Oh, hi there! Yes, it’s been a year since I’ve posted anything, although I’ve continued sending out the monthly newsletter (check out back issues here). Writing has not been a priority this year. It simmers gently on the back burner, and every once in a while I give it a stir. Sometimes it looks like something’s about to happen, but it just keeps simmering away, and I turn my attention elsewhere.
But I’m here to report on my 2021 in reading. I read 110 books, a little fewer than I did the last few years. I stopped updating my Goodreads account in the fall and have been using StoryGraph instead. (You can be my friend although the social aspects are minimal so far.) I do miss Goodreads but it did prompt me to track some reading stats on my own.
Here are a few of those stats: 94 of the books I read were fiction, 16 nonfiction; 88 written by women, 22 by men; 37 published before 1999, 44 between 2000 and 2019, and 29 in 2020 or 2021. I think that’s a good balance: I read a lot of newly or recently published books, but I’m also getting to the backlog of books I’ve been meaning to read for ages and taking time to reread favourites. Fifteen of the 110 were rereads, notably Persuasion by Jane Austen, The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford, the first five Harry Potter books (read along with the Harry Potter and the Sacred Text podcast), Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym, and two Dorothy L. Sayers books: Busman’s Honeymoon and Thrones, Dominations.
It’s always hard making this list, let alone deciding how many to include. I’m not judging what books are good or expecting that others will enjoy them too. These are the books that gave me the best reading experience, that stuck with me afterwards, that are worth remembering. (Links below mostly go to bookshop.org, where you can choose an independent bookstore to support with your purchase. Only available in the US, UK, and Spain for now.)
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, a Western epic about two former Texas Rangers and their crew driving cattle from the Rio Grande to Montana in the 1870s. The characters are wonderful, their adventures are exciting and horrifying, and the prose rides along at a friendly, steady clip, like a trusty horse. I could hardly stop reading once I started and always looked forward to picking it back up. I’ve continued the series with the first prequel, Dead Man’s Walk.
Mating by Norman Rush is the kind of experience where it’s hard to articulate what’s so great about it. A female anthropology student follows a male anthropologist to a remote village where he has created a sort of matriarchal experiment in the Kalahari desert. There is a lot of talking, a lot of insistence on intimacy, a lot of things that went over my head. It was so good I’ll be reading it again.
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich includes some very recent events although it was published just this fall. It features a version of the author’s bookstore in Minneapolis (and, briefly, the author herself). The second half of the book takes place during the early days of the pandemic and during the George Floyd protests. It’s about ghosts and trauma and identity and books.
In Craft in the Real World, Matthew Salesses shows how the usual method of teaching writing limits the potential of writers. It focuses mostly on the writing workshop specifically, but it’s a refreshing contrast to other writing craft books. It includes some great ideas and exercises to steer the teacher and the writer in productive directions.
Binstead’s Safari by Rachel Ingalls is a wonderful novel about a woman who travels with her husband first to London and then to Africa and is completely transformed, in more ways than one. It’s bizarre and unnerving but funny and engaging too.
Reading Second Place by Rachel Cusk was such a delight, but not at first. I read the first page a few times when it arrived from the library, but couldn’t get into it. Only when faced with the impending due date did I get drawn in, and then I was hooked. (This is a great benefit of library books. I’m more likely to give a book a chance when faced with returning it than when I buy a copy of my own and can read it whenever, which might mean never.)
The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel is her third graphic memoir, this time about her obsession with fitness trends, about the flow state and enlightenment, about her relationships, and about the process of writing. I loved it.
A few other notables: Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney, Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie, The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki, the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers, the Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb, Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry, Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters, and Open Secrets by Alice Munro.
I have no reading goals for 2022 other than to keep doing what I’m doing. Reading whatever feels right, multiple books at a time, returning to favourites when I start feeling stuck. Maybe I’ll read less to make more time for writing, but I hope to make that time in other ways.