Yes, it's that time of the year again! I was hoping, as always, to add another book to this list, but since that isn't going to happen this year, I may as well post this when the year has still one more day to go. So, I managed to finish 26 books this year, which keeps up my average quite nicely, at a book every 2 weeks. The list is pretty varied, I made some book resolutions a while ago, which I never updated in my books of 2018 post, but of course I didn't think of those as I picked my novels. I discovered some new writers this year, had some big disappointments from writers I love, and overall read more Dutch books than I've done in recent years.
So, without further ado, the complete list:
1 Milkman
2 Conversations with friends
3 Early Riser
4 Taal voor de leuk
5 Alias Grace
6 Friday Black
7 Machines like me
8 There there
9 Warlight
10 Naar de overkant van de nacht
11 Autumn
12 The Most Dangerous Place on Earth
13 Simon vs the Homosapiens agenda
14 Ferrera
15 Winter
16 How to
17 Calypso
18 The Catcher in the Rye
19 The Nickel Boys
20 Kruistocht in Spijkerbroek
21 The Cockroach
22 Maar je ziet er helemaal niet autistisch uit
23 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
24 De meeste mensen deugen
25 Asymmetry
26 Speeddaten met Plato
Just two rereads this year, the Harry Potter novel and Kruistocht in Spijkerbroek. Only one 'classic' novel, too; I'd never read The Catcher in the Rye before. Only a couple books by what I'd call my 'usual suspect' authors; Atwood, McEwan. I would have liked to read some books by Julian Barnes or Graham Swift, but somehow they didn't make their way into my bookcase this year. But on the other hand, I read lots of novels by new authors, either debut novels or new authors to me, which I mostly loved. I've written about several of these already, but let's put some of them into lists.
Best English novel
1 The Nickel Boys
2 Milkman
3 Autumn
So many great books this year. So, so many. But I think this will have to be the list for this year. Surprisingly, these are all authors I've never read before. I read several 'unheard' American voices this year, and Colson Whitehead's novel was the last. I think it was also the best, but maybe that is because I read it last. The Nickel Boys tells a horrible story in a beautiful way. Of all the novels I read this year, it is the one that is still on my mind some days. In contrast, Milkman was my very first read of 2019, and also the winner of the 2018 Man Booker. A deserved win, in my eyes. I don't think I've ever seen pages this densely packed, while getting through the novel at such speed. It is heavy, both in language and subject matter, but the story flows beautifully. Finally, of course, Autumn, by my big discovery Ali Smith. Less heavy subject matter, but giving the sense of togetherness in the novel, contrasted to the recent Brexit events, it will probably become a classic read at some point in time.
While reading them, I was expecting to put Conversations with friends or There there in my best novel list of this year, but overall it was such a great year, other novels found their way to the top. Honourable mentions to both, then.
Best Dutch novel
1 Kruistocht in spijkerbroek
2 Naar de overkant van de nacht
So most Dutch books I read this year were non-fiction, but I read 3 novels, one of which can be found under 'most disappointing' below. So Kruistocht in Spijkerbroek, or Crusade in Jeans, was the children's book sold cheaply this year (Dutch booksellers pick one childrens's book every year to promote reading). I love this novel when I first read it around age 10, and I love it still. Reading it as an adult makes you see loads of things you never realised when you were a child, but that doesn't make the novel any less good. Apparently someone made a film out of this novel, but I'd never watch that, for fear of ruining the images I have in my head. The second novel, Naar de overkant van de nacht, I started reading somewhere in 2017 or 2018, but I found it a pretty hard novel to get through. It's about a man celebrating carnival and thinking about his life. It felt a bit too heavy, too symbolic for my taste, which may explain why it took me so long to get through a novel less than 120 pages long.
Best classic
1 The Catcher in the Rye
If you're the only classic I read, you're going to end up on top. I liked this novel, but reading it after reading several stories featuring contemporary teenagers, Holden does turn out to be a bit of a whiner.
Best non-fiction
1 How to
2 De meeste mensen deugen
3 Taal voor de leuk
Right, enough has be said about How to in the accompanying blogpost. The second book, De meeste mensen deugen, is by Rutger Bregman, who has been getting some international attention due to his comments on the World Economic Forum in Davos. He's written a couple of books already, some of which have been translated into English. I'm pretty sure this novel will be translated as well. It focusses on human nature, specifically on how Hobbes and Rousseau both had opposing views on the matter. As the title (Most people are good) says, Bregman believes people are innately good, it takes a whole lot of effort or desperation to make someone commit criminal and/or violent acts. Being an optimistic person, I loved his view on things, especially the debunking of psychological studies that have become basic knowledge but now turn out to be based on faulty data or assumptions. Taal voor de leuk is by Paulien Cornelisse and features some of her columns on the Dutch language and the way people talk.
