A year in books - an addicted reader’s recount

à la Spotify wrapped, I am going to take some time to share my reading journey this year with you. And it has been a curious one. I have probably purchased and received the greatest number of books, met authors and dedicated myself through some incredibly long reads. My Goodreads target of 100 books this year has fallen short by half - tallying at 45 right now. But I am pleased with how religious I’ve been in writing book reviews and noting down my favourite quotes. This simple act of reflection, which I have neglected for many years, has truly changed the depth of connection I form with the text. No longer do I simply read and forget the story. The plot may disappear but figments of ideas and those poetic quotes live within me.

I don’t think we realise how much we are reading on a daily basis - from packaging and advertisements shouting at us, to long WhatsApp messages that we ponder over. If you have bothered to click on this and read about my reading, you probably don’t need to hear this but I just thought to state and remind myself too.

Reading is one of the most powerful and effective things one can do to grow.

There is a strange, magical power to reading. It is a form of escapism, time-travelling and learning that we have done for thousands of years. Considering that it has stuck around for so long, there must be something truly riveting for us humans, don’t you think?

I’m sure people have told you before about how much successful people read. For me, it was solace in the times when I felt most alone. The characters were my friends through a period of my schooling where I didn’t have any otherwise. The heroes were my heroes when I felt no one was there to champion me. In short, reading was healing. And a habit I never lost. Today, it is the satisfaction of the inner child in me.

But there is some wisdom in the connection oft-mentioned between success and reading. I would argue though, that reading doesn’t turn you into a successful person. The act of reading itself develops skills that lead you to be more cognizant, aware and present when you’re not reading. It strengthens skills of empathy, teaches you how to communicate and when you need it, inspires you to charge into (metaphorical) battle. Each of these skills continues to sharpen as you devour more books. And so, how can one not become more successful in what they do?

The plan was to write about my favourite reads and quotes but following my stream of consciousness, it sounds more like an ode to reading till now. Nevertheless, we will return as tangents can curve in non-Euclidean spaces (forgive me for dredging up some math in here).

The writer

I am fascinated by authors, writers, artists. Writing is such a lonely job and the creation of a book is an unnatural obsession - as is the creation of any art. For the journey they go through to furnish us with a book, I admire them so very much. Recently, I had the opportunity to meet the author of Affluence Over Abundance, James Suzman, quite personally. To hear him tell me how he agonised over the word choice and sentence structure of a single line both inspired and scared me. Books are a medium of creativity and each is a work of art. His book is non-fiction and I carried this misconception that they were more scientific than artistic. Yet, the dedication and love poured into the storytelling is consistent across any genre or book-length. A realisation I will cherish.

Poeticism

My tastes have evolved over the years and have gone from mystery and spy books of my teens, and the fantasy world of young adults to much more allegorical and poetic writing. Now, I much prefer standalone yet chunky novels that do justice in their descriptions and capturing of sensuality in simple moments. A really standout author for me this year in this regard was André Aciman. I probably connected on a deeper level as he had a similar third culture kid upbringing - born Italian, brought up in Egypt and studied in America. He also said something quite perfect in an interview: “I am a failed poet and so a great author”. This is why I highlight so much of his books. This year, I read his Harvard Square, Enigma Variations and currently nibbling away at his collection of essays, Alibis.

An obsession with authors

When I discover and like an author, I often end up reading their canon. This is a habit I have had from a young age but never really reflected on it too deeply. But even at a young age, I devoured Sherlock Holmes in a collected edition across 2 volumes and almost 2000 pages of fine print. Similarly, I attacked Conn Iggulden's historical fiction, the fantasy world of J. K. Rowling or the mythological ones that Dan Brown writes about. I am not very good at pacing myself and often end up reading everything an author has written in quick succession. Donna Tartt is the only one I have consciously stopped myself because she takes 10 years to write a single book. Truly marvellous books and I truly believe she justifies that timeline. This year, some of my obsessions have been Amor Towles (Rules of Civility, A Gentleman in Moscow, The Lincoln Highway) and William Boyd (Any Human Heart, Brazzaville Beach, A Good Man in Africa). A philosophical question I want to leave you: do we enjoy each next book because it continues to satisfy us or is there a significant influence and unconscious bias of past emotions and joy in reading an earlier book of theirs?

