StoryGraph

Early last year, I finally caved and created a Goodreads account. At the time, I thought I would find many likeminded readers there, especially fellow alumni of English Literature, to list and exchange book ideas. As it turned out, several friends used Goodreads, but more of them used StoryGraph. As soon as I'd created a Goodreads account, I was asked why I wouldn't join StoryGraph instead. Now, after a year of Goodreads, I moved over and joined StoryGraph.

But why is StoryGraph any better than Goodreads? They're both sites/apps that let you record the books you've read, file reviews, and get recommendations. How much more can there be to it?

Well, one of the biggest draws can be found on the bottom of StoryGraph's homepage, where it says "A fully-featured Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads". Goodreads is owned by Amazon. This means it generally only contains books you can buy on Amazon (which does not include a lot of the Dutch non-fiction I read last year). Also, in the 'recommendations' list, I've never found a book I was actually interested in reading or that was even close to my interests. Instead, the 'recommendations' lists are full of currently popular titles, especially BookTok trends, that Amazon is interested in selling. They use Goodreads to push their sales, not to point readers towards a hidden gem they might find in a second-hand bookstore.

StoryGraph is different in a couple of ways. One of my favourite things is that I as a user can add editions of a book, or change details. So when I wanted to add the pretty obscure Dutch cheese-making book I'd read, I realised there was no page count or publisher information available yet. I was able to edit this myself, adding to a more complete database. These are publications details, but you can also add reviews to a book that go beyond the standard 1-5 stars and written text. All users can enter the 'moods' of books (for example; adventurous, dark, funny, mysterious), whether it is fast or slow-paced, plot or character-driven, etcetera. The app will tell you the percentages, so for Astonish me, 77% found it 'emotional', 22% 'dark' and just 1% 'relaxing'. 55% thinks the book is character-driven, just 5% think it is plot-driven (myself included) and the rest think it's a mix. When you're looking for a particular type of book to read, these stats can come in pretty handy.

Furtheremore, based on these reviews, the recommentations on there are actually recommendations. I answered a short survey on my likes and dislikes, which generated a list of 20 titles the StoryGraph algorithm thought I might like. 18 of those books I'd already read. StoryGraph couldn't know that of course, since my historical reading data is only from 2023 and 2024, but it only goes to show that the recommendations acutally fit my preferences and also include books that were published decades ago and are not currently hip and happening. 

Finally, as the name already tells you, StoryGraph is full of graphs. And stats. And they're free to use, not hidden behind a 'plus' pay wall like on Goodreads. The stats will tell you the basics; how many books and how many pages, but also fiction/non-fiction, genres, languages, particular writers, and much more. Below is the overview of the books and pages I read in various months of 2023, with the November dip due to NaNoWriMo clearly visible. 

Books and pages read in 2023.

This will make my end-of-year overviews so much easier to compile!

So overall, I am much happier on StoryGraph than I ever was on Goodreads. It's already led me to some books I'd never thought to read before and it made me look afresh at books I have already read. The app does have some unexpected quirks and does not always work the way you'd expect, but there are probably only a handful of people working on it, rather than the hundreds Amazon can throw at Goodreads. 

In short, I am very happy to have made the switch and hope to find many more friends and books there in the future!

Astonish Me

Astonish Me is the third book I read by Maggie Shipstead. After the joy of reading Great Circle, which quickly became my favourite book of 2023, I was somewhat disappointed by her short story collection You have a friend in 10A. Since Astonish Me was published before both of these, I was curious to see how I liked it.

Unfortunately, despite the title, this novel did not astonish me all that much. The book centers on Joan, who is a ballet dancer in New York in the seventies, turns housewife in California in the eighties, but returns to the ballet world in the nineties when her son turns out to be a ballet prodigy. While she was young, she played a role in the defection of a Russian dancer; she drove his getaway car and had a short relationship with him. But her ballet skills were not up to par and she returns to her high school boyfriend, to let him take her into a world of domesticity. This, in a nutshell, is the entire story.

If you love ballet, you will probably love this book. There are long descriptions of ballet class, of dance design, of differences in styles between French, Russian or American dancers, of entire performances even. Joan is always stretching her muscles or refusing to eat, two stereotypical images one has of a ballet dancer. This could have easily turned into a caricature, but it is clear that Maggie Shipstead really loves ballet and probably cannot imagine that anyone could tire from reading about plies and fourth or fifth positions for page upon page.

But the characters were nice, both Joan and her husband, her best friend, who sticks with ballet dancing, and later on her son, with some outside views thrown in by their neighbours and their daughter. They are nothing special, but they have a personality, a will of their own. I was not really rooting for them, but I enjoyed spending time with them.

Structure-wise, the book is set in a mix of chronology. We first meet Joan as she decides to stop following her ballet dream and leaves the company. Then we jump back in time to meet her as a young girl learn about her formative time in Paris and her relationship with the Russian. Then we jump forward in time again, to meet her young family, with a son growing up and discovering ballet for himself. Then we jump back in time some more, and forward again. In my opinion, these time jumps are unnecessary; telling the story in a normal time order would have been just as fine (but more on that later).

But that was not the thing that annoyed me the most. Towards the end of the book, with the second jump backwards, we get a 'big reveal'. You somehow know this plot twist is coming, as the convoluted structure seems to exist only to create some confusion, to keep something hidden, so you just feel something is up. But the thing is, when the big reveal is revealed, it is as if we should have known about this all along. The book continues as if it is nothing special, nothing new. Added to that, most of the characters turn out to know all along. But we, as readers, had no chance. There was no way we could logically have thought about this, given all the information the book gave us. 

Now I love a book with a plot twist. Great Circle contains one of the best plot twist I've read in a while. But in that story, we find out what is going on before the characters do. We have some extra bits of information, so that we understand a hidden message in a letter way before the characters know. The book does not assume we have this extra knowledge and we can slowly enjoy the other characters coming to grips with the big reveal we already knew. It makes you feel smart, it makes you feel involved, and it makes the process the characters go through recognisable.

With Astonish Me, the process was exactly the other way around. It was as if all the characters were sitting on this piece of information and at the moment it was convenient for the plot, the author threw it in our face. It was not so much a twist, as a hugh bit of exposition. Combined with the forced structure, it was more like reading an instruction manual that had to get a bit of background out of the way, than slowly getting to meet a new part of a character.

Now Astonish Me is mostly a book about ballet. There isn't much of a story there. The plot isn't the point, the characters aren't the point, the writing style isn't the point, it is an ode to ballet, to techniques and historical events, to people committing themselves to an art form, to dedicating their lives and their bodies to something greater than themselves. As such, it is a good read. But as a work of literature, it unfortunately disappointed me once again. 

The Whalebone Theatre

In my overview of books I read in 2023 I mentioned that I might be reading the best book I would read all year at the turn of the year again, just as I did last year with The Great Circle. Now that I have actually finished said book, I do hope that this prediction will not come true, as that would mean a lot of less-than-great books in the year to come.
So the book I was reading was The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn. And I liked it, I liked it a lot. I just think it was not everything it could have been.

The book centers on a country house in the south of England, where a mixed bunch of characters convene from around the middle of the First to the end of the Second World War. Now if this smells a lot like the Cazalet stories of Elizabeth Jane Howard to you, you would be very right. With the main difference that I still feel like I know some of the Cazalets, I could recognise them on the street and understand how their emotions work, whereas all the Seagraves from Chilcomb remained mysteries to me throughout the story.

