All the books I read in 2019
After managing #bookaweek in 2018 I swore off aiming for such an arbitrary target ever again. Then a couple of months in to 2019 I noticed I'd so far only read books by women, and what's more motivating than an arbitrary target you've accidentally already made months of progress in? So this year I ditched #bookaweek for #readwomen.
This started with some momentum as I was already enthralled by Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet, and kicked off the year with The Story of a New Name. Picking up from the fantastic cliffhanger ending of My Brilliant Friend, it is just as gripping and affecting as the previous, and subsequent, novels. I deliberately left gaps between reading them to draw it out.
I started to fill the first gap with Educated: A memoir by Tara Westover who grew up in, and eventually out of, a fundamentalist Christian family (verging on a cult) in the US. It's a remarkable glimpse into an end-of-days isolationist mentality and a fascinatingly dysfunctional family. Although my life has been nothing like as extreme, I could see some parallels in my own upbringing within an evangelical Christian family with an eschatology-inclined father.
Nora Chadwick's The Celts is a nice old secondhand Pelican book find, and an engagingly written history.
Bookshelf by Lydia Pyne is another winner in the Object Lessons series about a topic close to my heart as an avid reader of physical books.
After dipping back into the Neapolitan Quartet for Those who leave and those who stay I finally caught up with the cool kids by reading Ursula Leguin's Earthsea: The First Four Books. Absolutely jaw droppingly good, certainly the best fantasy literature I've read. The world-building of book 2 is sublime, and not in a way that distracts from the plot, told from an unusual point of view. Book 4, using the same central character, is even more offbeat, looking at a fantasy world very convincingly from a woman's point of view; there is very little action in this one, but what there is is earned and cathartic. I want to reread this! And I'd be happy if my daughter picked this up rather than Harry Potter.
In Montmarte: Picasso, Matisse and Modernism in Paris 1900-1910 by Sue Roe is a revealing look at an important period, and location, in art history. I didn't realise just how intertwined the lives of so many of the great names in 20th century art were.
I then concluded The Neapolitan Quartet with The story of the lost child, as heartbreaking as the title suggests.
Hannah Fry's Hello world. Hot to be human in the age of the machine is an intro to algorithms and their place in modern life. I am probably not the target audience as I didn't learn a lot new, but Fry has a drily amusing style and I have recommended it to others.
Star Trek - The Next Generation: Nightshade by Laurell K. Hamilton is kind of clunky, but feels like the show and goes one better by serving Troi well. I was going throught a full rewatch of TNG on Netflix at the time, and great as it is, it rarely did its female characters justice, so that at least was nice to see.
I've been following Beth Mccoll on Twitter for years, she's compassionate, honest, and funny, all of which shines through in How to Come Alive Again: A guide to killing your monsters, about coping with mental illness in yourself and others. There's some genuinely great advice in ther, that has absolutely helped me since I read it.
Pure by Rose Cartwright continues the theme of coping with mental illness, in this case an extreme form of OCD known as Pure O which causes intrusive thoughts about sex. Fascinating and often very (darkly) funny.
Don't Hold My Head Down by Lucy-Anne Holmes picks up the sex theme as it follows the author looking to improve her sex life, and is also very, very funny. I had to stop reading it on public transport.
No continuity of theme into Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, a science fiction novel I've been meaning to read for a long time after getting a high recommendation. It's a lovely piece of world-building, with some remarkably tense action sequences, and the gender-blind narrator who refers to everyone as "she" is a wonderful device for challenging the reader's assumptions.
While not strictly written by a woman (as far as we know...), this edition of The Odyssey by Homer is translated by Emily Wilson and brings a new perspective on an epic which often appears highly misogynistic. It also reads very easily, moreso than any other translation I've read.
Quant by Quant by iconic fashion designer Mary Quant is a breathless rush through her life and ideas up to that point (it was originally published in 1966) and brilliantly captures the atmosphere of that key time in 60s London. Full of memorable anecdotes and strongly imbued with the author's voice. I picked it up at the excellent Quant exhibition at London's V&A that year, which I only really went along to for the sake of my daughter but enjoyed enormously.
