January 2025 Review

Doesn’t January drag? I mean really drag. But I got through it and managed to read a grand total of 15 books including two, yes two five-star reads this month.

So here they are:

Books Read

Art Deco Britain: Buildings Of The Interwar Years – Elain Harwood – Architecture – 3.5

Mountain Modern: Contemporary Homes in High Places – Dominic Bradbury – Architecture – 4

How Bad Are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything – Mike Berners-Lee – Environmental – 4

The Twelve Days of Murder – Andreina Cordani – Fiction – 2.5

Polar Horrors: Strange Tales from the World’s Ends – Ed. John Miller – Fiction – 3.5

Growing Old Disgracefully – Silvey-Jex – Humour – 2

The Stirrings: A Memoir In Northern Time – Catherine Taylor – Memoir – 4

While the Earth Holds its Breath: Embracing The Winter Season – Helen Moat – Natural History – 4

The Flitting – Ben Masters – Natural History – 4.5

The Valleys – Anthony Stokes – Photography – 3.5

milk and honey – Rupi Kaur – Poetry – 3

To Obama: With Love, Joy, Anger, and Hope – Jeanne Marie Laskas – Politics – 4

Slow Trains To Istanbul – Tom Chesshyre – Travel – 4.5

 

Book(s) Of The Month

Iconicon: A Journey Around The Landmark Buildings Of Contemporary Britain – John Grindrod – Architecture – 5

A Quiet Evening – Norman Lewis – Travel – 5

 

 

Top Genres

Architecture – 3

Travel – 2

Fiction – 2

Natural History – 2

Environmental – 1

 

Top Publishers

I read 15 books from 15 separate publishers in January, so I thought I’d put them all in:

Andrew McMeel Publishing – 1

Batsford – 1

Bloomsbury – 1

Bonnier Books – 1

Books by Boxer – 1

British Library Publishing – 1

Eland – 1

Faber & Faber – 1

Granta – 1

Profile Books – 1

Saraband – 1

Seren Press – 1

Summersdale – 1

Thames & Hudson – 1

W&N – 1

 

Review Copies Received

Seascapes: Notes From A Changing Coastline – Matthew Yeomans

Your Journey Your Way: The Recovery Guide to Mental Health – Horatio Clare

Weird Sisters: Tales from the Queens of the Pulp Era – Mike Ashley (Ed)

To Have And To Hold – Sophie Pavelle

 

Library Books Checked Out

None this month! Though I have two waiting to collect

 

Books Bought

As I have said elsewhere, I am trying to buy fewer books. So I will total the number of books that enter my house and those that leave permanently. These are the figures for January:

January Books in: 20

January Books out: 27 (The books leaving the house were sold, returned to the library or passed on to friends or charity. I am aiming for this number to be higher than the one above!!!)

In total, I have bought 20. Some of these were for selling on. I kept these eight below.

Jackdaw Cake – Norman Lewis

The Coast of Incense – Freya Stark

Gifts of Gravity and Light: A Nature Almanac for the Twenty-first Century – Anita Roy & Pippa Marland (Ed)

The Slow Road to Tehran: A Revelatory Bike Ride Through Europe And The Middle East – Rebecca Lowe

The Conspiracy Tourist: Travels Through a Strange World – Dom Joly

The Silmarillion – J.R.R. Tolkien

Island Of The Colour Blind And Cycad Island – Oliver Sacks

A Glimpse of Eternal Snows: A Journey of Love and Loss in the Himalayas – Jane Wilson-Howarth

 

So are there any from that list that you have read, or now seeing them, now want to read? Let me know in the comments below.

 

February 2025 TBR

After what seems like half a lifetime,  we have finally reached February. So it must be time for another TBR. And here it is.  I didn’t get to as many of the books planned in January because of library reservations that were requested on some of the books I had out so it is a bit longer than I had been planning to do. This is partly because I am trying to clear some of the books that I have in the house. This could take a while…

 

Daily Books

A Tree A Day – Amy-Jane Beer

An Insect a Day: Bees, Bugs, And Pollinators For Every Day Of The Year – Dominic Couzens & Gail Ashton

 

Standford Shortlist

Wild Twin – Jeff Young

The Place of Tides – James Rebanks

On the Shadow Tracks: A Journey through Occupied Myanmar – Clare Hammond

 

Review Books

Handbook of Mammals of Madagascar Hardcover – Nick Garbutt

From Utmost East to Utmost West: My Life Of Exploration And Adventure – John Blashford-Snell

21 Lessons for the 21st Century – Yuval Noah Harari

Your Journey Your Way: The Recovery Guide to Mental Health – Horatio Clare

Doomed Romances: Strange Tales of Uncanny Love – Joanne Ella Parsons

On the Narrow Road to the Deep North: Journey into a Lost Japan – Lesley Chan Downer

