Books of 2021

Wow, where did this year go? It does not feel like it is supposed to be the last day of 2021 by at least a couple of months, but apparently, here we are.
Apart from going pretty fast, this was not a year to remember for its good qualities in many respects. But book-wise, it was a pretty good year for me. I read a whopping 32 books, which is even higher than my already pretty high score of last year. I discovered a couple of great new writers but also reread some old favourites. 

 So my full list is:

1 Daring Greatly

2 The boy, the mole, the fox and the horse

3 The Luminaries

4 Focus aan/uit

5 No Bones

6 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

7 Thinking in systems

8 Soul Tourists

9 Wish you were here

10 Life after life

11 Klara and the sun

12 The Three Musketeers

13 Utopia Avenue

14 Here we are

15 Weather

16 The Midnight Library

17 Summer

18 Beach Read

19 The Switch

20 Such a fun age

21 The Flatshare

22 Anxious People

23 Beautiful world, where are you?

24 Public Library and other stories

25 The man in the red coat

26 Normal People

27 Expectations

28 The Eyre Affair

29 Sweet Tooth

30 Mansfield Park

31 A Man called Ove

32 The Christmas Pig

So I (almost) started and finished the year with children's books. I read The Christmas Pig, J.K.Rowling's newest, during a feverish Christmas Day, so chances are I won't remember much about it in a couple of weeks. But it is a better note to end on than last year, when illness drove me to romantic drivel.

I had a couple of rereads when I wasn't really in the mood for trying new things, mostly during October (The Eyre Affair, Sweet Tooth and Mansfield Park). Rereads from earlier in the year were The Luminaries and Life after Life, two novels I loved but didn't really fully understand the first time I read them. Upoin rereading I liked them better than before; sometimes you have to go back after a couple of years and look at such stories with fresh eyes. Normal People was a reread after I was so very disappointed in Sally Rooney's newest novel.

Again, only 1 'classic' novel in The Three Musketeers. No Dutch novels at all. But a surprising amount of non-fiction, especially in the start of the year.

Best English novel

1 Wish you were here

2 Such a fun age

3 Utopia Avenue

So many great novels to choose from! I am really spoiled for choice here. But in a stark contrast to last year; my top 3 contains just 1 female author. I read a lot of books by female writers, but apparently they were not the greatest (and at least 3 of them were romantic summer reads). For example, I immensely enjoyed Ali Smith's Summer, but it was not enough to make the top 3. Maybe if I'd reread the rest of the quartet first, but now it just felt a bit too rushed and unconnected to make the grade.

So what did I love? Wish you were here took me four years to receive and read, but of all the novels I've read this year, it is the one that still sticks out in my mind the most. The whole atmosphere of the novel, with two people so at odds with each other and with the world for all the wrong reasons... I've just reread my original review from March, and apparently the novel really grew on me after that. The same is true for Such a fun age, which I apparently didn't even write about it when I first read it. But it paints such a pointed, accurate picture of current 'woke' times and the way people interact with others; careful to be correct while at the same time doing that mostly so others will think better of them. It is one of the few very American novels I read this year, but the whole American atmosphere only improves on the story it tells. Finally, I would never have thought that David Mitchell could write a novel that would not go to the top of my list that year, but Utopia Avenue apparently does the trick. I loved it, it is certainly in my top 3, but it is not his best novel. 

Best Dutch novel

Zero Dutch novels in the entire year, and just 1 non-fiction book in Dutch (which won't make any list, but it was a nice read on how to focus).

Best non-fiction

1 Thinking in systems

2 The man in the red coat

3 Daring greatly

So I read a lot of non-fiction this year, some of which was an overflow from last year, when a December illness drove me to reading soppy romantic stuff. Thinking in systems opened my eyes on how to see things in connection with each other. I rate highly on the 'system thinking' score in personality questionnaires, so this really spoke to me. The man in the red coat is by Julian Barnes, and at first I didn't realise it was a non-fiction book about an actual person, Dr Pozzi. But being Barnes, the language reads almost like a novel. That I read most of it during an Italian holiday probably also helped with setting the atmosphere of the belle epoque. Finally, Daring greatly is Brené Brown's famous book on how to overcome your inhibitions and dare greatly. I liked her writing style and was interested in reading more, but seeing her online personality as some sort of pep guru makes me wonder if this really is the thing for me.

Best short-story collection

1 Public library and other stories

I read only the one, by Ali Smith, but it was a beautiful read. She combines stories about libraries and books with eyewitness accounts of people's connection to a specific library, now that apparently they're being closed down all over the UK.

Best scifi/fantasy

1 Klara and the sun

I think this is the only novel I could realistically put in this category, although it perhaps fits better in a new sort of 'dystopian' category (but maybe it feels that way because I'm currently reading The Every and everything connected to tech feels somewhat tainted). Apart from that, it is a beautiful, haunting novel. I must really read some more Ishiguru (as I actually said in my original review, back in April...). 

Best 'new' author

1 Frederik Backman

2 Anna Hope

Frederik Backman is a Swedish author whose novels I've read in English. Apparently they've been pretty popular for a while, with films and series made after them. I discovered him through his newest novel Anxious People, which led me to also try some of the older ones. I like his style and his insights, even though the Swedish setting does not always translate well through the English language. From Anna Hope I read her newest novel Expectations, which was so much better than Sally Rooney's new novel. I am really looking forward to reading Wake, also an older novel that sounds really good based on the description and reviews.

Most disappointing novel

1 Beautiful world, where are you?

2 Here we are

3 No bones

So the first one should be obvious from what I wrote about it before: somehow Sally Rooney's third novel is plagued by the 'second novel' effect, in my eyes at least. Here we are is not a bad novel in itself, but after reading the profound depth of Wish you were here, it fell a bit flat on its face. Graham Swift can be a bit hit and miss apparently. The same is true of No Bones; after reading Milkman my expectations for this novel were so high, that they could only be disappointed.

Authors I read more than once:

Ali Smith (2x)

Graham Swift (2x)

Sally Rooney (2x)

Frederik Backman (2x)

Books of 2019

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)

The Cockroach

So Ian McEwan's last novel, Machines like me, was not my favourite. In fact, it may have been his worst novel ever. And it left me despairing that he may have lost his touch, something I'd apparently feared before.
I need not have worried, for just six months later I wandered around the bookshop and ran into The Cockroach, a small novella (less than 100 pages) about Jim Sams waking up and "finding himself transformed into a gigantic creature". I've never read The Metamorphosis, but even I know enough to recognise that reference. In this story, it is the cockroach that is transformed into the human, into the PM of the United Kingdom, to be exact. The UK is undergoing political upheaval as the Reversalist Conservatives want to push through a big economic change, which the Clockwise Labour party wants to forestall. Sounds familiar? What if I tell you the Labour leader is actually a Reversalist himself? Or what about the American president Tupper, busy communicating by Twitter and spending time on his many golf courses?
Yup, this is a political satire, and a good one at that. Brexit is never mentioned, the whole story is purely fictional, and "resemblance to any cockroach, living or dead, is purely coincidental". But between the lines there is of course the absurd reality that the UK is now living through. I don't know that Ian McEwan has written a satire before, but this one is really well done. And it combines his dry, witty humour with his beautiful, flowing language, even when he is verbally slaughtering political opponents.
I raced through the book in about two hours and it left me both good for having read a great McEwan story and sad because the craziness it describes is actually taking place across the pond. But in the end, it is more words by my favourite author, and I'm always happy to have those.

Machines like me

Hurray, a new novel by Ian McEwan! And one that I read a review of in the paper on Saturday, and then the next Saturday actually came across in the bookstore, so I could throw down the novel I was planning to read (sorry, John Williams) to dive into the magnificence that is a fresh new story by Ian McEwan. Literary bliss. Or so one would hope. But the review I read wasn't entirely positive, and the subject matter didn't feel very McEwanesque, so I started with some caution. Not enough caution, as it turned out.