Best autobiographical
1 Maar je ziet er helemaal niet autistisch uit
2 Calypso
I realise these are technically also non-fiction, but as I read so many non-fiction novels, most of which I didn't write about here, I wanted to put in another short category. Maar je ziet er helemaal niet autistisch uit is by Bianca Toeps, who describes her life as an autistic person. She explains how certain things work, where certain traits come from, and how best to interact with autistic people. Some of the things she described were very recognisable, sometimes scarily so. I haven't been diagnosed, but I think this is a good read for everyone looking for a bit of recognition or reassurance. Calypso is a collection of columns by David Sedaris; I've never actually read any of his novels, but a friend gave me this book for my birthday. I enjoyed reading about his life, although it got a bit repetitive at times, as columns published months apart were now pushed together.
Best short-story collection
1 Friday Black
The only short-story collection I read, but a great one. Too bad there wasn't more of it.
Best fantasy/scifi
The only novels I read that could be considered scifi are sadly in the most disappointing list.
Best 'new' author
1 Ali Smith
2 Anna Burns
3 Colson Whitehead
So this is the other way around from my 'best English novel' list. Why so? Well, I liked Whitehead's novel best, but his voice maybe a bit less so. I'm looking forward to reading The Underground Railroad, but it isn't at the top of my list (it wasn't even on my 'books to buy' list until five minutes ago). Anna Burns has written two other novels, both of which I'm very curious about, and both of which are pretty hard to find. But if they're anything like Milkman, I'm in. Ali Smith, the most famous of the authors, has published the third instalment in her seasonal series, Spring, but it isn't in the right format yet. Yes, I'm one of those people who wants the whole series to be in the same edition. So I'll have to wait for that one, but luckily she's also written How to be both, and several other novels already. Her voice, the way she tells her stories, makes me very curious for more.
Most disappointing novel
1 Machines like me
2 Early Riser
3 Ferrera
The first two novels in this category can hardly come as a surprise. I wrote extensively about my disappointment with Ian McEwan's novel about living together with a robot. Thankfully he made up for it by The Cockroach, but Machines like me remains the biggest disappointment of the year. Closely followed, second only because McEwan is my favourite author, by Early Riser. We've been waiting for the sequel to Shades of Grey for years now, and Jasper Fforde decides to write a horrible novel like this! Again, I've vented my disappointment in an earlier post, but this also still smarts. The third novel is the long-awaited sequel to Ventoux by Bert Wagendorp. Ventoux, which I read before 2015, if my book lists tell the truth, was a great novel about renewing a boyhood friendship. Ferrera finds these 'boys' now in the middle of mid-life crises, packing up to go to Ferrara Italy. It feels like Wagendorp had a mid-life crisis while writing the novel, and it didn't do him any good. It was uninspiring, with flat characters, meaningless sideplots and a pointlessly dramatic ending. Again, after waiting for so long for a new novel, it was a big disappointment.
Authors I read more than once:
- Ali Smith (2x)
- Ian McEwan (2x)
Monday 30 December 2019
Monday 23 December 2019
Puzzling
A while ago I mentioned my enthusiasm in making logic puzzles; both in creating these puzzles for others to play, and in solving those made by others. But digital and/or logical puzzles are not the only kind of mental diversion I enjoy; there are also the physical sort, in the shape of jigsaw puzzles. Now this used to be something we did around Christmas time: put a big panel of wood on the dining room table (so that we could remove the puzzle if it wasn't finished by dinner time, which is honestly never was), pick a jigsaw puzzle we all liked or hadn't made in a while, and put it together. This was a team effort; someone could abandon the puzzle for a couple of hours to do the cooking or shopping or whatever, but there were longish stretches of time where everyone was at the table, cup of tea at their elbow, solving the puzzle together. My parents own a couple of puzzles, the older and bigger ones showing drawings of birds or rural scenes, the newer ones more colourful, with for example paintings by Van Gogh.
Now as I went away to uni, making a jigsaw wasn't really an option; for one because I didn't have a dinner table. But also; it's really a bit of an old person's hobby, right? So while living on my own, I never really made them. But a couple of years ago I was in a games store in December, and they sold the most beautiful puzzle of a curious bookcase, and I fell in love with the colours and the funny titles and the many beautiful details, so I bought it. And then a friend bought me another one. This was one of those friends who also enjoys making jigsaws, although this was not something you'd go around telling everyone, for fear of being considered dull.