 

WFMAC

Voyageur: Across the Rocky Mountains in a Birchbark Canoe – Robert Twigger (halfway through this at the moment…)

An Englishman in Patagonia – John Pilkington

 

Themed Reads

This month is London:

This is London: Life and Death in the World City – Ben Judah

London Made Us: A Memoir Of A Shape-Shifting City – Robert Elms

Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now—As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It – Craig Taylor

The Groundwater Diaries: Trials, Tributaries and Tall Stories from Beneath the Streets of London – Tim Bradford

Plus the one I didn’t get to last month:

Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation – Edward Glaeser, David Cutler

 

Clearance

Panoramas of Lost London: Work, Wealth, Poverty & Change – Philip Davies

Dilbert 2.0 – Scott Adams

In England – Don McCullen

Before the Coffee Gets Cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Geoffrey Trousselot (Tr)

 

Library

The Story of Silbury Hill – Jim Leary & David Field

Weathering – Ruth Allen

Here Comes the Fun: A Year of Making Merry – Ben Aiken

Birdgirl: Discovering the Power of Our Natural World – Mya-Rose Craig

 

Bookclub

Secrets Of Flowers – Sally Page

 

Poetry

the sun and her flowers – Rupi Kaur

Are there any from the list above that you’ve read or like the look of? Let me know in the comments below

Bloom by Ruth Kassinger

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

The first thing that came to mind when I saw that this book was about algae, was algae blooms, (the clue is very much in the title). These are happening much more frequently now, caused by the excess runoff from farmland which goes into rivers and then the sea, where the resulting growth can cause horrendous problems with life in the area affected.

But algae are so much more than that. To begin with, none of us would be here without algae. They converted the poisonous atmosphere of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, hydrogen and other gasses into oxygen. It took a couple of billion years, mind, but gave us an atmosphere we can breathe and equally importantly, a protective ozone layer.

That is simplifying it though. The first chapters of the book describe in detail the hell that the planet was at the time to a place where life stood a chance of surviving. All from these tiny pieces of slime. It is a wonder. Not only can we credit slime with giving life a chance to flourish on our planet initially, but it is still helping life exist here still. Algae are everywhere, and I do mean everywhere…

In some weird symbiosis with fungi, they make a new species called lichens, which can be much more than those grey patches that you find on walls. Seaweeds are algae and can be found in sushi, and ice cream as well as being a food in their own right, fat choi and laverbread are two examples. It has widespread uses around the world from fertilizers to animal fodder, it is used as a thickener and another algae is starting to be used as a replacement for oils as it can be used for the production of ethanol and other fuels.

I thought that this was a fascinating book. It opened my eyes to the critical role that algae have played in making our world habitable. It has great benefits, but too much of it can be a bad thing. Kassinger is an engaging writer and comes across as having endless enthusiasm about her subject. If you want to know more than you ever though possible abut algae then start here.

Empordan Scafarlata by Adrià Pujol Cruells Tr. Douglas Suttle

3.5 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Normally memoirs follow a timeline of events in a person’s life, with some flashbacks to add context. However, this memoir is unlike any other memoir that I have read before. Instead, it is a collection of figments and fragments of memories written in short essays, poems and snippets of prose.

He recalls the memories from his childhood when his mother separated from his father. He moved in with his new stepdad and hated being there to begin with, but slowly he got used to it. There are stories of love lost and gained as he heads off with an on / off girlfriend to the place where every young couple is making out; the beach. He soon discovers that sand gets everywhere…

Forest fires are a common occurrence in the region. He notes that people either stop and stare at the flames in fear or are captivated by them. There are those that are moved to warn others and pass buckets of water in the vain hope of extinguishing the flames. I didn’t know this, but it is an ancient country; there are dolmens in the hills from thousands of years ago. They are near pine forests where men occasionally go to kill themselves.

There are some real gems in here. I particularly like what he did when taking photos of tourists who were full of self-entitlement. However, as much as this book is about him and his experiences, he manages to capture the essence of Catalonia in this short book. It is a region of Europe that isn’t quite Spain and isn’t quite France but has its own strong identity in the region that crosses the border. I liked the mix of pieces in here, the longer essays work well with the shorter prose. I did feel that I didn’t get to know the author that well in this book, I only got to see glimpses of him in this kaleidoscope of his life. Well worth reading though

 

Three Favourite Essays

A Woman’s Death

Scriptorium

A Rough Calligram of a Silhouette of my Town

The Possibility of Life by Jamie Green

3.5 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

I laugh every time I see the Calvin & Hobbs cartoon above as it tells me two truths about our endless fascination with the possibility of life somewhere in this vast universe;

1. Given a lot of the really dumb things that we do as a species so are we actually that intelligent?
2. If there were some super bright entity that is capable of interstellar travel, why would it be interested in the likes of us?

