Ho, ho, ho

I got to the end of Christmas Eve, but no, why would I want to go home and start the holiday if I could offer to go back to work and sort out the late driver's vans before the weekend collection risked taking all the keys away. Exhausted is one word, and none of its synonyms seem to quite capture the need to sit down and not get up again for quite some time. So, having drunk quite a bit of Bailey's and watched everything from Die Hard to Muppet Christmas Carol I feel utterly unprepared to reflect on the passing year. 'I am past caring' seems to be the expression that has passed my lips most often in recent months, and yet I still found myself searching boxes of unprepared mail for people's Christmas cards and tracking down missing packages. We had a small win when a house full of young men denied all knowledge of a mis-delivered package and Jason had to threaten them with the police, suddenly they managed to find it. But Covid has gone round the office again in the last fortnight so mostly I have spent several weeks just apologising to people that their mail has not arrived. 

Books this year (will have to list them first then debate the favourites):

Trumpet by Jackie Kay

Quicksand and Passing by Nella Larson (recently released as a film too)

The Constant Rabbit by Jasper FForde

The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington

Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden

The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey

Before the Coffee gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

You took the last bus home by Brian Bilston

Stillicide by Cynan Jones

The Air Year by Caroline Bird

On Earth We are Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Familiar Face by Michael Deforge

In Five Years by Rebecca Searle

Luster by Raven Leilani

The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by VE Schwab

The Bass Rock by Evie Wylde

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Squid Squad by Matthew Welton

Blue Ticket by Sophie Mackintosh

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

The Sickness by Alberto Barrera Tyszeka

The Panda Theory by Pascal Garnier

Thirteen Months of Sunrise by Rania Mamoun

Three Women and a Boat by Anne Youngson

The Children act by Ian McEwan

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Assembly by Natasha Brown 

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie

Pandemonium by Andrew Mcmillan

Doppler by Erland Loe

An Island by Karen Jennings

The Hummingbird by Sandro Veronesi

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

Blood Condition by Kayo Chingonye

The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch

Natural Novel by Georgi Gospodinov

Books that I borrowed and returned to the library: Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen (didn't like any of the people enough to pay the fine I would have gotten to keep and finish it) and The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox (very much not in the mood for fantasy, if that is what this was). 

38 books is a step up on last year, and lots of translated fiction and poetry this year. For the second time, I give the fiction winner's title to Anthony Doerr, closely followed by Ocean Vuong, but the best book of the year must be The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, that I loved every page of and which gave me a very necessary lift and renewed positive outlook. Am thinking maybe some reading challenges might push me to read more next year. Or maybe I just need to disable facebook.

Stay safe. Be kind. Read more.