The novel centres around Charlie and Miranda, two neighbours. Charlie comes into some money when his mom dies, and decides to invest in one of the new robots that have just been released to the market; Adam. There are only 25 of these robots (12 Adams and 13 Eves), so how he manages to get his hands on one, while otherwise being one of the most indecisive, incompetent and inactive characters I've ever read is not explained.
But wait a minute, robots? Is this science fiction?
Well, yes and no. The story takes place the 80s, but in an alternative reality. Alan Turing is a prominent figure, and his research into computers and robotics has brought the world great things. There are other differences (the Brits lose the Falkland war) but otherwise things look a lot like our universe. By which I mean; our time. The Internet has been created, there are electric cars, a lot of the developments we went through in the past 40 years have taken place earlier here. So what is the point of setting this story in the 80s, if you're going to keep things basically the same otherwise? If you needed a big British defeat, you could have invented a war. It is science fiction after all. So was it just for the small references and puns that pop up every now and then?
Anyway, back to the story; Charlie buys Adam, together they program his personality, and then he 'comes to life' and becomes part of their lives. Charlie and Miranda also start a relationship, while Adam claims to be in love with Miranda as well. This would have been a nice time to go in depth into the whole 'can consciousness be created' debate, but Charlie sometimes mentions that they talk about it, without them actually talking about it. The whole novel spans several months, the only McEwan novel I know to span more than a couple of days apart from Solar (his attempt at a comical novel which I also didn't like) and Sweet Tooth (another one I didn't like).
I say 'Charlie mentions' because the novel is written in the first person, from Charlie's point of view. This is the second McEwan novel I can think of to use first-person narration, the other one being Nutshell in which it all works out really well. Here, not so much. Miranda is practically a flat character despite having a violently interesting back story, so is Adam, while both Charlie's personality as his feelings are ambiguous at best. What is supposed to be the 'big reveal' at the end, something to do with morals and consciousness, feels forced and at the same time unsurprising.

Oh, sure, there are some really great parts in this novel. Not plotwise (the plot is predictable and uneventful) or characterwise (see above, there is zero character development), but languagewise there are some very nice McEwanesque phrases. Some bits flow really nicely, even though the grand subjects of ethics and interpersonal relationships are not gotten into. The ending, predictable and forced as it is, is beautifully written, almost heartbreaking in its style. It felt like a cheap ripoff of a McEwan novel, in which someone took his writing style but not his brilliance at crafting stories or characters, and threw them together in a strange and pointless universe. It is almost as if McEwan wants to show that science fiction can never be literary (although Philip K. Dick proved different quite some time ago), not even by him.
All in all, this novel made me sad. Why not stick to what you do best; small novels, centred on a couple of characters, spanning a couple of days, focusing on emotions, philosophies, thoughts, and character development? Why go out of your way to create something this big and bombastic if that is not your style at all? I can only hope that there was some kind of hidden purpose, and that it isn't because he is losing his writing touch...

PS: I've written something about Sweet Tooth earlier (7 years! How time flies!) and there I am afraid McEwan is losing his touch. After The Children Act and Nutshell, I'm pretty sure he can still write beautiful novels, he just sometimes goes off to do something completely bizarre...

Books of 2018

I was hoping to add another book to this list, but it seems I will not finish reading it before the year is out, and also it is too beautiful a book to hurry up the reading, so I will make that my first book of 2019. I made a films of 2018 list a couple of days ago, in case films are more your thing.
But back to books: 2018 was a year with a nice variety of readings, more varied than my books of 2017 list. Also, a lot longer: I read 29 books this year, which is 6 up from last year. Again, I didn't read a long classic novel (although they are still on the to-read list) and also I quit reading a couple of books that took me too long to get through. If I have little time to read, I want to spend that time with books I actually like.

So, my complete 2018 list:
1 Lincoln in the bardo
2 Uncommon type
3 The heart goes last
4 The English patient
5 The sense of an ending
6 The ocean at the end of the lane
7 De zeven wetten van de liefde
8 The blind assassin
9 Murder on the Orient Express
10 The ABC murders
11 The noise of time
12 Fahrenheit 541
13 The Penelopiad
14 The view from the cheap seats
15 The garden party
16 All Change
17 The Liar
18 A handful of dust
19 Seveneves
20 The Children Act
21 My purple scented novel
22 The diary of a bookseller
23 Far from the madding crowd
24 Call me by your name
25 The only story
26 Shades of Grey
27 Normal people
28 Het bestverkochte boek ooit
29 Pride & prejudice & mistletoe

So, four rereads: The ocean at the end of the lane, The Liar, The Children Act and Shades of Grey, all by some of my favourite male authors (Gaiman, Fry, McEwan and Fforde). Two Dutch books, which are both non-fiction. I started reading two Dutch novels, but put both of those down as they didn't engage me enough. Will have to try again next year.
I had a couple of book resolutions for 2017 and 2018; stop reading of I don't like the novel, fewer rereads, read more great new authors such as Margaret Atwood. Also, as I was short on these last year; read more Dutch novels, short stories, non-fiction, and more new female authors. Some of those worked out, some clearly didn't. Despite the 'rules' I was really hoping for new novels by Ian McEwan or David Mitchell, but not having those I read more by new discoveries such as Julian Barnes, Margaret Atwood of course, and my newest love; Sally Rooney. Also, I read four Man Booker prize winners this year (Lincoln in the bardo (2017), The sense of an ending (2011), The English patient (1992) and The blind assassin (2000)), which makes 2018 a year filled with some of the best novels ever written.

Anyway, let's look at some lists:

Best English novel
1 Normal people
2 The sense of an ending
3 The English patient
So many great novels this year! This list was hard to make, also because novels that I've read more recently seem to stick in the memory better than those I read in January or February. But I managed to bring it down to three novels. But the undisputed number one is Normal People by Sally Rooney. I haven't been this happy reading a novel in a very long time. The Sense of an Ending makes a close second, though. Julian Barnes was a 2018 find, and I actually read three of his novels this year. The Sense of an Ending was the first and by far the best. It is one of those deeply emotional, tragic without being dramatic, stories about someone finally realising how much they've been deceiving themselves all of their life. As I wrote in February; This is a novel you can pull out each year, read again, and still find new bits in it. I will leave it alone for a couple of years, and then time will tell whether that is true. The last novel on the best novel list is another Man Booker winner (Normal People was merely longlisted, which is a shame, although I am now reading the 2018 Man Booker winner Milkman and can see how that is even better than Normal People) and another novel I read in February. The English patient, an instant classic I'd somehow missed all this time. I was watching Bodyguard on Netflix yesterday and it got me thinking about The English patient, so much so that I had to rewind because I'd been reminiscing so much. That is what a good novel does to you; it sticks with you, and you remember it while watching or reading other great things.
Honourable mentions on this list go to The Blind Assassin and Call me by your name, which didn't make the list but are still great novels.

Best Dutch novel
Non-existent this year

Best classic
1 Fahrenheit 541
2 Far from the madding crowd
3 A handful of dust
As always, one can argue here when a novel counts as a 'classic'. Last year, the oldest novels I read were over 20 years old but didn't feel as classics because they were still so current. This year, I felt like putting The English patient here, only to find out that novel is actually from 1992. Strange, how some novels feel much older than they are, while others are exactly the opposite.
Anyway, the novels I put in are from 1953, 1874 and 1934. I could also have put the Agatha Christie novels I read, as they're also from the 1930s, but I liked these less. Fahrenheit 541 is the newest novel on the list and my biggest discovery of 2018. I still can't explain how I missed this novel up until actually reading it (because Neil Gaiman mentioned it in The view from the cheap seats) but there you are. Read this novel, if you haven't already. Far from the madding crowd is a Thomas Hardy novel, which makes it a classic in its own right, but also a book to be shunned if you studied English literature and wrestled through Jude the Obscure, as I did. But as it turns out, this is a far nicer read. A handful of dust is also one of those fallen-through novels; one of my friends actually wrote here thesis on Evelyn Waugh and I never bothered to read any of the novels in it, except for Brideshead revisited a couple of years ago. I liked that better, A handful of dust is a bit too cynical and nasty for my taste, but still a good read.

Best non-fiction
1 The view from the cheap seats
2 The diary of a bookseller
3 Het bestverkochte boek ooit
I'm not sure if The view from the cheap seats counts fully as non-fiction, as with Neil Gaiman you can never be sure, but it by far the best non-fiction I read this year. The diary of a bookseller follows the life of a bookseller in the biggest bookshop in Scotland, which was a revealing, if somewhat narcissistic, read. Het bestverkochte boek ooit is by De Correspondent, the Dutch non-news news website that is expanding into the USA to bring the news that is not the current, actual, hyped up news but the stories behind the news, the events slowly unfolding. This book is about our obsession with numbers and what they actually mean.

Best short-story collection
1 Uncommon type
2 The garden party
Not a lot of short-story collections this year, but more than in 2017, when there were none. Uncommon type was a big surprise this year; it turns out Tom Hanks can actually write a pretty decent story! The second short-story collection I read was by Katherine Mansfield. I read The Garden Party (the story from the title) for my English lit studies, when again it was one of those timeless stories that feel still current, even though it was written in 1922. The rest of the stories are nice reads, but not as memorable as Tom Hanks' book.

Best fantasy/scifi
1 Seveneves
2 The Penelopiad
Not a lot of fantasy or scifi to go around this year, and Shades of Grey counts as a reread, but these two deserve some kind of mention. Seveneves is a scifi novel that taught me more I ever thought to know about the ISS, living in space, space physics and building a new world. The Penelopiad is Margaret Atwood's interpretation of the Odyssee myth. This may not count as fantasy in the strictest sense of the word, but I do want to mention it because of her very human and real characters.

Best 'new' author
1 Sally Rooney
2 Julian Barnes
3 Michael Ondaatje
This list can hardly come as a surprise. Will read more of these authors whenever I can.

Most disappointing novel
1 All change
2 The heart goes last
3 The only story
This list always hurts. This year, it contains three of my favourite 'new' authors; Elizabeth Jane Howard, Margaret Atwood and Julian Barnes. I've said all I ever wanted to say on All change. The heart goes last was my most disappointing Atwood novel this year; compared to The Blind Assassin or The Handmaid's tale it feels rushed, with stock characters and a stock message. The same is true for The Only Story; Julian Barnes's newest novel. I had actually forgotten what it was about, but reading the blurb it all came back to me; the failed relationship of characters I didn't actually care about. Especially reading it directly following Call me by your name, which depicts a blossoming relationship in all its lovely longing, this novel made me thoroughly sad. I hope to pick up better novels by Atwood (Alias Grace is still waiting) and Barnes next year, as it hurts me to put authors I usually really love in this list.

Authors I read more than once:
- Margaret Atwood (3x)
- Julian Barnes (3x)
- Agatha Christie (2x)
- Neil Gaiman (2x)
- Ian McEwan (2x)

Films of 2018

For a couple of years I've been writing a 'Books of...' post (the 2018 edition will be upcoming) but with the end of the year nearing and lots of other lists appearing in various media, I wondered why I wouldn't make a 'Films of ...' version as well. In an average year, I watch many more films than I read books, because films are shorter, cheaper, and watching a film is a shared experience. Because I have a membership card at the biggest cinema of my city, I can watch any film I want for a fixed price per month. Also, this cinema actually remembers all the films I watched there in an nifty app, thus giving me the below overview with just one click. I watched many more films than these, of course; arthouse films at the arthouse cinema, Netflix original films, films at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and Hongerige Wolf festival, older films that found their way to my screen in some other way (in the past month alone I saw Twelve Angry Men from 1957 and Mary Poppins from 1964). But to include all would be impossible. So I will stick with the list my cinema provides me with; the new films I saw in 2018, excluding re-releases (I saw Grease on its 40 anniversary), Disney special weeks and the in-house pre-premieres.

These were:
1 Breathe
2 The Greatest Showman
3 Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
4 Darkest Hour
5 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
6 Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding
7 The Maze Runner: Death Cure
8 Game Night
9 Every Day
10 Mary Magdalene
11 Ready Player One
12 Hostiles
13 Phantom Thread
14 Midnight Sun
15 Avengers: Inifinity War
16 De Matchmaker
17 Isle of Dogs
18 Deadpool 2
19 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
20 Love, Simon
21 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
22 Incedibles 2
23 Ocean's 8
24 Tag
25 Mission Impossible: Fallout
26 Adrift
27 On Chesil Beach
28 Blackkklansman
29 A Simple Favour
30 Venom
31 Juliet, Naked
32 A Star is Born
33 First Man
34 Bohemian Rhapsody
35 The Children Act
36 Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
37 Robin Hood
38 The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
39 Ralph Breaks the Internet
40 Mary Poppins Returns

A pretty varied list, if I say so myself. Some Marvel, some arthouse, some YA, some action films. Some comedy, lots of drama, a couple of Dutch romcoms; my film habits are more diverse than my reading habits.
So, because one list is not enough, let's break this down into some neat little lists:

Best English film
1 On Chesil Beach
2 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
3 First Man
Right, so this is always the last list I write (even though it is the top one) because it is the most difficult. What do I put here? The films that moved me the most? The films that surprised me? The films that are beautifully made? In the end, I put the films that made the strongest impression, the films that I will remember some years into the future. On Chesil Beach is a film adaptation of one of my favourite Ian McEwan novels. It stars Saoirse Ronan, who is one of my favourite actresses. I cried my eyes out in the cinema; the story is heartbreaking to read, but to see it played out on the screen is somehow even more moving. Nothing much happens, it is set in one afternoon and evening, but whole lives can change in just that short amount of time. Not sure why it received lukewarm reviews, to me it was one of the highlights of the film year. The same is true for Three Billboards, although that is of course a wildly different film. This film is filled with raw emotion without becoming overly dramatic. Frances McDormand won a deserved Oscar; she plays a very strong woman, without being the perfect hero we we see in so many films. She makes impulsive, sometimes somewhat stupid, choices; she is human in her rage. With two strong female leads the third film may be somewhat of a surprise, but First Man also made an impression, not because of Ryan Gosling's performance as Neil Armstrong (although he was great as always) but because of the whole madness of actually sending people into space in metal boxes atop giant fuel tanks that almost shake apart on the start. Again, we have a dramatic story without overt drama. Also, Claire Foy fills the strong female role here. Three films to watch again.

Best Dutch film
I'd love to do a list here, but I only saw one proper Dutch film; De Matchmaker, which apart from the article you may be forgiven for thinking was actually an English film. It was pretty good, great actors make all the difference (even though some of them were type cast in the same role they've played for at least 5 years now, practice apparently makes perfect).

Best animation
1 Isle of Dogs
2 Ralph Breaks the Internet
3 Incredibles 2
No argument here; Isle of Dogs is hands down one of the best films of 2018. It is beautifully made, with lots of attention to detail, the story is moving and whacky at the same time, as are the characters the style reminded me of my earlier love of Kubo and the Two Strings and it just gives you an overall feeling of having seen a work of beauty. Ralph Breaks the Internet is a bit of an odd one, as I never actually saw Wreck-it Ralph, but it was fun and creative, with good characters and a nice (if somewhat predictable and long) plot. The only reason it wins from Incredibles 2 is that I can actually remember what happened in Ralph, whereas the Incredibles seem to have disappeared from my mind all together. I did see the original Incredibles film and liked that more than its sequel.

Best book adaptation
1 On Chesil Beach
2 Juliet, Naked
3 Adrift
In 2018 I was lucky enough to see film adaptations of several favourite novels come out; On Chesil Beach and The Children Act by Ian McEwan, and Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby. The first is one of the best films I saw all year, the second sadly made the 'most disappointing' list. Juliet, Naked was a bit of a surprise: the novel translated to screen better than I'd expected. Adrift isn't just a film adaptation of a book, but a 'based on true events' film (Tami Oldham wrote a book about her experience of being adrift on sea for 41 days). This could have been a overly dramatic survival story, but the film is beautifully made, cutting away from the couple on their broken boat to how they met and the hours before the storm, thus giving a great tension build-up. Not a film I expected to like, but one I will remember for some time to come.

Best sequel
1 Mary Poppins Returns
2 Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
3 Avengers: Inifinity War
Soooo many sequels this year. So, so many. Not all of them good, mind you. But the Mary Poppins sequel, which took 54 years to come about, was actually really great. I hadn't seen the original until about a week ago, so I am new to the fandom, but I loved the original and the sequel. Emily Blunt makes for a great Mary, it is amazing to see how many different roles she has already done. I felt the same happiness about the Jumanji sequel; it took a long time arriving, but it was really nicely done. I think this may be the first The Rock film I actually enjoyed. Also; Jack Black. Then there are lots of lesser souls in the sequel universe; Mission Impossible, Jurassic Park, The Maze Runner, but the Avengers film steals third place. I will not mention the Fantastic Beasts sequel here (see below).

Best Marvel
1 Avengers: Inifinity War
2 Deadpool 2
3 Venom
(I'm just putting Marvel adaptations here, not worrying whether they are actually part of the MCU. Also, no, I didn't see Black Panther or Ant-Man and the Wasp). It wasn't a great Marvel year, this year. Sure, Infinity War was pretty nice, but it is not a film in and of itself, the open ending drove me nuts. Also, too many characters crammed into one move. Deadpool and Venom were disappointments story-wise and character-wise. Maybe I should have gone to the Marvels I didn't see, which would make this sad list my own fault, but the overall feeling is just; meh.

Best young adult
1 Love, Simon
2 Every Day
3 Midnight Sun
Okay, so Yong Adult must be everybody's guilty pleasure, except for actual young adults, who think that there is finally a film that understands them. Love, Simon should be nobody's guilty pleasure, but a film you proudly proclaim loving. It is almost un-American in its realism (somewhat like Atypical), with of course the necessary dose of drama added. But the story is sweet and feelgood, the characters are believable and the message is great. (I should probably have gone to see Call me by your name as well, but I just read the book and couldn't stand destroying the image in my mind with the film adaptation.) Every Day and Midnight Sun are more stock 'nobody but you understands me' YA fare, but still nice enough to inculde on the list. The final Maze Runner film never stood a chance.

Most disappointing film
1 The Children Act
2 Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
3 The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
This is a painful list. By definition, it only includes films I actually had high hopes for. I mean, when I visit Tag or Game Night I don't expect any great artistic revelations (although they were both better than expected). So my hopes were really high for The Children Act, especially as McEwan wrote the screenplay himself (as which On Chesil Beach, which is in the first list), but this was such a disappointment. Emma Thompson is acting her heart out, but the story is just so flat, the characters are flat, their development and thought process is non-existent and the main message or point is just completely lost. When I explained how the characters are in the novel to my baffled friend (who hadn't read the book) she exclaimed: why didn't they film that instead? My thoughts exactly. Second major disappointment is the Fantastic Beasts sequel; the first film was so lovingly made, centred around Newt and his beasts, and now we get an in-betweeny with way too many characters, no coherent plot to speak of, too many action scenes thrown together, no actual Grindelwald crimes (as promised by the title) and to make things worse; no beasts to speak of (also; as promised by the title). Eddie Redmayne is wasted on this film. The third film in this list is there because it was just a major disappointment overall. I love The Nutcracker, I will visit the ballet in a couple of days, but this film just had nothing to do with that story or anything else. There was no proper plot, no characters to relate to, just... nothing. The only good thing about it was Matthew Macfayden (to end this somewhat downer ending on a positive note).

Books of 2017

Another year in books has flown by. After my book challenge in 2015, I've been keeping lists of all the books I read through 2016 and this year. As in previous years, I'm always surprised to find which books I read not even half a year ago; amazing how quickly you forget when it was that you read something. On the other hand, some novels I feel like I've just finished them while that turns out to have been more than a year ago.
No reading goals, just keeping up the numbers. I read 23 books this year, which is 2 up from last year. Mainly, I think, because I didn't tackle any big literary reads (like Anna Karenina last year) and there were some rereads, which are always faster. As always, some books have already been discussed at length, while others may have their first mention on this blog right below.

The complete list for 2017:

1 The High Mountains of Portugal
2 The Sellout
3 Juliet, naked
4 Black Swan Green
5 The Outrun
6 Last Orders
7 The Handmaid's Tale
8 How to be good
9 The Jane Austen book club
10 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
11 Hag-Seed
12 The Joy Luck Club
13 England and other stories
14 Mijn Meneer
15 The Light Years
16 The North Water
17 Marking Time
18 Here I am
19 Confusion
20 The Best of Adam Sharp
21 Cloud Atlas
22 Exit West
23 Casting Off

So, five rereads; Juliet, naked, Black Swan Green, The Jane Austen bookclub, Harry Potter, and Cloud Atlas, two of which are by the ever-popular David Mitchell. The Joy Fowler and JK Rowling were because there was a bit in the summer where I wanted to read but not invest actual brainpower into the reading, so I went back to some really easy rereads. Only one Dutch book, which is also the only non-fiction title on the list (although it is partly fictionalized, it is the autobiographical account of Ted van Lieshout's youth). Technically only one short story collection (England and other stories), although one could count The Joy Luck Club as short stories (I read one of the chapters as a 'separate' short story during my studies). No classics at all. I was going to say 'no Americans' until I realised both The Sellout and Here I Am are written by Americans; somehow they both disappeared from my mind pretty quickly. No new novels by Ian McEwan, or David Mitchell, or any of my other popular authors, simply because there weren't any. Actually, now that I think of it: no Ian McEwan at all this year. After the triple McEwan there may have been a slight overdose, but still; this must be the first time in about 10 years that I read no novel by Ian McEwan for a whole year. This will surely be rectified in 2018.

Let's break the novels that I did read down into some lists:

Best English novel
1 Exit West
2 Last Orders
3 The Handmaid's Tale
A difficult choice this year! Exit West is clearly the winner; another Mohsin Hamid novel that I dearly loved. It is a very contemporary novel, featuring a couple from a unspecified Middle Eastern country fleeing through one of the mysterious doors that keep opening up all over the world, leading to other places. It is both mystical and very realistic, and I'm sad it didn't make Man Booker this year, as it would have been a deserved winner (I've just started reading the novel that did win, and Exit West would beat it with its hands tied behind its back at this point). Do read something by Hamid!
Last Orders is Graham Swift's Man Booker 1996 winning novel, which gave me the combined emotions of a WWII novel and The Full Monty, with it's 'band of brothers'-like bantering and the emotions simmering under a surface of beer and beautiful language. Same goes for The Handmaid's Tale; it's old, it's great, I've written all you need to know when I read it. Funnily enough, both Last Orders and The Handmaid's Tale could count as my 'classics' this year; they are both over 20 years old, and still very current.

Best Dutch novel/classics
Non-existent this year. Strange, as I did get lots of new novels, and have a pretty long backlog in both these categories. They must never have been at the top of the to-read list.

Best non-fiction/best short story collection
Only one novel in each of these categories this year, so not really lists to speak of.

Best fantasy/scifi novel
1 Exit West
2 The Handmaid's Tale
3 The High Mountains of Portugal
Not a lot of these to go around either, but I would of course have put in Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green if they hadn't been rereads. Two of these also feature in my Best English novel list, but The High Mountains of Portual deserves special mention. Yann Martel, like Mohsin Hamid and David Mitchell, can capture you with a world that is very much like ours, but than turns out to be slightly unlike ours in a magical way, and your suspension of disbelief just goes with that until you find yourself in their made-up world still fully believing that these things could really happen here and now. Realistic fantasy, a true escape into literature.

Best 'new' author
1 Elizabeth Jane Howard
2 Graham Swift
3 Margaret Atwood
Only Elizabeth Jane Howard is really a 'new' author for 2017, and I've written enough about her novels in my previous blog post. But Graham Swift and Margaret Atwood are some of my recent discoveries of whom I want to read more. I'd read my first novel by Swift, Mothering Sunday, as one of my last novels in 2016 and this year I continued with Last Orders and his short-story collection England and other stories. I'd have wanted Wish you were here on the list as well, but it went into reprint just as I ordered it, so that will have to go for 2018 (when I wrote about Last Orders in March it had also disappeared from view in the bookshop, so I'll have to look into that...). Margaret Atwood is not really a 'new' author for me, as I read Oryx & Crake during my English studies, but she is one of the authors I've put on my 'must read more' list. This year I read The Handmaid's Tale and Hag-seed, both of which are great in their own way. I got The Heart goes Last a couple of weeks ago, so she will also feature in the 2018 list.