It was something that Douglas Adams alluded to when one lot of aliens turned up but wanted to take the whales…

This fascination of life being out there somewhere has captivated scientists for hundreds of years, all the way back to Galileo and Copernicus. But as scientific understanding grew of how life appeared on this planet and the way it fluctuates from masses of plants, insects and large creatures to extinctions and back again with a different type of life adapts to the changed conditions.

The discovery of other planets orbiting stars in the ‘Goldilocks zone’ that might, just might, have the right conditions based on what we know about the Earth has driven research, intensive scanning of the heavens and intense speculation of what might or might not be out there.

We have not found any evidence of life outside this small blue dot that we’re on. However, there is speculation still that some of the moons around the planets in the solar system might. As you’d expect, the question as to whether there is life elsewhere doesn’t really get answered in this book, but that is not the whole point of it, this is an exploration of what they might be like if we were to come across another species.

Green has split the book up into six chapters, Origins, Planets, Animals, People, Technology and Contact, and in each draws from science and science fiction as to the things that life is capable of creating. I have always had an interest in it since I downloaded the SETI program many years ago. Strangely enough, I didn’t find any signals from any aliens when running that software, but the possibility that I might keep me interested for a long time. I thought that this was a very accessible book on a subject that I had not read much about before. Worth reading if you have an interest in the possibilities of life.

My Books of 2024

Another year passes and another list of my favourite books from the past twelve months. I didn’t have quite as many five-star reads as normal, either from the 150 books I read. First up are some honourable mentions that I gave 4.5 stars to:

Local: A Search for Nearby Nature and Wildness – Alastair Humphreys

Spring Rain – Marc Hamer

Sunken Lands: A Journey Through Flooded Kingdoms and Lost Worlds – Gareth E. Rees

Sea of Tranquility – Emily St. John Mandel

The New Wild – Fred Pearce

Black Ghosts – Noo Saro-Wiwi

Cull of the Wild: Killing in the Name of Conservation – Hugh Warwick

The Lost Paths: A History Of How We Walk From Here To There – Jack Cornish

Late Light: Finding Home In The West Country – Michael Malay

The Rosewater Redemption – Tade Thompson

 

And here are my seven five-star reads.

Wild Service: Why Nature Needs You– Nick Hayes (Ed) – 5

In May 2022, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences released a paper that measured fourteen European countries on three factors: biodiversity, wellbeing, and nature connectedness. Britain came last in every single category. The findings are clear. We are suffering, and nature is too.

Enter ‘Wild Service’ – a visionary concept crafted by the pioneers of the Right to Roam campaign, which argues that humanity’s loss and nature’s need are two sides of the same story. Blending science, nature writing and indigenous philosophy, this groundbreaking book calls for mass reconnection to the land and a commitment to its restoration.

In ,i>Wild Service we meet Britain’s new nature defenders: an anarchic cast of guerilla guardians who neither own the places they protect, nor the permission to restore them. Still, they’re doing it anyway. This book is a celebration of their spirit and a call for you to join. So, whether you live in the countryside or the city, want to protect your local river or save our native flora, this is your invitation to rediscover the power in participation – the sacred in your service.

 

The Notebook: A History Of Thinking On Paper – Ronald Allen – 5

The first history of the notebook, a simple invention that changed the way the world thinks.

We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did this simple invention come from? How did they revolutionise our lives, and why are they such powerful tools for creativity? And how can using a notebook help you change the way you think?

In this wide-ranging story, Roland Allen reveals all the answers. Ranging from the bustling markets of medieval Florence to the quiet studies of our greatest thinkers, he follows a trail of dazzling ideas, revealing how the notebook became our most dependable and versatile tool for creative thinking. He tells the notebook stories of artists like Leonardo and Frida Kahlo, scientists from Isaac Newton to Marie Curie, and writers from Chaucer to Henry James. We watch Darwin developing his theory of evolution in tiny pocketbooks, see Agatha Christie plotting a hundred murders in scrappy exercise books, and learn how Bruce Chatwin unwittingly inspired the creation of the Moleskine.

On the way we meet a host of cooks, kings, sailors, fishermen, musicians, engineers, politicians, adventurers and mathematicians, who all used their notebooks as a space for thinking and to shape the modern world.

In an age of AI and digital overload, the humble notebook is more relevant than ever.

Allen shows how bullet points can combat ADHD, journals can ease PTSD, and patient diaries soften the trauma of reawakening from coma. The everyday act of moving a pen across paper can have profound consequences, changing the way we think and making us more creative, more productive — and happier.