As the story opens there are only Jasper and Christabel, father and daughter, with the mother quite recently desceased. Jasper remarries to Rosalind, who is to produce an heir. This is all set during the First World War, with Jasper unable to go to the front because of an old injury. His brother Willoughby is off fighting but manages to be home just at the time Rosalind gives birth. And this is where our troubles begin. I mean, naming the younger brother Willoughby will already give anyone with any literary knowledge an idea of what the fellow will be up to (read up on your Austen if you don't). Inevitably, Rosalind gives birth to a girl (meaning no heir), Jasper dies and Rosalind marries Willoughby to finally produce the male child the estate needs; Digsby. 

Now the above is just the first of five parts to the book, laying the foundations for the rest of the plot. A confused family of five, three children who grow up as siblings but are actually mostly cousins, with a lot of hanger-on characters in the shape of Willoughby's old war pals, the staff, random Russian painters who set up shop in a cottage, and a further rabble of children. None of these characters really do seem to like, let alone care about each other, with the great exception of Christabel, who thinks she has willed Digsby into being by wanting a brother so badly and thus feels solely responsible for his wellbeing. Which is good, for the children are left entirely to their own devices by their parents or step parents.

At some point, the theatre from the title is constructed from the bones of a washed-up whale. Somehow, the theatrics are managed by the children, with the adults taking part but leaving the main operation to three characters hardly older than 10. Any suspension of disbelief that may have lingered, went at that point. I mean, the whole setting just felt so artificial, and these characters were behaving in ways no sane adult would do, especially in the 1920s.

Then follows the start of the Second World War, which clears out the estate as all the characters go off to fight or help out in other ways. This War seems to take up most of the book but is also somehow suddenly over. We find ourselves in the thick of the action with the liberation of Paris, and then suddenly back home at the estate, where the future of the home is set out in broad strokes before the book comes to an end. I finished reading it almost a week ago but in the back of my mind there is still something expecting that there will be more to the story, waiting for it to end, waiting for the outcome of both the war and several characters, who we somehow never see again.

So the plot is, to put it mildly, unbelievable. The characters, as mentioned before, I did not really care for. I enjoyed Christabel's fierceness, but she is not likeable. I enjoyed Flossie's character development into a confident young woman, until that fell flat and she married the most convenient George ever to set foot in the estate. I still don't know Digsby, even though he was the only one all the other characters appeared to like.

So with all that, why did I still like this book? 

For one, the writing is very immersive. There is a bit at the beginning, when Jasper dies, that I could almost see happening in front of my eyes. It was one of the very few parts that really cut to the quick, but it showed the promise of what this book could have been. There are other parts too, especially when Christabel is in France, or when Flossie has German POWs working on the estate, that were captivating to read. As this is Joanna Quinn's debut novel, there certainly is promise in her writing style, if she can find an editor who will help her bring some life into her characters and cut back on all the exposition. 

With the beautiful language come some great thoughts, again mainly from Christabel and Flossie, on the meaning of life, on acting, on friendship. There really are some great ideas in this book, but it is as if the characters, like their author, are not fully equipped to express them. Finally, there were some nice surprises in style; the maid's diary, in poorly written English, reflected on the goings-on and characters in a new light, and there were letters and newspaper clippings and exposition guides to show what was going on in the intermissions between chapters or parts. This is the kind of writing she should have employed far more: show, don't tell.

All in all, not the best read of 2024 (I hope). But somehow, I can't help liking it despite myself. I hope Joanna Quinn will quickly write another novel, to see whether the promise she shows here is really there.

Books of 2023

Yes, it is that time of the year again! Looking back on all I have read this year and planning ahead for my 2024 reads. Last year around this time I was in the middle of what turned out to be the best book I would read the entire year (spoiler alert!) and this year might possibly be the same. But we'll find out about that next year around this time.
Amazingly, I read 43 books this year. That is 2 more than in 2015, when I was actually attempting to read 52 books in my books challenge. Turns out that joining the local library will give you access to a massive amount of books, some good and some not so good, some of which you'd never thought of to read by yourself, others you're sure you'll never read again. Added to that, 2022 was quite a poor year in reading so I still had loads of books waiting to be read (including 3 Man Booker winners, as it turns out).

So, without further ado, let's look at the list:

1 Great Circle

2 The Last White Man

3 Flights of Fancy

4 Faalmoed & andere filosofische overdenkingen

5 Sorrow and Bliss

6 Men without Women

7 Little fires everywhere

8 Altijd iets the vinden

9 The No-Show

10 De Kooi

11 The Color Purple

12 Wall and Piece

13 The Miniaturist

14 Welkom bij de club

15 Gegijzeld

16 The Secret History

17 You have a friend in 10A

18 Sea of Tranquility

19 Monet - Op zoek naar het licht

20 Love Marriage

21 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

22 Monet - Een feest voor het oog

23 The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

24 The End of the World is a Cul de Sac

25 Becoming

26 Liefdesbang

27 The Long View

28 Parable of the Sower

29 Foster

30 Parable of the Talents

31 Crying in H Mart

32 Daisy Jones & the Six

33 Companion Piece

34 Trespasses

35 Love on the Brain

36 Last Night in Montreal

37 Our Missing Hearts

38 The Love Hypothesis

39 Shuggie Bain

40 Birnam Wood

41 Project Hail Mary

42 The Switch

43 The Promise

Just two rereads in the entire pile; a children's book (Gegijzeld, which would now probably be labelled 'young adult') that I wanted to reread and a Beth O'Leary snack (The Switch) during NaNoWriMo. That makes for a total of 41 entirely new books, fiction and non-fiction, English and Dutch, in a year. This may well be my best reading year of the last 10 years, if not more.

Best English novel

1 Great Circle

2 Trespasses

3 Sea of Tranquility

Not surprisingly, I've written about all these three books earlier, as they made quite an impression. Great Circle is just one of the best books I've ever read; wholly fictional, but it feels like you've lived an entire life with these characters. Trespasses feels equally real but is rooted in a past not all that long ago, which makes the impression it leaves somehow feel more real. Sea of Tranquility is another one of Emily St. John Mandel's best works, although nothing will ever top Station Eleven.

But this was a hard choice to make. The good thing about GoodReads is that it tracks your reviews, so I've ended up with the books that I gave five star reviews when I just read them, but honorable mentions must go out to Project Hail Mary (see also below), Companion Piece, Little fires everywhere, The Last White Man and Love Marriage. All great books that made a lasting impression this year.

Best Dutch novel

1 Welkom bij de club

So Thomas van der Meer calls his book a novel, and I will treat it as such, but it feels more like an autobiography of the author in his transformation from woman to man and from office worker to healthcare professional. He faces so much judgement and prejudice, it is a miracle this story is as light and funny as it is.

Best classic

Well... I read a couple of novels that could be considered classics this year; The Color Purple, The Secret History, maybe even Parable of the Sower? But I wasn't really overwhelmed by any of these books, especially the first two, which have become quite famous. I enjoyed Parable of the Sower for the most part, but then at the end it fizzled away into nothing much and the sequel, Parable of the Talents, didn't improve much. So despite actually reading some classics for the first time in years, I won't be appointing a 'best' among them.