Most disappointing novel
1 How to be good
2 The Sellout
3 The Outrun
(4 The Best of Adam Sharp)
Wow, this was really the easiest category to fill this year. Not a good sign. I was looking forward to How to be good, one of the few Hornby novels I'd never read, but it was thoroughly disappointing. Moralistic, full of angry relationship issues, with a wavering plot and unlikeable characters. The Sellout was the Man Booker winner of 2016, so naturally I read it, but I didn't like it at all. It is supposed to be a funny social commentary on contemporary America, but I can't remember finding any bit of it funny. The main character struck me as pathetic, his backstory was unbelievable and the plot even more so. The Outrun appeared to be good at first; girl returns to small town Orkney life after her big-city London life blows up in her face, but in the end it didn't really go anywhere, the character didn't come to life for me as in so many of these 'woman retreats to find herself' novels. Special mention for The Best of Adam Sharp, again a novel by Graeme Simpsion that disappointed. It felt like a slight do-over of The Rosie Project, with some High Fidelity elements thrown in. He really turned out only one good novel, his first, and I will now stop reading whatever else he writes until the recommendations tell me it really is too great to miss.

Authors I read more than once
- Elizabeth Jane Howard (4x)
- Margaret Atwood (2x)
- Graham Swift (2x)
- Nick Hornby (2x, one reread and one new)
- David Mitchell (2x, both rereads)

Books to go

A couple of months ago, I read an interview (I can't remember with who, or where) that has been haunting me ever since. It was with someone aged around 60, who had decided to only read new books, and about once or twice a year reread a book that he already knew he loved. Because, as he reasoned, he read only about 20 books per year, and as he had only about 20 more years to live (at least, that was the number he was aiming for) that made a grand total of 400 books left to read in his entire lifetime. He felt sorry that he hadn't read more great novels when he had the time (in his teens, twenties, and generally before he had a job or children) and now he wanted to make every book worthwhile.
Imagine that! I mean, it is a noble idea, of course, and great planning on his side, but the whole depressing thought of knowing how many books you're still going to read in your life, basically means saying 'no' to a lot of books, and closing the door on so many reading experiences. And when you read a new novel that you absolutely love, you automatically go 'aw, but I won't ever read you again, because I don't have enough slots left for rereads!' Horrible thought.

But still, the man had a point. I mean, my situation is not nearly as dire, as I am only 31, read 40 books per year, so with his projected life expectancy I would still have 2000 books to go, but I too have spent time reading novels I didn't enjoy, didn't think were going anywhere, or just read out of politeness to the person who lend it to me. I am terrible at not finishing a novel; once I've started, I feel like I am committed to finish it, no matter how awful I think it is. (Non-fiction is different, by the way, I have about 10 non-fiction books laying around with bookmarks stuck somewhere in the first 50 pages that I'm not sure I will ever finish.) But all those non-enjoyable books take up a lot of time. Even more time than the good ones, respectively, because I automatically read less when I don't like what I'm reading, so it takes more time to finish them.
So, time for a change.
In 2015, I gave myself the challenge of reading 52 books, and of only reading books I hadn't read before. I didn't make the number, but I did read all new novels. This is a great idea in principle, but some of those novels I did not enjoy. Still, I kept reading, to reach my goal. New rule from now one: if I don't like a novel, or feel myself avoiding reading, I will stop reading that novel and start something else.
Next up; rereads. I like rereads, especially during busy periods when my mind is too distracted to dive into a complex new novel; rereads are like a familiar warm bath that relax my brain and don't care if I miss out on some smaller details because I already know the main plot. During the renovation and move, I read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, for example. Which is great, but too many rereads get in the way of new novels. So; rereads are only allowed when needed.
Finally, I have several authors who are my absolute favourite and whose every new novel that comes out I read immediately. Examples include Ian McEwan and David Mitchell. There are also some authors who would probably make it onto that all-time-favourite-have-read-everything-will-read-every-new-novel-that-comes-out list, but who I keep forgetting about, until I by accident read another one of their novels, go 'this author is great, I should read more by them!' and then forget about them again. Examples include Margaret Atwood and Graham Swift. So, third new rule; read more novels by potential to-love authors.

As always with literature, I will probably break any rule I make within half a year, but they do give me some comfort with the depressing 'the end is neigh!' feelings I have been walking around with for a while. And if you'll excuse me, I will now get back to my John le Carré, a novel that I felt was sagging a bit in the middle, but did not put down, for, er... reasons.

Last Orders

As I am a big fan of Man Booker Prize winners, and discovered I really liked the writing of Graham Swift (I was sure I'd written a blog post about Mothering Sunday, but it turns out I only mentioned that novel in my 'Books of 2016' list, where it came second), reading Last Orders, the novel that won Swift the Man Booker in 1996 seemed like the most logical next step. It took me a while to get it, because apparently the Groningen book shop is not that big on Swift (I've been waiting for Wish you were here to come in for about 3 weeks now). But there it was at last, pint glass featured prominently on the cover. I'd already read somewhere that the Booker win was a bit controversial, as Swift seemed to have borrowed the main plot line from William Faulkner, but since I've never read As I Lay Dying (although now I want to), this didn't really bother me too much.

So, Last Orders. It's about beer, a lot of it, but it's mostly about men. Their relationships (friendships, fathers and sons, wives), their professions, their lives, their pastimes. The main plot takes place in one day, as Ray, Lenny, Vince and Vic drive from London to Margate to scatter the ashes of their friend and father; Jack. During the drive, each of them has a series of flashbacks to earlier events, mostly concerning the other three, Jack, their children, or their wives. It is as if Jack's death has brought upon them the need to take score of their lives, to see what life (and Jack) has brought them.
Now the perspective screwed me up a bit in the beginning. Some chapters are titled after the point of view character (Ray, Vince, Mandy), and some are named after the location the group is in. But all of those 'location' chapters are also voiced by Ray. It took me a while to figure that out, also because I tend to remember characters by the first letter of their name, and I kept mixing up Vic and Vince (same thing that happened with Jude and JB in A Little Life). Because of this, it took me a while to get into the novel. However, it feels as if Swift was prepared for that, because the relationships are confusing in the beginning, but gradually become clearer and clearer as we get to know the characters, their stories, and their relationships better. And there is a lot to know.
This is a very heavy, multi-layered novel, although it doesn't feel that way when you read it. However, I felt not everything was developed to the fullest. There are some interesting parallels; Jack the butcher and Vic the undertaker, both 'used to handling bodies', who have their shops on opposing sides of the same street. But this is merely a statement, something said in passing, but not taken any further. The same is true for all the children Jack seems to 'adopt' in his life; Vince is his true adoptive son, but he adopted Ray during WWII, and Lenny's daughter Sally in her childhood. But the connections between these people, or what they meant to Jack, are never really worked out. We get glimpses, and other characters' thoughts on it, but that's that.

Nevertheless, it is a great novel to read. The plot is pretty predictable, but that is not what such a novel is about. It's about the language, the hidden meanings, the short chapters in between that throw a whole different light on a scene, a person, or a memory. The whole story can tilt or shift with just one sentence. However, compared to Mothering Sunday, Swift had not fully developed the style of writing that I loved so much in the latter novel. This felt familiar, as Ian McEwan won the Man Booker with Amsterdam in 1998, which is also great, but no where near his masterpieces Atonement and Saturday in style and plot and nuance (I know I keep blabbing on about McEwan, but he just happens to be my favourite author). So in a way, this felt like discovering the roots of Swifts writing style, and I will now try to follow his development through to his last novel. That is, if the book shop decides to cooperate.