But then this changed. We, the people, millennials most of all, are all too stressed out, working too hard and not being mindful of ourselves. Firstly, there were the colouring books for adults. Followed by yoga for everyone. Then, cuddling with cows. (I may have the order mixed up a bit, but you get the drift.) Somewhere along those lines, making jigsaw puzzles became socially accepted. Encouraged. Something to live in the moment, to take your mind off your busy life and impossible life choices. Suddenly, everyone was making jigsaws. And to make things better: they were doing it competitively.
Now I know this sounds like a proper juxtaposition: we're making jigsaws to forget about our rat race lives, and then we turned into a competition. And that is probably true. But it is a fact that the Dutch National Jigsaw Competition is in its tenth year in 2020. The first couple of years were small events with lots of jokes (puzzling in the dark, or without the example picture), but for the last 3 years it has become a serious business, with dozens of teams from all over the country competing. These teams of four (no more, no less) make the same 1,000 piece puzzle by Jan van Haasteren under the same conditions, trying to finish quickest. The national record is at 57 minutes.
One of my colleagues competed in 2018 and 2019, finishing second both times. Inspired by her stories and together with another colleague and a friend of mine, we tried to get into the 2019 competition as well, but all the qualification rounds were already fully booked. So, we set about practising. We'd all made jigsaw puzzles, lots of them, but trying to make one as fast as you can, without taking the time to go to the bathroom or take a sip of tea or do something else entirely was very strange at first. Hard to take serious, in a way. Also, the strategies to finishing a puzzle as quickly as possible are wildly different from just making one at home for fun. In the latter case, for me, the pieces stay in the box, I start by making the outer edge first and then fill it in gradually. In competitive puzzling, you throw all the pieces out of the box and sort them as quickly as you can, putting all the large colourful areas together first and not even bothering with the outer edge, as that will only get in the way when you're moving pieces around. We became pretty quick, even more so when a fourth member joined our team and we could actually compare our times to the times other teams had on earlier occasions.
This year, we were on time for the qualification round nearest to our home. We went there, full of anticipation, finding ourselves in a room with 39 other teams, mainly women, of all ages. Some teams were of the semi-professional kind, even wearing team shirts, others were clearly mainly there to have a pleasant evening together. Of these 40 teams, only 3 would go on to the finale. After the national anthem (it being a national competition) we counted down together, tore the wrapping paper from the box, and were very happy to see that it was one of the prettiest and easiest puzzles Jan van Haasteren has made. So we were in good spirits, dumped the pieces on the table and got started. After about 30 minutes, the announcer told us that if we wanted to break the national record, we should be halfway by now. And that some teams were more than halfway already. We looked at each other in despair; we were nowhere near halfway. How could they be this quick? After just 44 minutes and 24 seconds the first team was finished. They broke the national record by 13 minutes, setting an impossible time to ever beat. One place for the finale had been filled. We looked over to the only neighbours we could see; they were also nearly finished. There was no way we were going to make this.
Now I've never really competed in anything. I'm not a sports person. I like to win when playing boardgames, but I enjoy the company and the togetherness more than the victory. So I was surprised to notice my own drive, my own ambition to finishing this puzzle as quickly as possible, against all odds of ever taking a place in the finale. And I wasn't the only one. Our faces were red, we were standing up and shoving pieces at each other and into the jigsaw as quickly as we could. At the one hour mark, the announcer said that the numbers 2 and 3 were also close to finishing. We still had to put in about 100 pieces; we were sure we weren't going to make it. At 1:02:38, the table next to us erupted into cheers. We paid no attention, as we just needed to put in about another 10 pieces ourselves. At 1:02:53, we were finished. Third place. We made it into the finale, against all odds, the only newcomer team to make it. Fourth place was at 1:07:18, so we beat them by almost 5 minutes. I still can hardly believe it.
As I said, I've never been a competitive person. But I can now see why people do these things, put in the hours, train together, focus, keep going even when you're sure you're not going to make it. It was a rush of adrenaline, of energy, and most of all of great fun. We reached our goal; getting into the actual finale. Which we'll enter without any hope or expectations, as were the newcomers and there are so many better, faster teams. But it'll be another experience to remember. And... who knows?
These Christmas holidays, I'm back to making jigsaws at a more leisurely pace, together with family and friends, the way I secretly still like it best.
Now as I went away to uni, making a jigsaw wasn't really an option; for one because I didn't have a dinner table. But also; it's really a bit of an old person's hobby, right? So while living on my own, I never really made them. But a couple of years ago I was in a games store in December, and they sold the most beautiful puzzle of a curious bookcase, and I fell in love with the colours and the funny titles and the many beautiful details, so I bought it. And then a friend bought me another one. This was one of those friends who also enjoys making jigsaws, although this was not something you'd go around telling everyone, for fear of being considered dull.
But then this changed. We, the people, millennials most of all, are all too stressed out, working too hard and not being mindful of ourselves. Firstly, there were the colouring books for adults. Followed by yoga for everyone. Then, cuddling with cows. (I may have the order mixed up a bit, but you get the drift.) Somewhere along those lines, making jigsaw puzzles became socially accepted. Encouraged. Something to live in the moment, to take your mind off your busy life and impossible life choices. Suddenly, everyone was making jigsaws. And to make things better: they were doing it competitively.
Now I know this sounds like a proper juxtaposition: we're making jigsaws to forget about our rat race lives, and then we turned into a competition. And that is probably true. But it is a fact that the Dutch National Jigsaw Competition is in its tenth year in 2020. The first couple of years were small events with lots of jokes (puzzling in the dark, or without the example picture), but for the last 3 years it has become a serious business, with dozens of teams from all over the country competing. These teams of four (no more, no less) make the same 1,000 piece puzzle by Jan van Haasteren under the same conditions, trying to finish quickest. The national record is at 57 minutes.
One of my colleagues competed in 2018 and 2019, finishing second both times. Inspired by her stories and together with another colleague and a friend of mine, we tried to get into the 2019 competition as well, but all the qualification rounds were already fully booked. So, we set about practising. We'd all made jigsaw puzzles, lots of them, but trying to make one as fast as you can, without taking the time to go to the bathroom or take a sip of tea or do something else entirely was very strange at first. Hard to take serious, in a way. Also, the strategies to finishing a puzzle as quickly as possible are wildly different from just making one at home for fun. In the latter case, for me, the pieces stay in the box, I start by making the outer edge first and then fill it in gradually. In competitive puzzling, you throw all the pieces out of the box and sort them as quickly as you can, putting all the large colourful areas together first and not even bothering with the outer edge, as that will only get in the way when you're moving pieces around. We became pretty quick, even more so when a fourth member joined our team and we could actually compare our times to the times other teams had on earlier occasions.
This year, we were on time for the qualification round nearest to our home. We went there, full of anticipation, finding ourselves in a room with 39 other teams, mainly women, of all ages. Some teams were of the semi-professional kind, even wearing team shirts, others were clearly mainly there to have a pleasant evening together. Of these 40 teams, only 3 would go on to the finale. After the national anthem (it being a national competition) we counted down together, tore the wrapping paper from the box, and were very happy to see that it was one of the prettiest and easiest puzzles Jan van Haasteren has made. So we were in good spirits, dumped the pieces on the table and got started. After about 30 minutes, the announcer told us that if we wanted to break the national record, we should be halfway by now. And that some teams were more than halfway already. We looked at each other in despair; we were nowhere near halfway. How could they be this quick? After just 44 minutes and 24 seconds the first team was finished. They broke the national record by 13 minutes, setting an impossible time to ever beat. One place for the finale had been filled. We looked over to the only neighbours we could see; they were also nearly finished. There was no way we were going to make this.
Now I've never really competed in anything. I'm not a sports person. I like to win when playing boardgames, but I enjoy the company and the togetherness more than the victory. So I was surprised to notice my own drive, my own ambition to finishing this puzzle as quickly as possible, against all odds of ever taking a place in the finale. And I wasn't the only one. Our faces were red, we were standing up and shoving pieces at each other and into the jigsaw as quickly as we could. At the one hour mark, the announcer said that the numbers 2 and 3 were also close to finishing. We still had to put in about 100 pieces; we were sure we weren't going to make it. At 1:02:38, the table next to us erupted into cheers. We paid no attention, as we just needed to put in about another 10 pieces ourselves. At 1:02:53, we were finished. Third place. We made it into the finale, against all odds, the only newcomer team to make it. Fourth place was at 1:07:18, so we beat them by almost 5 minutes. I still can hardly believe it.
As I said, I've never been a competitive person. But I can now see why people do these things, put in the hours, train together, focus, keep going even when you're sure you're not going to make it. It was a rush of adrenaline, of energy, and most of all of great fun. We reached our goal; getting into the actual finale. Which we'll enter without any hope or expectations, as were the newcomers and there are so many better, faster teams. But it'll be another experience to remember. And... who knows?
These Christmas holidays, I'm back to making jigsaws at a more leisurely pace, together with family and friends, the way I secretly still like it best.
 |
| Someone managed to take a picture at our moment of triumph. |
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