Best non-fiction

1 Faalmoed  & andere filosofische overdenkingen 

2 Liefdesbang

3 Altijd iets te vinden

The library has a wealth of non-fiction books I would never actually buy but enjoy reading very much. These three books al taught me something in their on field; philosophy, relationships and art. This is no strict order, I enjoyed and learned from all of them, and several of the other non-fiction books I read too. 

Best autobiographical

1 Becoming

2 De Kooi

3 Crying in H Mart

It's been a while since I could actually separate non-fiction and autobiographical into two piles, but here we are. I very much enjoyed Michelle Obama's autobiography, although it could have been a bit shorter. But it gave a good insight into her life and the process of running for president of the United States. De Kooi is written by a special forces man who is famous because of a tv programme he participates in. This book felt like a covid-project; not much else to do, so time to put your memories to paper, but it gave an interesting insight in a small group of specialised agents who keep society safe. Crying in H Mart has become somewhat of a BookTok phenomenon and as I didn't really know the author I couldn't really relate to it all that much, but it was an enjoyable read.

Best short-story collection

1 The End of the World is a Cul de Sac

2 You have a Friend in 10A

3 Men without Women

I read The End of the World is a Cul de Sac before reading Trespasses and I was a bit confused about what Louise Kennedy was on about. Some of these stories were great, some not so much. But this was the right way around, as reading You have a Friend in 10A, the story collection of Maggie Shipstead, sent me into doubts about her writing. Some authors just excel in writing longer stories, although again some of the short stories were really good. I've written about Men withouth Women before and it only made the list because it does contain some nice stories. But none of these collections are really that great, especially compared to last year's 'winner' Story of your life and others.

Best scifi/fantasy

1 Project Hail Mary

2 Sea of Tranquility

3 Parable of the Sower

I've written about Project Hail Mary and about Sea of Tranquility before; they are that wonderful combination of great writing, smart plots, interesting characters and a wholly new setting, which the author created just for us. Parable of the Sower is the last on the list because as a scifi novel, especially a dystopian one, I did enjoy it. It just left me annoyed at the open ending and religious overtones. But it is one of those novels that has been around for ages and you wonder how you never knew it existed (until someone metioned it in a conference talk, in my case).

Best 'new' author

1 Maggie Shipstead / Louise Kennedy

2 Celeste Ng

3 Taylor Jenkins Reid

I'm putting two authors on the first place here, as both produced a wonderful novel and a somewhat mediocre short story collection. Can't really decide between them. I am looking forward to reading more of their novels, as that is apparently where their strenghts lie. 

Celeste Ng's Little fires everywhere must have been on my to-read pile for literally years before I picked it up and then I was mad at myself for not doing so earlier, because it is a great story. I then read Our Missing Hearts, which made less of an impression than I would have thought given the subject matter. Taylor Jenkins Reid is another BookTok phenomenon; I enjoyed both of her novels but they seem a bit too catered to the current sentiments in young adulty reading; I hope to find something that has truly 'her' voice in the coming year.

Most disappointing novel

1 The Color Purple

2 The Miniaturist

3 Birnam Wood

As mentioned above, The Color Purple is now considered a classic and even won the Pullizer Prize, but I'm afraid I'm missing the hype here. I didn't care for any of the characters, the style felt stilted and the plot really wasn't going anywhere. The Miniaturist was one of those novels that spent a lot of time in the 'top 10' piles in the book store but I'm happy I didn't buy it, because it was a silly story, set in an unrealistic Amsterdam of the seventeenth century. It feels like a book Americans would read to 'understand' the Netherlands or the Dutch somehow. Both these books were among my firsr library readings, which just goes to show how easy it is to borrow something you're not entirely sure you will actually like.

I wrote about my disappointment with Birnam Wood earlier; I probably would have rated it a lot higher if it hadn't been written by Eleanor Catton, which just proves that writing one good book is no guarantee for further success. There were books I disliked far mor than Birnam Wood, such as The Love Hypothesis (which is basically Ali Hazelwood's earlier novel, Love on the Brain, in another jacket) or The Long View (which is Elizabeth Jane Howard's least rated book) but since my expectations for these books were so much lower, they just receive an honorable mention here.

And as a special bonus category:

Best Man Booker winner

1 The Promise

2 The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

3 Shuggie Bain

I had quite a pile of Man Booker winners still to read (2020, 2021 and 2022), and despite the large number of other books I read this year, I fitted them all in. All of them felt like 'real' Man Booker winners in their own rights, although I probably would have picked other books from the short list in these respective years (Maggie Shipstead! Claire Keegan!). But I can see why they won. I enjoyed The Promise best of all; a well-structured plot without it being too obvious and a nice tie-in between the novel's events and historical milestones. I look forward to reading other books by Damon Galgut, especially if they have the same stream-of-conscious-like writing style. The Seven Moons... took me a while to get through, but it shed light on a part of the world, and on a history of that part of the world, which I'd never read about before. Shuggie Bain I wrote about before; I still haven't fully made up my mind about that one.

Authors I read more than once:

- Maggie Shipstead (2x)

- Celeste Ng (2x)

- Beth O'Leary (2x)

- Emily St. John Mandel (2x)

- Louise Kennedy (2x)

- Taylor Jenkins Reid (2x)

- Octavia E. Butler (2x)

- Ali Hazelwood (2x)

Apart from Beth O'Leary and Emily St. John Mandel, these are all new authors I read for the first time in 2024. And apparently, their first novels gave me an appetite for more. And next year I will probably read more from all of these authors and many more, although I don't think I will ever manage 43 books in one year again for quite some time!

Project Hail Mary

Andy Weir fits onto a very small list of people who understand science, who really get things most of us cannot ever expect to fully comprehend, and who can make art out of that understanding. And with art I mean; books, stories, comics, etcetera, not just tv series or books explaining the very difficult things so that we do understand them. I mean; art encorporating that knowledge, but going beyond it to tell a story, or make a joke, or paint a picture. (The only other person on this list, for me, is Randall Monroe of the xckd webcomic. So it's a short list. And Andy has only written three books so far, another list that I wish were a bit longer.)

I read his first novel, The Martian, as I was travelling back from the very random road tripping tour I did back in 2016 and it was just the thing to keep me awake across the 14 hours and several different flights that got me back from Phoenix to Amsterdam. Turns out that story was made into a famous film with Matt Damon way before I read the actual novel, but I'm glad I read the book first. 

I somehow missed Artemis, his second novel, but I was on time with his third, Project Hail Mary, as it was hailed (yes, I wrote that) as one of the best science novels by my favourite science communication column. And yes, we should call this a science fiction novel since most of the things happening in it are not really happening today as of yet, but I'm sticking with science novel since they could happen (apart from the alien species that sets the whole thing in motion, of course). By which I mean; the science checks out. Just as in The Martian, everything actually works the way it could go, there are no magical science cheats or easy passes to get out of trouble. As I said before; Mr Weir combines science and art in a way that not many people can.

So Project Hail Mary. Ryland Grace finds himself waking up in a spaceship hurtling towards another star. He is not sure how he got there, he is not even sure who he actually is. Here we get to the magic of Weir's writing: the protagonist tries to figure out where he is from by analysing that he uses inches for small distances, but kilometers per hour (or whichever metric equivalent is in the book) for more scientific things. So he concludes he must be American, and probably a scientist. As the novel progresses we get several flashbacks that fill out Ryland's backstory, but these early parts, when we are getting to know a character who is at the same time getting to know himself, are brillant writing.