Books of 2016

In 2015, I set myself the goal of reading one book a week, or 52 books in a year. As you may remember, I failed at that, but still managed to read 41 books in total. The catch was that I could only read books I'd never read before, which put both a strain on my finance, and made me ache for some the books I wanted to reread, but wasn't allowed to. And also, I didn't really have the time to finish a book each week, with the size of the novels I was reading (The discovery of heaven just takes a couple of weeks, at best).
This year, I did not set myself any reading goals, but I did keep track of ever book I read. Just a short list at the back of my agenda, which worked well for me in 2015, and again so this year. I think this is a habit I will keep, as it is nice to see how much you've read, but also which novels. On one of the first days of this year, I made some lists about what I'd read in 2015, and as I'm pretty sure I won't finish any books in 2016 anymore, I will now do the same for this year.
In total, I read 21 books, which feels about right for a 'normal' year in which I wasn't trying to push any particular number. Looking back on the list I had some "wow, did I read that this year?" moments, for books which feel like they've been inhabitants of my bookcases for years. Other books I'd simply completely forgotten about. and some I will never forget about. Some I've written about extensively, others I've apparently never mentioned here.

This is the complete list for 2016:

1 Grief is the thing with feathers
2 The Art of Asking
3 Bonita Avenue
4 A God in Ruins
5 Pluche
6 As in tas
7 De verwarde cavia
8 Anna Karenina
9 Me before you
10 The Martian
11 Slade House
12 In the light of what we know
13 Magnus
14 A little life
15 After you
16 Northern lights
17 On Chesil Beach
18 Amsterdam
19 The buried giant
20 Mothering Sunday
21 Nutshell

Some differences from 2015: there are two rereads in this list (both by Ian McEwan), and there are more Dutch books, relatively speaking. Only three non-fiction books. Fewer classics.
So, to destill some lists (of just the newly read books):

Best English novel
1 A God in Ruins
2 Mothering Sunday
3 Nutshell
This was a difficult one. I read a lot of great books this year, and one would probably expect the much-praised A little life or In the light of what we know to be in this list too. However, this year has confirmed for me that I love two things in novels: small, intimate plots, and what we shall call 'literary' language. This explains for Mothering Sunday and Nutshell, which are both very small, very literarily written (yes, that is a word), and take place in the space of a single day or a single womb. And A God in Ruins (can you believe I'd actually forgotten I read that book this year?) is just beautiful. Kate Atkinson previously wrote Life after life, which was great too, but this (sort of) sequel is even beter. I cried when I finished it, probably the only book I cried about apart from Slade House (and Me before you, if I'm to believe what I've written before). I'd never expected two 'new' authors to jump ahead of my beloved Ian McEwan, but Nutshell just wasn't good enough for the competition.

Best Dutch novel
I'm supposed to put a list here, but really, I didn't like any of the Dutch novels I read this year. Bonita Avenue is hailed as some sort of magnus opus, while being a debut, but I didn't really see it. Magnus is by one of my favourite comedians, but it wasn't all that great. De verwarde cavia was just cheap. It was a sad year for Dutch literature in my list.

Best non-fiction (whichever language)
1 Pluche
2 The Art of Asking
3 As in tas
None of these were really great, but As in tas is really just cashing in on the author's father's dead, while I've written enough about what is wrong with The Art of Asking in another post. Pluche is the memoirs of one of my favourite politicians, and while not perfect, definitely the best of this lot.

Best fantasy/scifi novel
1 The Martian
2 The buried giant
3 Slade House
The Martian is definitely one of the best realistic scifi novels I've read in a long time. It is funny, dramatic, scientifically realistic, and as I'd already seen the movie, I kept picturing Matt Damon, which is pretty nice too. The buried giant is the most unlikely fantasy novel I've ever read, deeper and darker than I'd expected. I would not normally put a David Mitchell novel at the bottom of a list, but Slade House was just too short, and it felt a bit too rushed. Like he wanted to get a short novel out there before going on to one of his normally much lager ones. Let's hope we get one of those in 2017.

Most disappointing novel
1 After you
2 De verwarde cavia
3 A little life
Funny how much a book can disappoint you even when you aren't really expecting anything great from it. After you is the sequal to Me before you, and it doesn't get any more cliche. Really, don't read it. De verwarde cavia was self-published by one of my favourite comedians and non-fiction writers, so I had my hopes up, but it is really about nothing. fluff. Wasted time. I feel almost ashamed for putting A little life in this list, because it has been so acclaimed, and everybody loves it. And I loved it too, the first two-thirds of it. Then it just got too... not gruesome, although I've heard enough people say that too. It just got too lost in it's own plot. The author really wanted to complete the whole 'life', and as such threw in a lot of stuff that a good editor would have taken out again. Really, at 60% of the pages, a more condensed, focussed story would have made for a better novel. So this novel really became a disappointment as I was reading it, and if it hadn't been for the final 200 pages, this book would be at the top of my "Best English novels" list. Funnily enough, when I wrote about it earlier, I was far more positive about this novel, so apparently my opinion changed radically in hindsight.

And finally, because I put it in last year:

Authors I read more than once
- Ian McEwan (3x)
- Jojo Moyes (2x)
Like last year, one of my favourite authors is the most-read one (last year it was David Mitchell and Dave Nicholls). I could do a McEwan top 3 (On Chesil Beach, Nutshell, Amsterdam) but really, who does that sort of thing?

52 Books Challenge - The lists

Now I'm not normally a person for lists or ratings or 'highlights of the past year' or something, but given that I have 41 books which I can group into a couple of meaningful categories, I'm going to give it a go in this instance. These are the things that popped into my head while looking over the books I'd read this year.

Best English novel
1 The Children Act
2 Black Swan Green
3 One Day
Pretty typical, in a year where I'm reading only new novels, that my favourite novels still come from that group of male British authors that I've loved over the years. Must be my style. Also, the only Ian McEwan novel I read all year (and the first novel I read this year) is still a firm number 1. New to this list is of course Dave Nicholls, who I hadn't read before this year, but am now a really big fan of.

Best Dutch novel
1 Tongkat
2 Kom hier dat ik u kus
3 De Aanslag
This was a pretty hard choice between Tongkat and Kom hier dat ik u kus, because they are both beautiful, wonderful novels in their own way. But Tongkat is just so special, I cannot really get my head around it (I will reread it in the near future).

Best non-fiction (whichever language)
1 Dit kan niet waar zijn
2 My Brief History
3 Gratis geld voor iedereen
Three widely divergent books, but all three good in their own way, and all three containing lots of personal notes/touches/stories of the author.

Best short story collection
1 Speaking with the angel
2 The Beautifull Cassandra
3 The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
I didn't read that many short story collections, and none of them were really brilliant, but still, a top 3. Also, my only Jane Austen reading of this year is in there.

Best WWI/II novel
1 The Narrow Road to the Deep North
2 All Quiet on the Western Front
3 Slaughterhouse 5
As always, I read a lot of War novels this year, and some stand out. The Narrow Road... won the Man Booker for a reason; it is a beautifully written, deeply haunting novel about WWII in Asia. Nr 2 and 3 are classics in the genre, and for a good reason. I've said it before, and I will say it again; if everybody would read these horribly fantastic novels, no one would ever start a war again.

Best comic novel
1 Shades of Grey
2 Funny Girl
3 Starter for Ten
I don't often read funny novels, but when I do, they're usually by Nick Hornby or Jasper Fforde, who find themselves high on this list. And then there's another Dave Nicholls, of course.

Classics (whichever language)
1 The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
2 Brideshead Revisited
3 De Aanslag
Brideshead Revisited and De Aanslag are technically both also WWII novels, but when looking at them as classics, they somehow rank higher than some of the other WW novels. And the John le Carre novel just blew me away - I will definitely read more by him in 2016.

Most disappointing novels
1 The Rosie Effect
2 All the Light we cannot See
3 The Book of Lost Things
Not everything was good. I was really looking forward to The Rosie Effect, because I loved The Rosie Project, but this was one of the most disappointing sequels I've ever read. All the Light we cannot See won the Pullizer, but really, it's such a hyped-up American WWII novel, I couldn't care for it in any way. And The Book of Lost Things is one of the worst fairy tale retellings I've ever read. If you want to read a good one, go for The Sleeper and The Spindle (my only Neil Gaiman novel, which I couldn't fit anywhere else).

And to complete the list craze, not a top 3 but another neat list:

Authors I read more than once
- David Mitchell (3x)
- Dave Nicholls (3x)
- Rutger Bregman (2x)
- John le Carre (2x)
- Harry Mulisch (2x)
- Nick Hornby (2x)
Again, some of my all time favourites are also recurring reads. I could do you a top 3 of Mitchell novels (Black Swan Green, The Bone Clocks, Number9dream) and Dave Nicholls (One Day, A Starter for Ten, Us), but that would be stretching things.

Black Swan Green

So I've been reading quite a lot to keep up with my 52 Book Challenge, and one of the books I've recently read was Black Swan Green by David Michell. Now I may not have written all that much about him here, but David Mitchell (not to be confused with the comedian of the same name) is one of my favourite authors.
As with most of my favourite authors, I first read his most well-known novel, Cloud Atlas, because you have to start somewhere, and if lots of people are saying a book is great, you start to believe them. And it is great, beautifully written, very intricate, with seven different 'layers' of story all interweaving into one big saga. Most people know the novel, or the film, which was less good but still nice. Then I read The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which is about a Dutchman living in Decima in Japan. This novel doesn't have the whole 'separate stories making up one bigger story', but that is a good thing, because it lets you focus on how great the actual writing is. The sentences are very well-constructed, with lots of imagery and metaphor; it is almost poetic. Which meant that I'd become hooked, and that I had to read his three earlier novels too, while waiting for a new one to come out.
His 'earlier' novels, before he became really famous for Cloud Atlas, are Ghostwritten, number9dream, and Black Swan Green, and I read them in that order (although Black Swan Green was published after Cloud Atlas, it never go the same amount of attention, weirdly enough). I've done the same with Ian McEwan's novels after 'discovering' him with Atonement and Saturday, and I think this is a great way to get to know an author, see how they've developed with regards to themes and characters, but also the things that really show their style, who they are as an author. Ghostwritten follows a slightly similar pattern as Cloud Atlas, only less complicated and well-developed: it travels through various countries and characters in various chapters, as the protagonist 'moves' through different people. You can definitely see his style as an author and his way of combining different stories into one, and the mystical elements that become part of all of his novels, but this is clearly a 'first novel'. Then in number9dream and Black Swan Green, we follow the live of a young, teenage male protagonist during a difficult period in their lives. number9dream is set in Japan, and it is a coming-of-age story in which a boy searches for his long-lost father, getting further entrenched in the Japanese underground world. In this novel, there a strong sense of imagination; some scenes don't really happen, but just take place inside the head of the main character as he ponders his options. It is sometimes confusing to read, but very nicely done, and it keeps you as a reader on your toes.
And then there is Black Swan Green. In this, we follow 13-year-old Jason for one year, from January to December 1982, and experience one (or sometimes several) day of each month through his eyes. The chapters begin and end quite suddenly, so you sometimes don't really know what happend until someone mentions something in a later chapter, and some things you never really find out. Which is okay, because again the writing is some of the most beautiful I've ever written (Jason is a poet, after all) and the scenes just take on a magical atmosphere of their own. What happens, really, is nothing out of the ordinary for a 13-year-old in the early 1980s, but because of Mitchell's style, it becomes almost fairytale-like to read. Also, I've just found out that it's semi-autobiographical, which gives it a whole extra layer of complexity. In all, I think Black Swan Green may be my favourite Mitchell novel, even ahead of Cloud Atlas.
So Mitchell is great with his (written) language, and his characters are very well-rounded and deep, and his plots are amazing (even when nothing really happens, which is a lot of the time). But there is one final thing that makes his novels so interesting to read; they are all interconnected. Where Marvel has its Marvel Cinematic Universe, with all of their super-hero movies combined into one larger story, so all of Mitchell's novels are also connected. Characters from one novel appear in another, or are referenced to, or there are other connections that you only see when you've read the novels quite carefully. For example, take Mrs. Crommelynck, who teaches Jason about poetry in Black Swan Green. She mentions she is the daughter of a famous composer from Belgium, whose last sextet was actually written by a young man named Frobisher. This sextet, and the character of Frobisher, form a very important part of Cloud Atlas. Then there is the song '#9 Dream' by John Lennon, played in Black Swan Green, but obviously a reference to number9dream. Several other characters, including classmates and teachers of Jason, appear in other novels or short stories by David Mitchell. So all in all, you get the feeling that not only some of his novels consist of several smaller stories making up one bigger story; no, all of his novels combined make up one large David Mitchell universe, with some things actually taking place in this place and time, and some in mysterious pasts, unknown futures, or mystical 'other' worlds very similar to our own. He does count on his readers to be intelligent, attentive, and amazed. Although the novels are just as nice without seeing the connections, it just adds another layer of brilliance.
Luckily for me, his newest novel The Bone Clocks is out already, and waiting on my 'to read' pile (and another novel, Slade House, is said to come out this year). But as with all great writers, I have to take a little break with some other, lighter novels, before I can dive into one of his intricate and beautiful stories again. It is an experience you can't get enough of, but one you should take in small, measured quantities, or all other novels will seem unoriginal, unintelligent, and uninspired by comparison.

The Children Act

With all our free days taken up by the Australia trip we didn't really have a Christmas holiday to speak of, but we had some days off, and on those days I managed to end one book, and read two more.
I finally finished reading Crime and Punishment, which I started somewhere between Canberra and Melbourne, and wasn't able to get through at any pace until I got to part five. I really don't know what it is with these classics; they take forever to get into, dragging on and on without you getting anywhere, and then two thirds of the way they finally become interesting, you finish them in a flash, and then wish there would have been more to read. I don't know much about Russia or Russian authors, and I read this novel in an English translation, but I think I can see the appeal.
Of the new novels, the first to start and last to finish was My Brief History, a memoir by Stephen Hawking. As this was called a memoir, I was hoping for some personal anecdotes and interesting bits about his free time and normal life, but this wasn't to be. There was one chapter on his pre-school childhood, one chapter on primary and secondary school, and chapter three already dives into his time at Oxford. He keeps saying how he is bad at math and formulas and not really that bright, but then continues chapter after chapter on papers he wrote as a fellow at Cambridge (Oxford, apparently, was glad to be rid of him) and tries to explain very very difficult stuff like imaginary time and why time travel is impossible. It somehow turns in another one of his incomprehensible books on physics and cosmology. Which is sad, because I wanted to find out more about the man behind all that. Also, I didn't understand half of what he was trying to tell me, but I get that a lot with relativity.
The other book, a novel, was The Children Act by Ian McEwan. Now most of you may know by now that Ian McEwan is my favourite author of all time. I love his style, his long flowing sentences, how he can describe a room and the people in it and the atmosphere and the history of the room and the past of people in it with just a few sentences is brilliant. I also think he wrote the best novel I have ever read, which is Atonement. Closely followed by Saturday. With this newest novel, however, he is once again improving upon himself.
After Atonement and Saturday, he wrote two novels I did not really care for, Solar and Sugartooth, which made me feel that maybe he was past his high point. Which is fine, we cannot expect great writers to be great writers with every novel they write, and I will keep re-reading the older ones for quite a while to come, but it is kind of sad to know. But with this novel, The Children Act, he is completely back on his high level.
I won't tell you too much about the plot, because it is quite a short novel, and most of the important points are part of the novel's magic. But I will tell you that the main character, Fiona, is one of the best he's ever written. She is a judge on family matters (after reading the first chapter I had to Wikipedia a lot about the British justice system before I could continue reading) who has no children of her own but daily has to decide on the fate of other people's children. Immediately, you can feel the central conflict developing, especially as the story reveals some trouble between her and her husband. There are some examples of issues she has had to judge on, including cases dealing with religious beliefs preventing people from receiving certain kinds of care, which is the main issue of this novel. Fiona has to rule on a case of a Jehovah's Witness boy refusing a blood transfusion that will safe his life on the grounds of his belief. The way McEwan tiptoes around all the delicate issues of such a troublesome premise is very beautifully done; there is no judgement about such decisions, apart from what Fiona finally rules. He has this remarkable way of writing about very complex and possibly dangerous subjects as if they are no worry at all.
Also, in acting you have the system of 'method acting', in which an actor literally becomes his character. I think Ian McEwan must do the same for his characters, because in every one of his novels the protagonist is someone completely different, with so many tiny details about their lives and occupation that it is almost hard to belief that he himself was never a family judge. While in Saturday, you almost belief he studied to be a surgeon for six years, and in Amsterdam you live through the throes of a classical composer in the midst of a major composition. Here, you almost become Fiona as she ponders he decision and the consequences.
Really, the only reason why I will still prefer Atonement and Saturday to this novel is that it's so short. I finished it in less than a day; each of its chapters is of sizable length, but there being only five I was still done pretty quickly. Not that there is anything missing, the story has several layers and follows a nice arch, but still, more McEwan is always better. This feels more like a novella than a novel, and knowing that we will have to wait another two years for another story to come out really makes one regret that this one wasn't longer. But; read it. Especially if you've never read any Ian McEwan before, it is a wonderful display of his style and craftmanship of creating very deep characters, and you will finish it in a good afternoon. And then you will have all his other novels still before you!
I, on the other hand, have dived back into the classics, and am now in the middle of the First World War with All Quiet on the Western Front. I haven't read much of it yet, but I can already tell you that that war sucked as much for the common German soldier as it did for the British, which was to be expected.

Netherland

During my English studies, there were several courses aimed at 'contemporary literature'. In my view, 'contemporary literature' was often translated to 'literature written by people not born in the UK, US, or Australia' or 'post-9/11 literature' (or combinations of the two, such as The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which I'll suggest to anyone who will listen). Somehow, post-9/11 novels attract other post-9/11 novels, which means my book collection has a relatively large amount of them. Netherland, by Joseph O'Neill, has been among them for a while, and after finishing Bridget I wanted to get on with something that was actually literature, and contained more emotions than 'will he ever tweet me back?'-angst.

Before we go any further, I would like to say that the category 'post-9/11 novels' does not contain any novel ever written after the 11th of September 2001. It indicates novels that were written in response to the 9/11 attacks, or that have been influenced by them. Some are very clearly in this category, such as Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, some less obviously so, including Ian McEwan's Saturday. Some take place in New York City and deal with the obvious aftermaths of the events, some are set in the countries that the US invaded after the attacks (I've read We are Now Beginning Our Descent by James Meek, which is set in Afghanistan and Iraq) and some take place in a fictional future also influenced by the events. What they all, or most of them, have in common is an atmosphere filled with heaviness ("Something oppressive... like thunder" as Fiver tells us in Watership Down). People going through the motions, without actually thinking about it, mostly just to stay alive. Or on the other hand, people desperately trying to get out of the oppressed feelings, only to find themselves thrown back time and again. It's not that I particularly like reading about people who find themselves in such situations, but I am very impressed by the way writers can put these emotions through in their works, and they make me see why Literature is Literature, and what it can do.

So, back to Netherland, which has been sitting on my bookshelf for quite a while now. I had been advised to read it by many fellow students, some of whom had to read the novel for a class, so it has to be particularly good if they recommend it after having been forced to read it themselves. I had no idea what or who this novel was going to be about before picking it up, only that it was on the post-9/11 category. I didn't know, for example, that the main character is a Dutchman. And that there would be several Dutch words and sentences interwoven in the text, without translation or context, which I'm guessing makes them pretty hard to understand for non-Dutch people. Also, it gives an extra layer to the title, which is nice.
As if a Dutch protagonist isn't enough, the novel is also about cricket. There are few things I consider less American than cricket, but there you are. I don't know anything about cricket, either (which made a certain chapter in The Go-Between very difficult to read), but the author does a good job of not making that an issue. Otherwise, it's about New York City, and relationships between people, and how those relationships were stressed to the point of breaking in the aftermaths of the events.

Now I've been to NYC, I've seen the gaping hole and visited the church that the rescue workers slept in while they were searching the wreckage and read the memorials and I still don't feel like I've come even a little bit closer to understanding what happened and why it made such an impact. (I can see the national and global impact, but I'm talking about the man on the street, the 'normal' New Yorkers who didn't lose any loved ones but had to go on living in a scarred city, in a world that would never really be the same again.) But this novel can show me, if even only a little bit. It makes you understand the events, and try to accept them, or at least give them a place. I haven't finished the novel yet, so I don't know which way it's going to go, but I can already see it will make a lasting impression on my understanding of life, the universe and everything, which is what you need, once in a while.

A Farewell to Arms

So I finished Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms (a few days ago, but it's been crazy busy, especially now that we're winning gold medals left and right at the Olympics and everyone is glued to the TV). It was not the first Hemingway I'd ever read, we had " Hills like White Elephants" and another weird story set in Africa that I can't remember the name of, but it was the first full-length novel. As with all the other 'classics' I've been reading recently, it took me quite a while to get through. Much longer than I would have anticipated from the very small and very thin book.
I already knew how it ends because I'd seen Silver Linings Playbook in which Bradley Cooper throws the book through a window because he is dissatisfied with the ending. I won't give it away, but I can tell you that from the first page you will already have the inkling that this won't be a fairytale happy ending. And it isn't.
Anyway, the novel, or more specifically the plot, reminded me of two things: Roald Dahl's short stories and Ian McEwan's Atonement. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Roald Dahl wrote several short stories based on his experience as an RAF pilot in the Second World War, and Hemingway based his novel on his own experiences in the Italian campaign in the First. You can somehow get from their writing that what they're describing is something they know about, something they've experienced themselves. I'm not saying this makes it more realistic, but there is a rawness to it that can make it less smooth to read. That idea actually makes it interesting to compare it with McEwan's novel, as he (as far as I know) has no experience of active service, but the part in which Hemingway describes the retreat, the long line of stalling vehicles and the enemy planes flying above, was very familiar. Atonement was of course written long after A Farewell to Arms, so if anyone is copying it was McEwan, but as I read Atonement first (and several times) it works the other way around in my head.
Even apart from these literary connections I thought the novel very good, and it is probably a good idea to (re)read such novels now that the First World War is exactly 100 years behind us, and there is tension building on all sides in the world.

After finishing the classic I went on to a contemporary novel, Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid (his first novel of the three he has written so far; I've already mentioned his novel How to get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, if you still haven't read any of his work you definitely should). The only connection Moth Smoke could have to A Farewell to Arms is that they're both written in the first-person narrator, and that narrator is a man. Otherwise, they're completely different. Which is exactly what I need, after such a classic heavy tome.

Revolutionary Road

For the past couple of days, I have been reading Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. I sort of came to it by chance: it was mentioned in the Nick Hornby columns and I was ordering something from Amazon and needed an extra thing to qualify for the free delivery (only starts from 25 pounds to the Netherlands), and then I thought: why not? I'd seen the film, so I already knew the story, and 92 5-star Amazon reviews should be enough, right?
Definitely right. In fact, I've started to slow down on my reading so I will be able to read this novel for longer. The depth of character, the smallness of their world and the experience of reading about their lives and seeing how very wrong they are, how very annoying and stupid and short-sighted, but still bewitching in their own way, is fascinating. Since I've seen the film I know how it's going to end, but still, the plot is not the most important thing in this novel, it's the way things are being said, the way the characters develop. That is of course part of what makes something a classic, but it has been a long long time (probably since reading Saturday*), that I've had this experience in a novel.
Also, I've been spending several minutes before falling asleep at night pondering how on earth this could be someone's debut novel. I mean, if this is the first thing he ever published, then I can't really wrap my mind around what he will have written after that. I must definitely read more by this author.
Also, reading this novel has made me put some of the other things I've read into new perspective. The scenes from The Hours that are set in the fifties somehow make more sense after reading this. Same is true for On the Road. It is so interesting to see the widely divergent ways that the fifties were experienced in the US, and it makes me wonder which (if any) of the novels that are written today will make the 50-year mark, shaping the ideas of future people about the time we're living in now.


* I never do these little asterisk thingies but this time what I'm going to say is so widely different from the rest that I can't really help it: a fellow student of English wrote his MA dissertation on post-9/11 literature, and he included Saturday in the lot. This made me very confused at first, because in my mind, the novel is about almost everything but 9/11. But then I talked about it with him, and he explained some points, and now I feel like there is this whole layer to my favourite novel that I'd never noticed or knew about before, and I will definitely have to re-read Saturday some time really soon, but first I have to come to terms with the fact that there is still more to be found in something I've already read and loved 5 times over. Literature is hard work, sometimes.