Star Trek: Dreadnought by Diane Carey is a major low in reading for this year. I read some of her Trek novels when I was a teenager (and indeed this one has hung around unread since then) and remember finding them okay (though Best Destiny I recall being incredibly dull), but I was young and not very politically aware. This is just Randian nonsense dressed up as Trek. There's a two page screed midway through which literally almost made me throw my book across the room for both its stupidity and its clumsiness in breaking the flow, little short of a character turning to camera to explain their views. To be clear, this is a Star Trek book with a prominent Vulcan character who wants to tell you how Vulcan philosophy is about individual freedom and attainment and that those working to the common good are in the wrong. A Vulcan. You know, the ones who gave is one of Trek's most famous phrases about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few, or the one. Just terrible.
Gone by Min Kym is the heart-breaking story of how her violin was taken from her, destroying her promising career which started as a musical prodigy. Although you could say it's a bit of a first world problem, people are not dying or in hardhip, it's hard reading at times, and though the author doesn't go this far it's hard not to pin her downfall on her appalling boyfriend and his needy, passive-aggressive behaviour toward her.
Doctor Who: Survival by Rona Munro is the Target adaptation of the story which closed off the original run of the TV show, back when I was first watching it as a boy. Those last two seasons are a hugely underrated period in Who, often unfairly maligned as the show going off the rails in the 1980s where it was actually creatively at something of a peak, and in Survival can be seen the seeds of the show as it returned 16 years later, though it's also more daring in its subtext and political commentary than modern Who. All of which would have been lost on me as a primary-school-age boy back then, but stands out as stark and clever and bitingly weird now.
Talking of the weirdness of British politics, Haven’t You Heard? by Marie Le Conte is nominally about parliamentary gossip but doubles a great introduction to how the UK government works. It's also funny, and full of great anecdotes.
I've found all of mathematician Eugenia Cheng's books so far to be enlightenting, engaging introductions to potentially complex topics. The Art of Logic continues this tradition and expands it by demonstrating logical principles using socially conscious examples, by extension impliying that social justice is... logical. Cheng would make a much better writer of Star Trek than nominal Trek fan Diane Carey.
Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg (trans. Jenny McPhee) is a warm and engaging portrait of her family and social circle set starkly against the rise of fascism in pre-war Italy and the post-war consequences. It's a compelling read, and feels frighteningly relevant at times.
Also frighteningly - terrifyingly - relevant is No One is Too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg. It's a small collection of her speeches, inveitably a little bit repetitive but the message is so important that it can stand a little repetition. A bit of a downer, I couldn't help but feel we are pretty much doomed.
The obvious question is "was it any different, reading only women?" and the answer is... yes.
It wasn't difficult, by any stretch. My reading pile had plenty of books to choose from already, and if I was in the mood for reading a type of book that I didn't have to hand I had no difficulty finding something to would fit the bill. My record is not terrible on reading women, but it certainly hasn't been proportional and this being so easy to do makes me wonder how much subconscious bias has been influencing my reading choices. I will do better.
With one notable exception is was all good. Earthsea I would class as the best fantasy fiction I have read. Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey is now my favourite. A number of these books were very funny - I've never subscribed to the idea that women don't do funny as well as men, but if I had then that would have been smashed here.
There was probably also more righteous anger, and treatment of social justice issues, here than I probably read in a typical year. Even the Doctor Who story had a sexual subtext and political allegory (though on the flip side, that Star Trek novel was also political. Just in a very stupid way), and the book on Logic, the most abstract of topics, explored concrete social examples.
I'm glad I did it.
- The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
- Educated: A memoir by Tara Westover
- The Celts by Nora Chadwick
- Bookshelf by Lydia Pyne
- Those who leave and those who stay by Elena Ferrante
- Earthsea: The First Four Books by Ursula K. Leguin
- In Montmarte: Picasso, Matisse and Modernism in Paris 1900-1910 by Sue Roe
- The story of the lost child by Elena Ferrante
- Hello world. Hot to be human in the age of the machine by Hannah Fry
- Star Trek - The Next Generation: Nightshade by Laurell K. Hamilton
- How to Come Alive Again: A guide to killing your monsters by Beth Mccoll
- Pure by Rose Cartwright
- Don't Hold My Head Down by Lucy-Anne Holmes
- Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
- The Odyssey by Homer (translated by Emily Wilson)
- Quant by Quant by Mary Quant
- Star Trek: Dreadnought by Diane Carey
- Gone by Min Kym
- Doctor Who: Survival by Rona Munro
- Haven’t You Heard? by Marie Le Conte
- The Art of Logic by Eugenia Cheng
- Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg (translated by Jenny McPhee)
- No One is Too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg