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!

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)

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 Art of Asking

So one of the books I've finished so far this year is The Art of Asking, by Amanda Palmer. I thought this book was going to be about how Amanda thought she had to be a Strong and Independent Person/Woman and then saw the light and realised that sometimes, it isn't so bad to ask anyone for help, and now she will tell the reader the how and why of things. As it turned out, she realised this in the first 10 pages of the book, and the rest of it was mostly about her dating Neil Gaiman, her breaking up with her record label and discovering crowd funding, and her sleeping on other people's couches while blogging and tweeting and generally sharing every detail of her private life with the whole world. But luckily, in between all that, there were some gems of wisdom and writing.
So who is this Amanda Palmer? I only recently found out that she, and her former band The Dresden Dolls, are not as famous as I'd always thought, so a short recap may be in order. Amanda Palmer is a singer, songwriter, feminist, and the wife of Neil Gaiman. Which is how I first heard of her, because I've been following Neil on his blog for a couple of years now, and at some point, Amanda popped up (they've been married for a while now, and they recently had their first child). I didn't really check her out at that point, but then one of my best friends mentioned that he loves The Dresden Dolls, so I decided to listen to some of their music, and some of their music is really nice. For the most part, it's a bit too loud/shouty/in-your-face for my taste, but a noticeable exception to this rule is Delilah, which is by far my favourite song. Since then, Amanda has gone solo, and released a couple of albums, one of which contains her playing Radiohead songs on her ukulele.
Anyway, Neil had mentioned Amanda's book on his blog, and when I saw it laying around at the house of the aforementioned friend (in Iceland, which meant he had found it worthwhile to drag the thing 3000 km across the sea) I decided I had to read it. So I did. And I was a bit disappointed, as you may have gathered from the first paragraph, because it was all about Amanda Palmer. Amanda Palmer likes talking/writing/blogging/singing/apping about herself a lot. She also doesn't really like any kind of formal structure, so the book is really all over the place, with long and short bits mixed up and jumping in time and adding new people until you get completely confused. But then there are some bits that do make sense, in a novel-writing kind of way, and she mentions that Neil helped her along, so you can see his influence there, I guess. Also, it does tie up nicely in the end, with a sort of happy ending.
But in between all the rambling and the endless descriptions of tours and couches and tour buses, there are some really nice bits. Amanda mentions The Fraud Police, who will at some point come knocking at your door and tell you that it's all been fun and games, but now you really have to stop pretending you can write/sing/make any difference in the world. It's that secret feeling we all have, of being 'found out' some day, of being discovered as a fraud and then cast aside by everybody. The way she described this, felt really real to me. This is about not trusting yourself, or trusting your own talent. Then there is the bit about trusting others, and you don't have to stand on a pedestal as a living statue, or sleep on other people's couches, to experience that other people are, in general, trustworthy. But it's good to realise that sometimes, and the examples she gives are all true and honest and worthwhile. Finally, the theme of the title, asking for help, is connected with both trusting yourself and trusting others. For example, she's had a really hard time accepting money from Neil when she was in a tight spot, because she felt that she had to be able to be independent. Although she asked random people for all kinds of help, asking the ones you love, the ones whose opinion really matters, is the most difficult. And during these parts, I really loved her, and the book, and the message she was carrying out.
But then there were two afterwords by people saying 'you may not believe this, but this is really the way Amanda is! She's not faking it! Believe me, everything in this book, it's very very true!'. Which spoiled the whole thing, because up until that point, I'd never had any doubt that this all was true. But by pointing it out, by having other famous people write an afterword in which they state that the true things you have just read are really true, you're kind of defeating your own point. Because why couldn't we just trust you on that, Amanda?

You can do better!

I have been reading The Fry Chronicles, which is the second part of Stephen Fry's autobiography (I was unaware that there was a first part before I began reading, otherwise I would have started there) and it is one of the best books I have read in a long time. This is partly because Fry thinks along the same lines as I do, and partly because he has done a lot of things that I am very curious about (such as go to Cambridge), but mostly because his writing style is just so brilliantly dry and ironic and self-critical and humorous. He just loves his alliterations, as when he describes the "fumbling, frotting, fondling and farcically floppy failure as well as more infrequent feats of fizzing fanfare and triumphant fleshy fulfilment" (104) that made up his love life. Sometimes he can explode in anger, while still maintaining his own voice, as in "[t]he people who tell you this are cut from the same cloth as those who grow up these days to become trollers on internet sites and who specialize in posting barbarous, mean, abusive, look-at-me, listen-to-me anonymous comments on YouTube and BBC 'Have Your Say' pages and other websites and blogs foolish enough to allow space for their poison. Such swine specialize in second-guessing the motives of those who are brave enough to commit to the risk of making fools of themselves in public and they are a blight on the face of the earth" (95). It truly is a wonderful book, I would recommend it to anyone, even those slightly less interested in the person of Stephen Fry.

But that is not the point I was going to make today! And believe me, there is a point to all this.

At some point (haha), Fry discusses his choice to go into theatre, even though he cannot sing, dance, or act very well. He explains one of his motives very shortly, saying "I suppose a conviction that one can do better is a necessary part of pursuing a calling" (93), however arrogant or presumptious it may seem. Reading or seeing or hearing something, and then thinking "I can do better than that!" as a kick-starter to artistic (or other) ambitions.
So I thought about that, and I think it is true for a lot of activists, artists, actors, or other professionals, like sportspersons (cannot say "sportsmen" anymore) or bankers (although they may be leaning more towards "I can do better for myself!"). You need that kind of drive to get going and keep going, in some things.
But on the other hand it's also very daunting, trying to be better than Ian McKellen or Vincent van Gogh or The Beatles or whatever. I mean, if I think about reading a book by Ian McEwan and thinking "I can do better than that!" it not only feels like blasphemy, it's genuinely untrue. I don't think I can do better than him, on the contrary, every time I read a very well-written book I feel like I will never get there, I will never be that good. And that is precisely one of those reasons why I tend to give up after a while; I have made some progress, something is visible, words are on the page or paint is on the canvas, and I look at it and go; "This can never be as good as X or Y! I might as well stop here, because it will all be for nothing anyway!"

And that, my friend, is what we call the wrong attitude!

So the insight of today is; I should become more arrogant. No, I shouldn't. But I should become more self-confident and not expect some masterpiece on first attempt, but think about the fact that Ian McEwan, or even Stephen Fry for that matter, must have written several drafts before their words were put that perfectly on the page. You can only get better with practise (I used to have a primary school teacher who was always telling me to "Practise! Practise! Practise!"), and you (I) will only practise if you do not think about all the masterpieces that are out there, but focus on what you are doing. Although you do have to be aware of it, of course. So that may not precisely be what Fry was talking about, but then again I am not "pursuing a calling" and not as ambitious as many think me to be, even though I do still dream of a life as an author (without all the stupid tv programs and quiz shows and whatever). Anyway, it's not as if he became what he set out to be, because he was determined to become a teacher in a boarding school. So who knows where we (I) will end up.

So that was my Fry-induced insight of today, and I hope it may do someone else some good as well!