As it turns out, Ryland is out there to save humanity from a catastrophic ecological disaster. His companions have sadly not survived their coma, so he is on his own. Or is he...?

The blurb stops there, so if you don't want to get any spoilers you should stop reading now, but with a blurb like that you can be sure that he will not be on his own. In fact, pretty soon after he arrives at the star, he is joined by another spaceship, containing another solo astronaut out to save his (their?) home planet. These two characters live in completely different environments and have completely different biological make-ups, but somehow manage to communicate (again; this is written in a believeable manner) and decide to join forces. Ryland and Rocky (as he dubs his alien companion) set out to save both worlds.

What follows are the expected adventures, setbacks, discoveries and further setbacks. If you've read or watched The Martian or any 'journey of the hero' like story, you will know what to expect. Combined with the science and the wonderful way Weir paints his setting with words would have already made for great reading, but Project Hail Mary goes further. As we get to know Ryland through the flashbacks, we realise he is not the prefect hero, he might even be called the opposite. And as they work together to find a solution, Ryland muses on what it means to be human, to cooperate, to exist. They discuss fundamental topics about how live has evolved and why it should be the two of them who meet here, lightyears from both of their home planets.

In The Martian, the final setback (which was of course overcome) was one too many for me. It somehow broke my suspension of disbelief, as to me failure wasn't actually possible anymore at that point. The same might be true for some with Project Hail Mary. For me, these final chapters were an image of humility, humanity, and sacrificing yourself for the greater good. In my opinion, flawed as he is, Ryland Grace makes for a better main character than near-perfect Mark Watney ever could. Faced with the most difficult decision of his life, far more difficult than the one that brought him on the spaceship in the first place, he is put in a position not many of us would ever want to be in. To have an already great novel end on such a high note, seeing the title of the final chapter actually brought tears to my eyes. That doesn't happen a lot, especially with science (fiction) novels. 

It is a rare thing, a novel that goes beyond the science most of us understand, but manages to explain the things that are happening in a natural way, while it gives the reader two characters that are believeable, likeable and relateable, and also instills a sense of right and wrong, of choice and sacrifice, all in one adventurous package. It may well be the best thing I read for a long time to come.

Birnam wood

So Eleanor Catton's second novel has been out for a while now, but I refrained from reading it just yet. I'd gifted it to a couple of people who had lukewarm responses and I'd only recently reread her first novel The Luminaries (or so I thought... turns out that was early 2021). Anyway, at some point, I felt I really had to get going, as I was very curious what kind of a second novel she had produced. Hopefully, it didn't suffer from the 'second novel effect', although the 10 year gap between the books did not really bode well...

Unfortunately, this new novel, Birnam Wood, is nowhere near the level of The Luminaries. If it weren't for the very clever plot devices and rock-solid structure of the novel, and both stories being set in New Zealand. I wouldn't have guessed they were written by the same person. 

Birnam Wood centers around a grass roots farming collective (they call themselves a 'guerilla gardening group') of the same name, who semi-legally grow crops in people's gardens, but also in abandoned fields or backyards. How this would ever become a profitable endeveaour is beyond me. I mean, they sell the crops, but they also have to eat for themselves. Adding the costs of soil, seeds, water et cetera to the list, as someone who has been growing her own food for years now, I'd say they'd have to take over most of their town for this to ever become a profitable situation. But they are apparently still at it after a couple of years, with Mira somewhat informally heading the group. She feels it is up to her to improve things. When she stumbles upon the perfect solution to their problem; an American billionaire wanting to sponsor them on his newly bought plot of land, they jump at the opportunity. 

Wait... An anarchist group taking money from the practial embodiment of everything they fight against? Yes, unbelievable as it sounds, that is the event that sets this story in motion.

If this all sounds too good to be true, you're right. In the first chapter written from his point of view, we discover this billionaire has more than one ulterior motive. He is, quite bluntly put, wholly evil. This was one of the most refreshing parts about the book, really, to read about a villain whose evilness is not explained away by a traumatised childhood or thwarted love; he is just in it for his own gain and nothing else. 

All the other characters were unfortunately far less interesting; they have their backstory, ideals, and motivations, but most of the conflict between these characters could have been easily resolved if they'd just talked to each other. The three main young characters, Mira, Shelley and Tony, are in a weird triangular love/hate relationship that felt like it only existed to create tension between them and have them make rash descisions to annoy another character. Sure, I know people can be confused or guearded, but even the characters themselves tell us how many assumptions they are make about everyone around them. Again, if they'd communicated a bit better, half the book would not have happened.

And these characters are millenials, so they do talk a lot. These were the best parts of the story, for me; the lengthy conversations the Birnam Wood crowd has about society, politics, nature, all those things that are not working in their favour. These parts were really well written, as were some of the background descriptions. Also, lengthy descriptions of New Zealand's amazing nature and wildlife, which I hope to experience for myself one day, although I will not be camping (or gardening) on frozen ground, as these characters are continiously doing. 

And yes, the plot works, the structure is ingenious, Catton doesn't teach creative writing for nothing. She knows how to pace her narrative, when to switch the point of view, how to keep the reader guessing and reading on. That bad things are going to happen, is a given from the start. But to whom? And how bad will it be?

Unfortunately, I didn't care. I didn't care about the characters, I didn't care about the outcome. Despite all the backstory and all the points of view, they never came alive for me. Technically, the story works very well. Emotionally, this novel is flat as a pancake.

Shuggie Bain

Shuggie Bain bookends my October this year; I started reading it on October 1st and finished just now, with just a couple of hours left in the month. It was one of the Man Booker winners I still had to read, together with the 2021 winner The Promise, which has lived on my bookshelf for a similar amount of time. But if it is anything like Shuggie Bain, I'm afraid it will have to wait for another couple of months.

Maybe a book about a young boy growing up gay in a poor, grey and always rainy Glasgow isn't the best thing to read during a grim and rainy autumn month. Maybe that was why it took me 31 days to get through. Or maybe it was because the book is so heavy, filled with sadness and broken possibilities, that you cannot consume it in a big gulp. You have to go slow, or it will consume you.

The book stretches over five sections set in specific years between 1981 and 1992. They cover the places Shuggie (real name: Hugh) lives with his mother Agnes and his half-brother and sister. His father leaves the family early on in the novel, dumping them in an outlying scheme and moving in with another woman. After that, he is around at the edge of their existence, coming in to wreck rather than help. The half-sister lives pretty early on too, escaping their meagre existence into marriage. Shuggie and his half-brother Leek (Alexander) are the ones left to take care of their mother, who has never worked a day in her life but values her appearance and what others might think of her immensely. This means her children speak proper English, in contrast to the Scottish accent all the other characters have (I had to read those sentences aloud in my head sometimes, to figure out what they said). It also means they appear to be above the others, who despise them and won't accept them. The other kids wouldn't have accepted Shuggie anyway, as from a very early age it is clear that he is what they call a 'poof'.