Translated works

This is a new space and probably my most exciting one as it unlocks yet another world of writing. My favourite part of a translated work is how, even though you are reading it in the same language as native books, there is a hint of something which immediately tells you that it has come from another language. Sometimes it's the stylistics, the way a character is addressed or even an unnatural word ordering. Your subconscious picks it up and you know that though your read in English, you are in a completely different culture. Anxious People and A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman are good examples of this, bringing that very direct and deep disdain of small talk of the Swedes. Its dry humour is one that left me laughing late at night with all the lights out - slightly strange. Another great work translated from Spanish was The Savage Detective by Chilean author Roberto Bola?o - a book following an avant-garde poetry movement called the Visceral Realists in Mexico. A truly philosophical and mindboggling yet deeply warming book that I read was The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, originally in Czech. Oh, what a read! I mean, just look at that title - does the not simply foreshadow the poeticism you will be subjected to? Undoubtedly my most thought-provoking read.

The bookshop effect

Selection of books is hard. When I exhaust the canon of an author, I end up back on Goodreads, exploring and seeing what others are up to. One of my favourite things to do (and something which annoys my sister) is to spend ages in a bookshop and talk to the staff there. Book store staff are invariably great readers. I often tell them the aesthetic I’m looking for, my recent reads or authors I enjoy and like a wine connoisseur, they will guide me through the wonderland of a book store, allowing me to sniff or savour sips of new authors. I will walk away with a book in my arm and a few more in my TBR (to be read) list. Some of my favourite bookstore visits this year have been Armchair Books in Edinburgh, The Book Nook in Stirling, The Eagle Bookshop in Bedford, The Book Barge on Regent’s Canal and various charity shops. More than fresh copies, I am most obsessed with a well-worn and well-loved book. The oldest one I have now is from the 20s I found in an Oxfam in Cambridge: A Passage to India by E. M Forster. A strange book that made me nostalgic of a time I was never in yet felt I’d experienced so deeply.

Long ‘uns

This year, I ended up picking some books that required real commitments. Closer to the 1000 page mark, each of them took me almost a month to read. The longest of those was Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. A story relating an alternative future, the incredible attention to detail and the number of stories that lay within that mammoth of a novel - like a set of Russian dolls - simply left me astounded. It was also a strange read as it required you to read each footnote and there were many, many of them. Some so were so long that I’d forget I was not in the main book but actually in an aside. The two others giants were David Mitchells’ Cloud Atlas, Bolano’s The Savage Detective and David James Duncan’s The Brothers K. Truly remarkable and worthwhile reads. My biggest appreciation across all was the sensitivity of authors when shifting perspectives, times and characters and how they reflected with variation in word choice, sentence structure and rhythm of the writing. If it took me weeks to read, I simply cannot imagine how big of a commitment it would have been to write those.

A favourite aesthetic

I fall in love with places and times. Often in a sense of naivety. It probably wasn’t as easy or accessible in older age but I romanticise it and sigh in longing. One of my favourite aesthetics in the last few years has been the 20s and 40s in America, particularly New York City and Hollywood. I was in Daunt Books the other night asking for recommendations of books set in this time and out of the 5 or 6 recommendations, I’d read all but one. So, yes, a little bit obsessed. Some of the books that gave me this respite were Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent, Bryce’s Wild Women and the Blues and Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad.

Quotes of the Year

Bolano’s The Savage Detective

"The visual arts are ultimately incomprehensible. Or they're so comprehensible that nobody, first and foremost myself, will accept the most obvious reading of them."

Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

“the irreconcilable duality of body and soul, that fundamental human experience” and “... the profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, for in this world, everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted.”

Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas

"Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?"

Boyd’s Any Human Heart

"And, closer to, the sharp clarity of sunlight on the bushes and the creeper around the house is perfect: the perfect balance of lead-shadow, leaf-shine and leaf-translucence - absolutely correct, as if worked out by mathematical formulae to provide the ideal visual stimulus."

Wallace’s Infinite Jest

"mathematically uncontrolled but humanly contained, bounded by the talent and imagination of seld and opponent, bent in on itself by the containing boundaries of skill and imagination that brought one player finally down, that kept both from winning, that made it, finally, a game, these boundaries of self"

Aciman’s Enigma Variations

“prefer the illusion of perpetual fasting to the certainty of famine” from

Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent

“There is a strange duality in the human which makes for an ethical paradox”

If you read through this all, thank you for indulging me and if you are keen to exchange and follow reading journeys, add me on on Goodreads here. My reading tastes are so varied and far-flung yet in anything I read, I feel like a spinning figure skater on an empty rink in perpetual motion, dizzyingly full of energy and happiness. If you want to give this skater a break, come talk to me about books and I’ll welcome you with arms wide open.