But this is not Shuggie's biggest problem; that is his mother's alcoholism. From early on it is clear that there is no saving her; even when she is on a dry spell you can just tell that things will take a turn for the worst again. Unfortunately, Shuggie never realises this. Even when Leek leaves, telling him there is no hope, Shuggie stays at home, neglecting his school work and other things a young kid should be thinking of, to take care of his mother, to try and save some benefit money to buy food, and to keep all the other drunks away. These are heartbreaking passages; Agnes is completely reliant on him sometimes, but wallows in self-pity and does not see the love her children have for her.

Some of these sections are written in short bursts, as if they are a random collection of memories. This made me wonder whether the novel was autobiographical, but the author Douglas Stuart insists it is not, although he does admit some of the scenes were taken from his memories. In a way I am glad, as I would not wish such a childhood upon anyone.

 Now that I have finished it, I can't really make up my mind what I thought about this novel. I can see why it won the Booker, as the writing is very good and the themes feel important, but the message is not a happy one and I lost sympathy for the character of Shuggie along the line. He is not optimistic, he is not purposeful, he just doggedly lives along until the change that comes along is big enought to push him off track. This made me care less about the outcome, which made the final parts of the novel feel somewhat like a chore. But Shuggie Bain is a book I would probably never have picked up if it hadn't won, so there is still something to say for keeping up the Man Booker reading tradition. If only a happy book would win sometimes...

Trespasses

Somehow, I've been reading a lot of Irish writers lately. Not just Sally Rooney, but also Anna Burns, Claire Keegan, and now Louise Kennedy. A while ago I read her debut and short-story collection, The End of the World is a Cul de Sac. I liked about half of the stories, but didn't really get anything from the other half. So when I read a review about her debut novel, Trespasses, I hesitated for while. But it sounded like such a good book that in the end, I went for it.

Another thing I went to, in the meantime, was Ireland. More specifically, I made a three week round trip of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, both of which I'd never visited before. And while I was there, I realised I didn't really know anything about these countries, despite reading loads of novels and stories set there in the past year. Suddenly throwaway comments about 'a Sligo accent' or 'the Irish boom' made much more sense. I'm considering rereading everything I've read with this new knowledge in mind.

One thing I thought I knew about were the Troubles. I read Milkman in 2019 and it blew me away. And then I read some more novels set in the aftermath, and I thought that was that. But being there, walking around Belfast and Derry seeing the memorials and reading the stories, but more importantly seeing the walls and the murals still up, still separating people, still condemning the other side, that brought it home. I've seen pieces of the Berlin Wall, remnants of what once was, but here these walls are still in use, with gates that close at night. The Derry city walls have only recently been opened to the public again, after years of serving as a lookout for the military to still any unrest. Living in such a world, growing up in such a world, is so very much different from my own experience that it made me realise how much I must have missed reading these books. Subtext, amosphere, small references.

Now Trespasses is set in the seventies in and near Belfast, so at the heart of it all. And the protagonist Cushla is a Catholic living in Northern Ireland, which tells you more than you think. The story centers around both her wish to save and protect the Catholic children she teaches and the love affair she has with a much older man (both Protestant and married). In and of itself the plot wasn't the best, and the way everything ties together in the end, with all these characters that don't know each other influencing each other's lives... That wasn't really for me. But the whole atmosphere came to life as I read it. 

At some point, Cushla is in Dublin, and she is amazed to see people going out, enjoying themselves out on the streets. She realises how impossible this has been in her neighbourhood for years now. It's just a small reference, but it hits home when you know what that means. When the Northern Irish characters meet up, it is always at someone's home, and the guests always have to pass through checkpoints to get there. These characters joke about this, as it is a simple fact of life for them, but the weight of these things is there in the background. This, combined with a factual writing style and very real characters, is what made this novel stay in my mind weeks after I'd finished it.

Now I will hopefully never experience what it was like to live during the Troubles and I don't think any novel or museum or movie can make us experience it fully. But books like these capture a time and a place that not many people know too much about. I am happy to have found this spot.

Foster

After all the great reviews I'd read about Small Things Like These, it turned out to be my biggest disappointment of 2022. However, Claire Keegan once again received high praise for her newest novella (at just 84 pages, we can't call it a novel proper); Foster. Because it was available through the library, I decided to give her work another chance.

As I had already seen the film version of the story, The Quiet Girl, I knew everything there is to know about the plot beforehand. In fact, I was amazed to find out they had managed to pull an hour and half of film from such a short story. For really, it is a short story. Girl is somewhat under appreciated by her parents back home, goes to stay with a distant (in the film, not the book) aunt and uncle, blooms into a confident young lady, discovers some truths about life, family etc, and is returned back home. A lot can happen in the span of such a comprehensive plot, and it does.

The story is told from the first person, which leaves a lot to the imagination. Cáit is shy, but mostly because of how her parents behave towards her. In the film they make her out to be the runt of the litter, teased by her sisters and bullied by her father. In the book, all of the children are basically mistreated by their parents, not out of spite but because they really have nothing to feed or keep them on. I think the novella has the better premise, as it is easy to show growth in a character that is actively put down, but harder to do in a character that is simply neglected. In fact, in the book we don't even find out her name. It is as though no one sees her. And that is really the only thing that 'the woman' and 'Kinsella' (as Cáit calls them) do; see her. Show her kindness. Show her faith. And she blooms under their attention. 

The writing is very good. With so few words available, Claire Keegan had to get them just right. There is no room for extensive descriptions, but the lack of words also asks something of the reader. Because Cáit is clearly not telling us everything, because we get just snippets of her life and stay, we as readers have to fill in a lot of blanks. In that sense it reminded me somewhat of Childhood (Kinderjaren) by Jona Oberski; we as adults can see what is going on but she can only describe what she sees or hears, not knowing the full meaning. The open ending in both the book and the film leaves you wondering for days after; what will have happened to her? 

So did I like this novella better? Yes, by a long stretch. I rarely wish a character more happiness in their life after their novel than I do Cáit. This of course is in sharp contrast to all the characters in Keegan's previous novella, whom I didn't care for in the least. 

Some parts were a bit on the nose, such as the nosy neighbour telling Cáit the big secret or the story about the two lighthouses being joined by a third, but we can overlook those laboured plot details by the sparse beauty of the rest. If the characters come to life for you, if you feel like you've actually joined their life for a short while and are now sad to see them go, that is when the magic of books works its best.

Sea of Tranquility

The nice thing about GoodReads is that it stores all kinds of data about the books you read. For example, the date on which you finished reading a particular book (if you enter the date correctly, of course). This means I can see that I finished reading You have a friend in 10A on April 9th and Sea of Tranquility on April 11th. Which means I read Sea of Tranquility in just two days.
This may not be that surprising, since Emily St. John Mandel was my favourite new author of 2022 and I couldn't wait to get my hands on a paperback copy of her newest novel (which I surprisingly did not find in the biggest European bookstore in London but in my own local bookstore-around-the-corner). And I was on holiday in early April, so plenty of time to read. But the novel that originally drew me to her work, Station Eleven, was one of those that I like to spread out over as much time as possible, just for the story not to be over. I would have thought Sea of Tranquility would have the same effect, but somehow, I flew through it. 

The reason I haven't written about it earlier is that I still can't fully make up my mind about the book; how much do I like it?

The novel takes a similar pattern to Cloud Atlas, with several interconnected stories set apart in time and featuring different protagonists. We first travel forward in time from 1912 to 2401, and then back again to 1918. Just like David Mitchell, Emily St. John Mandel has recurring characters in all of her novels, which gives another layer of interconnection. Even thought it is executed well, it sometimes made the whole thing feel like a bit of a combined copy of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks (added to which, while David Mitchell's novels lean more towards fantasy, there is an apocalyptical undertone to both authors).

Although the interconnection is a nice element, it can become somewhat of a lazy read because you already know some of the main characters or the people they interact with. Ah, yes, the guy who stole his sister's videos and has now become a big artist by setting them to music. We know the guy, we know his sister Vincent, we know how their stories end. There are new things to learn of course, like how Mirella's story ends after Vincent looses sight of her in The Glass Hotel, but those chapters somehow feel like a sequel to that novel, knocked out to cash on something that already worked before rather than an original new story.

Added to that, some parts of the story seem too easily autobiographical. One of the protagonists is a female author on a book tour after the success of her novel on a post-pandemic apocalyptical world. She has repeated discussions with readers concerning a death scene it that novel, which is eerily familiar to exactly that scene in Station Eleven. The descriptions of a book tour, the people met and the loneliness felt, clearly tell us something about the author's experience after her novel became a big seller. Added to that, several parts are again set on Vancouver island, albeit in the distant past, but it felt like things I had read before, places I had already been.

Which is maybe why I liked the chapters that included wholly new storylines and characters better. Especially the parts set in space, where man has colonised the Moon as a trial version of later colonies further away, with the trial now having become redundant and the Moon colonies just another sad backwater to grow up in. The theme of time travel runs throughout the novel, with its own mind-bending puzzle at the end; if they had not travelled in time, would the need to travel in time actually have been there, causing the whole story to unravel? I can never get my head around these things, but in this novel it felt neatly wrapped up.

And as always, the writing is beautiful. Sometimes just two or three sentences suffice to set an entire scene or describe an entire personality. Sea of Tranquility felt a lot shorter than the other novels, as thought the writing was a bit lighter, less filled with meaning. That is to say, the meaning is mostly in the plot and the musings on time travel, and less in the words on the page.

All in all, I enjoyed reading the book immesely. It has made me buy all three books published before Station Eleven, just to have the matching set. But I do hope that in a next novel, we get to meet new characters, discover new places, discuss new ideas. For even though this book does not feel like the same trick all over again, there are many fresh ideas and new angles, it does start to feel a bit stale around the edges. 

Library readings

As I mentioned somewhere before, I joined the local library as my new year's resolution. This would give me the opportunity, I thought, of taking out a couple of books every year that I knew I wanted to read, but probably only once. So buying them would be a slight waste of money. Added to that, there are loads of non-fiction books that I find interesting but don't really have to own. All in all, I thought about 5 to 10 books each year would be stretching it, but still worth it (a membership is around 60 Euros, I think).
We are in week 15 of this year and I have already borrowed 10 books, with several others reserved. Clearly I should have done this whole library thing much sooner.

So what is it that I've been reading?

Firstly, books that I am interested in, but not entirely sure I really want to read. This includes Murakami's Man without Women, which was one of my first borrowings, but also The Miniaturist. I would never buy these as I wouldn't be sure I would finish them, but just getting them from the library is easy enough.

Then there are the classics that I've never read but think I really should have read. These include The Color Purple and The Secret History. Both can still be found in bookshops all over (somewhat proving their status as a 'classic') but having read them I am sure I will never get back to them again. They are sort of 'been there, done that' reads.

I also read a couple of non-fiction books that are informative but nothing too deep, including (in Dutch) a collection of columns by a philosopher, a collection of musings by an art critic, the memoirs of a special forces operator and a collection of Banksy's works. I am currently reading an account of Monet's work and life, so this category seems to be somewhat art related. Finally, I read a book (again Dutch) that is advertised as 'a novel' but which read to me like an autobiography, so I will count it as non-fiction.

Finally, there are those books I think I want to own, but the ratings in reviews and on GoodReads scare me off. The only example I've had so far is You have a friend in 10A, the short story collection by Maggie Shipstead. Since I absolutely loved The Great Circle, I was planning on buying all three of her other books without hesitation, as I tend to do with newly discovered authors who don't have that many titles to their name yet. But then I read some things that made me doubt whether I would enjoy them as much. So I checked the library and apart from two dozen copies of The Great Circle they only had the one other book; You have a friend in 10A. I read this over the past week and I am still not entirely sure what to think of it. Some of the stories were pretty good, making you think the way a good short story is supposed to get you thinking. Some of the others had heads nor tails. All of them reminded me in some way of The Great Circle by their setting or characters (most of all the title story, which also revolves around has-been actress and her strange relationship with her father), but in a toned-down version. It is like she revists the same themes or characters from different angles, some of which work out and some of which don't. I am still not entirely sure what to think or whether I want to actually buy the other two novels she has written.

So, 10 library books and counting. I hope to think my book overview at the end of the year will be a bit longer than it has been in previous years, especially on the short story and non-fiction lists.  

Men without Women

So a couple of months ago I wrote somewhat of a rant concerning Haruki Murakami's short story collection First Person Singular. It had nothing to do with short stories and everything to do with an old man writing his (partly fictionalized) memoir. Not a great experience.
Then I watched Drive My Car, the feels-like-never-ending film about a theatre director whose wife has died, who is driven around by a slightly awkward girl. It was a bit too long, but I really loved it. As it was based on a short story by that very same Haruki Murakami, I decided to give him another change. I borrowed Men without Women from the library (I joined the library as part of my new year's resolutions, which was the best idea ever) and dove right in. 

The collection consists of seven stories, all featuring a man who for some reason or other lives without women. Some are written in the first person, but most in the third. Although women feature in all of the stories, some of the men are even married, I could see the central theme running through them. It is one of the few things that connects them, apart from them all being set in Japan. Otherwise, they range far and wide.

'Drive my Car' is the first story in the collection. I really enjoyed it, I would almost say despite my preconceptions. It is a perfect example of a good short story; we fall right in the middle of the story, stuff happens, and then we come to some sort of a conclusion. The writing style (or perhaps; translation) is very nice and fluid and the characters are both recognisable but also likeable. The main character is there, who has lost both his daughter and his wife, who he knows started having affairs after their child died. The girl who drives his car is there, although her story doesn't really feature. They have deep conversations, he practises his Chekov lines, and she resists the will to smoke while they drive in his old Saab. In the end, the both come to some sort of resolution with their past or themselves. The film expanded way beyond the story to flesh it out to three hours, but it stands on its own well enough.

So after this first experience, my expectations were a bit higher. Perhaps I had judged Murakami too harshly.

The second story 'Yesterday' is a classical Murakami technique; man in the present tells about an experience he had when he was younger, generally concerning a girl. In this story, which derives its name from a somewhat weird Japanese adaptation of the Beatles song, we meet a guy who wants the main character to date his girlfriend. This doesn't really come to anything. When the protagonist meets the girl again years later, they remember their past, the guy and what became of him. End of story. It doesn't have a point, a message, something to remember it by. If it weren't for the Beatles reference in the title, I would probably have forgotten it entirely.

Sadly, that is true of almost all the other stories, the ones without the clear titles. The only one I can still remember and liked somewhat was 'Kino', about a man who opens a bar after he divorces his wife. This started nicely, describing how he creates the bar and then waits for customers while a grey cat naps on his windowsill. At some point people discover his bar and he starts sleeping with one of his female customers. There is also a somewhat maffia type who he dislikes at first but who saves him from a couple of thugs. This was all leading up to something; he was crawling out of his shell and starting to make something of his life.

Then the story takes a spiritual turn, with lots of crawling snakes and whispered warnings of his need to travel far away from the bar and not return for a long time. He goes on this journey, writing postcards home as instructed, but then suddenly makes a wrong decision and the story ends with him then and there. Again; no point, no resolution, just a string of weird events ending abruptly.

Then there was an adaptation from The Metamorphisis that felt very far fetched. There was also an adaptation of 1,001 Nights, called 'Scheherazade', which was fun because part of it was incorporated in the Drive my Car film adaptation but which otherwise didn't really strike a chord. And there must be two other stories, but I genuinely can't remember what they were about.

So all in all, not a great experience. It may well be that in the original Japanese there are several deeper layers, there were some references that I didn't fully get and the whole Yesterday translation story is almost impossible to translate. But apart from the language I just cannot see why these stories aren't going anywhere. I mean, I enjoy reading these flowing, stream-of-consciousness like stories, as in Ali Smith's work. But this is nothing like that. They are just random bits of events and characters, thrown together to make something happen, but they have neither heads nor tails. 

The funny thing is that I really enjoyed 'Drive my Car' and the first part of 'Kino'. So his stories do work for me, on some level. But apparently, I only enjoy about a quarter, the rest I cannot understand. Sadly, I don't think I will borrow any more Murakami books from the library, not with so many other, potentionally much more enjoyable, books waiting to be read.

The Last White Man

Mohsin Hamid has another novel out. Or rather, novella. Somehow, I have ended up reading all of his works, after being the only one to pick The Reluctant Fundamentalist in my trauma theory class, simply because I'd already read all of the other post-9/11 novels on the list. That one stuck, and I've read all of his other works since then. Exit West, his previous book, was at the top of my Books of 2017 list because it contains such a unique point of view, memorable ideas and beautiful language.

So my expectations for The Last White Man were pretty high (while a part of me was also prepared for something else, with the recent experiences of great authors turning out horrible books) and I was not disappointed. The premise is quite spectacular, especially in these tense times concerning colour: slowly but steadily every 'pale' person (Hamid's term) turns into a dark person. This happens suddenly, overnight. It is not just a complete change of skin colour, but a change of race (although none are ever named); eye colour, facial features, hair, build, etc also change. In short; no one can recognise you anymore, not even your own mother.

Now in the wrong hands, this premise can spiral out of control pretty quickly. But in The Last White Man, we focus on four people; the main character Anders (which incidentally means 'different' in my native language, so that was a nice word play) who is one of the first to transform, his father, his friend Oona, and her mother. We only get Anders' and Oona's perspective, the parents are described in general terms, mostly concerning their opinions of their children. The other two parents have died, which ties in with the theme of loss running through the story. But because the focus point is so small, we get to experience their realisations, feelings, expectations, interactions, without also experiencing the impact on society as a whole. There are some small references; Anders and Oona have to stay home from work because of riots, and Anders is driven from his house by a white mob when he is just one of the few that have transformed, but the perspective never really gets broader than that. Their experience is the center.

It is only a very short story, so going into the plot would be spoiling things, but the language is beautiful. Some sentences run an entire page, meandering from one person's view to the next, or wind through the experience of an entire afternoon, no stopping, stream-of-consciousness style without ever feeling contrived or artificial. One example, just the one, from when Anders has already transformed but hardly anyone else has, and he goes to work and experiences the following:

"Anders told himself the stares were natural, he would have done the same, it was not a regular situation, after all, and to reassure people, and to reassure himself too, he tried to engage in his normal banter, to be, as it were, like himself, to act undeniably like himself, but this was more difficult than he had imagined, impossible really, for what was more unlike oneself, more awkward, than trying to be oneself, and it was throwing him off, this artificiality, but he had no idea what to replace it with, and so he began instead to mirror the others around him, to echo the way they spoke and walked and moved and the way they held their mouths, like they were performing something, and he was trying to perform it too, and what it was he did not know, but whatever it was it was not enough, or his performance of it was off, because his sense of being observed, of being on the outside, looked at by those who were in, of messing things up for himself, deeply frustrating, did not go away all day."  

I only wish for two things: that the novel would have been longer, and that Mr Hamid won't take another five years to write his next book.

Great Circle

I finally finished the other book on a female pilot I allude to in my overview of 2022's books: Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead. Apart from it being shortlisted for the Booker and appearing in loads of great reviews, I also felt drawn to the story after reading Beryl Markhams autobiography. As it should be, Great Circle references that book, and several other books written by female pilots, at some point. But without the implied reference to Beryl Markham's beautiful prose, this is a fantastic book in and of itself.
The book centers around two women: Marian Graves, a female pilot in the 1920s, 30, and all through WWII, who sets out to complete a circumnavigation of the earth via both poles, and Hadley (who surely must have a surname, but I have no idea), a famous Hollywood movie start who portrays Marian in a film made about this final flight sometime in our days. There are some simliarties between these two women, mostly in that they were both raised by their uncle and have some unfortunate experiences with men, but they are two very distinct characters. The Hadley parts are written in the first person, whereas the Marian parts, which also travel into other people's lives, such as her parents, brother, childhood friends, are told in the third person. The two stories meet repeatedly, intertwining until only you as the reader can see the full picture. For if there is anything to learn from this novel, it is that the truth is never as straightforward as it may seem from the present. Even if you peel back the sugar-coated Hollywood layer that is of course enforced when making a film, people still make lots of assumptions without even realising they do.

The language is beautiful. I read one part early on, where an ocean liner sinks, with open mouth, so completely immersed I forgot my surroundings completely. When Marian finds herself in the cold of Antarctica, it is as if you are in the tent beside her. We never really get to know her fully, because of the third-person perspective, but Maggie Shipstead clearly gave both their own distinct voice.

If I could find fault with the novel in any way, it would be that it might be a tad too long. Too over complete, maybe. At almost 700 pages, it took me quite a while to get through. There were some revelations, which did not really appear as revelations, until the final chapters did bring something new, surprising me into loving the story as a whole even more. It has been quite the experience, reading this story, and I very much look forward to reading her other novels.

Books of 2022

Despite all of my best intentions, 2022 was not the greatest reading year by a long stretch. I was hoping to finish a couple of books (one fiction and one non-fiction, coincidentally both about flying) before the end of the year to add some volume to the list, but the last week of December proved to be a short version of the entire year; wanting to read more, but not actually reading more.
So I ended with a total of 25 books, my lowest since 2017 (23 books). Some of them were really great, reminding me why I love to spend time reading, while others were pretty big disappointments. I somehow managed to avoid any of my favourite go-to auhors (Atwood, McEwan, Mitchell Swift) and read a lot of new authors, which may have come at a cost in quality. Since reading so few books I would have liked for all of them to be great, but in a year with lots of changes and big events (all on a personal level, so I will not get in to these here), picking the right book is somehow more difficult. Also, NaNoWriMo in November always halts my reading pace and drives me to reread old favourites, since writing something new and reading something new at the same time doesn't work well in my head. These are, of course, all excuses.

Let's get on with the full list:

1 The Every

2 Breakfast at Tiffany's

3 Harlem Shuffle

4 Are you experienced?

5 Story of your life and others

6 Wake

7 The Roadtrip

8 Eight Detectives

9 The Constant Rabbit

10 Beartown

11 Station Eleven

12 The Song of Achilles

13 Grimm Tales

14 There but for the

15 The Reading List

16 The Ladies Midnight Swimming Club

17 Mr Salary

18 The Flatshare

19 The Glass Hotel

20 First Person Singular

21 West with the Night

22 Small Things Like These

23 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

24 What If? 2

25 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

So three rereads, the two Harry Potters (NaNoWriMo time) and The Flatshare, since I had read Beth O'Leary's The Roadtrip earlier in the year and was in the mood for more of the same.

I read only one 'classical' novel, or rather short story collection, Breakfast at Tiffany's. You could count the Grimm's fairy tales as classical literature, but Philip Pullman has edited them to his own taste, so we will not. No books in Dutch at all, either fiction or non-fiction. Only two non-fiction books in total, come to that. But on the other hand, many more short story collections than the past couple of years.

Best English novel

1 Station Eleven

2 The Constant Rabbit

3 The Song of Achilles

If I had finished the novel I am still reading this might have been a harder choice, but as it stands, Station Eleven is hands down the best thing I read in 2022. Maybe even the best thing I read in 10 years. I wrote a gushing review about it when I had just finished it, so I will not repeat that here, but I do want to add that maybe I am now actually ready to watch the tv series that has been made about the novel. If only just to return to that universe afresh one more time.

The Constant Rabbit is the newest novel by Jasper Fforde, one of my favourite authors who should really hurry up and get that sequal to Shades of Grey (not Fifty Shades of Grey) underway. But in the meantime we got this bizarre novel in which due to some mishap a couple of rabbits have been changed into human-size, intelligent creatures. Everything is completely absurd, with a serious undertone concerning segragation, exclusion of others and the will to reach across a divide and connect. Coupled with big-company greed and the destruction of the natural environment, there are so many current themes packed into what on the surface just appears to be mad scifi, it deserves a second and third look before you make any conclusions. I loved it, which was a relief after the disaster of Early Riser in 2019.

Which brings us to number three. I would not have expected the Song of Achilles to be third in this list, reading so many other great novels; Harlem Shuffle, Wake, or Beartown by earlier year favourites Colson Whitehead, Anna Hope and Frederik Bachman, an Ali Smith novel (There but for the), new stories by new writers (The Reading List or The Ladies Midnight Swimming Club) or even the other Emily St. John Mandel book that I read, The Glass Hotel. But, most of these disappointed or annoyed in some way or another. Maybe it was the overall sense of this year not being a really good reading year, but I couldn't get myself to put any of those in third place. So the Booktok sensation Song of Achilles, which I got as a present from a friend who teaches secondary school and assured me all the teens are loving it, gets the trophy. I didn't do Latin or Greek in secondary school, so most of this story was new to me, apart from a badly remembered evening of watching Troy. I was surprised by how well the story was written, how the perspective of Patroclus changes your view on the events, and how much the characters come to life. It is, of course, very much a product of its time in the changes Madeline Miller made to her source material, but that doesn't warp the story beyond recognition. If I were in secondary school now, I would be happy to study the classical tales with books like these.

Best Dutch novel 

None of these. I have just joined the local library, so I might actually start to read these a bit more often, but in 2022, nope.

Best non-fiction (including autobiographical)

1 West with the night

2 What If? 2

I cannot actually believe I forgot to write about West with the Night when I read it, but it must have been the NaNoWriMo craze coming on. So let's set things right here. West with the Night is the 1942 memoir by Beryl Markham, who has led at least four lives combined. She grew up in Kenya running wild on a farm with Masai, went on to train racehorses, then she became one of the first bush pilots, culminating in the first east to west non-stop solo flight across the Atlantic. Then she became a society lady. Now we cannot be sure everything she wrote about actually happened (apart from the records, of course), but the way she writes, the way the language flows from the page, is simply magical. It is a shame she didn't write more, but then her book wasn't really a raving success when it came out in the middle of WWII. Bizarrely, it took Ernest Hemingway to pull the book from oblivion. I am very glad he did, for it was a marvel to read, and has sparked some interest in other flying related novels and books which I am currently reading.

What If? 2 is obviously the sequel to What if? in which Randall Monroe from xkcd (which I visit almost religiously on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays for new comics) answers scientific questions in a surprising way. Somewhat like the Ig Nobel prizes, it makes you laugh before it makes you think.

Best short-story collection

1 Story of your life and others

2 Breakfast at Tiffany's

3 Grimm Tales

It has been a while since I actually have some choices for this category, and I actually got to let one out as well (First Person Singular, which I discussed earlier). So Story of your life and others was a big surprise early in the year. The title story is the inspiration for the film Arrival, but differs so much from it that only the bare essentials remain the same. That actually made for a very nice reading experience. The other stories in the collection are a mixed bunch, as I wrote earlier, but the better ones have stuck with me for a while.

Breakfast at Tiffany's was happened upon me when I finished The Every while staying at a friend and had no other book to read. It was a fun read, the 'short novel and three other stories', although I can't actually remember anything about the latter. It made me think I should read more by Truman Capote, although I couldn't actually name any of his other works apart from In Cold Blood, which I read years ago. Grimm Tales are retellings of fairy tales by Philip Pullman, who added some clarification notes at the end of each one. I never really warmed to any of his other books, so I was a bit tentative about reading these. Most of them were nice, although it got a bit repetitive towards the end. But then again, these fairy tales are filled with almost interchangeable stock characters, so maybe that one isn't really Pullman's fault.

Best scifi/fantasy

1 Station Eleven

2 The Constant Rabbit

3 Story of your life and others

See above for more on these books, but I'll say here it was nice to have such a mixed bunch of 'literary' works that are also intertwined with scifi elements. Maybe genre boundries are disappearing somewhat?

Best 'new' author

1 Emily St. John Mandel

2 Ted Chiang

This one can't really come as a surprise, reading everything above. Can't wait to get my hands on the proper edition of Sea of Tranquility and love that too. Ted Chiang doesn't seem to have any other collections out apart from the one I've already read but I'll see what I can do to find any of his other work.

Most disappointing novel(la)

1 Small Things like these

2 The Every

3 Mr Salary

I wrote a lot about Small Things like these and The Every earlier, which I won't repeat here. I just reread my disappointing novels from 2020 and I think The Every suffers from the same problem as The Testaments; the author just wanted to give their audience more of the same, to expand their world, when they should have just stuck to the one brilliant novel. Tacking new things on the sides doesn't help and in some cases even detracts from the original. Both novels do of course adress very relevant social issues, which I fully agree should be put into literature, but let it at least be good literature.

Maybe I shouldn't put the very short story that is Mr Salary in with this bunch, but it was yet another case of Sally Rooney disappointment. I read it in under an hour and forgot about the whole thing in less time than that. Really, why put these things out there? I hope to see better works from her in the coming time, but landing in the 'most disappointing' category two years running doesn't bode well...

Authors I read more than once:

- Beth O'Leary (2x)

- Emily St. John Mandel (2x)

- J. K. Rowling (2x)