 

Tender Maps: Travels in Search of the Emotions of Place – Alice Maddicott – 5

Some travellers are driven by the need to scale a natural wonder, or to see a city’s sights or a place of history. Others, like Alice Maddicott, travel in search of a particular scene, feeling or atmosphere, often inspired by music, literature and art. Taking us deep into our emotional and creative responses to place, this extraordinary book explores the author’s relentless travelling, from the heat of Sicily to the mountains of Japan. With her uniquely lyrical approach to psycho-geography, Maddicott explores the relationship with landscape that is the very essence of human creativity.

From seventeenth-century salons of Paris to the underground culture and crumbling balconies of modern Tbilisi, through writers as diverse as Italo Calvino and L.M. Montgomery and artists like Ana Mendieta and eighteenth-century girls embroidering their lives, Tender Maps is a beautifully evocative book of travel, culture and imagination that transports readers in time and place.

 

Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain – Corrine Fowler – 5

The countryside is cherished by many Britons. There is a depth of feeling about rural places, the moors and lochs, valleys and mountains, cottages and country houses. Yet the British countryside, so integral to our national identity, is rarely seen as having anything to do with British colonialism. Where the countryside is celebrated, histories of empire are forgotten. In Our Island Stories, historian Corinne Fowler brings rural life and colonial rule together with transformative results. Through ten country walks, roaming the island with varied companions, Fowler combines local and global history, connecting the Cotswolds to Calcutta, Dolgellau to Virginia, and Grasmere to Canton.

Empire transformed rural lives for better and for whether in Welsh sheep farms or Cornish copper mines, it offered both opportunity and exploitation. Fowler shows how the booming profits of overseas colonial activities, and the select few who benefited, directly contributed to enclosure, land clearances and dispossession. These histories, usually considered separately, continue to shape lives across Britain today.

To give an honest account, to offer both affection and criticism, is a matter of we should not knowingly tell half a history. This new knowledge of our island stories, once gained, can only deepen Britons’ relationship with their beloved landscape.

 

The Heart Of The Woods – Wyl Menmuir – 5

Our lives are intimately intertwined with those of the trees and woodlands around us. For centuries, trees have shaped us and we have shaped them. They have have determined the tools we use, the boats we build, the stories we tell about the world and about ourselves, the songs we sing, and some of our most important rituals.

In The Heart of The Woods, the companion piece to his Roger Deakin Award winning The Draw of The Sea, Wyl Menmuir travels the length and breadth of Britain and Ireland to meet the stories of the people who plant trees, the ecologists who study them, those who shape beautiful objects and tools from from wood, and those who use it to help others.

In heading deep into the woods, Wyl explores what we get out of spending time around trees, the ways in which our relationship with them has changed over time, and the ways in which our future is interconnected with theirs.

Written in close collaboration with makers, crafters, bodgers, and woodsmen and women in order to understand better the woods they know so well, the joys and frustrations of working with a living material, and the stories of their craft and skills, this is also a book about legacies – those a parent leaves to a child, the legacies left by specific trees in specific places, and those a society leaves to the next generation. The Heart of The Woods will delight anyone who enjoys walking among the trees, and anyone who, when lost, has found themselves in the woods.

 

Seaglass: Essays, Moments and Reflections – Kathryn Tann – 5

On a windswept stretch of the Durham coastline, there’s treasure to be jewels of shining sea glass, swept in by the tide after years at sea. Gathered together in a jar on the windowsill, each seaworn pebble is a moment in time, a glinting archive of unknowable lives.

Seaglass is a collection of such moments; essays blending creative non-fiction with nature writing and memoir, and portraying with powerful observation and moving honesty the journey of a young woman navigating modern adulthood. The stories draw a map of Kathryn’s life, from Manchester to the South Wales coastline and out to the Thousand Islands in Canada’s Saint Lawrence River. Traversing wilderness, natural history, travel and water – rivers, lakes, coastlines and leisure centres – Seaglass explores shared experiences, anxieties, confidence and contentment.

 

The book above was within a sliver of getting my book of the year, and I think that is because she is the closest to the author that did get my book of the year and this is (Which was also my cover of the year for the first time)

Cairn – Kathleen Jamie – 5

Cairn: A marker on open land, a memorial, a viewpoint shared by strangers.

For the last five years poet and author Kathleen Jamie has been turning her attention to a new form of writing: micro-essays, prose poems, notes and fragments. Placed together, like the stones of a wayside cairn, they mark a changing psychic and physical landscape.

The virtuosity of these short pieces is both subtle and deceptive. Jamie’s intent ‘noticing’ of the natural world is suffused with a clear-eyed awareness of all we endanger. She considers the future her children face, while recalling her own childhood and notes the lost innocence in the way we respond to the dramas of nature. With meticulous care she marks the point she has reached, in life and within the cascading crises of our times.

Cairn resonates with a beauty and wisdom that only an artist of Jamie’s calibre could achieve.

2024 Book Stats

I finished 150 books in 2024, lower than 2023 because of ongoing family matters that need some of my attention. I did reach my Good Reads Target again.  Here are my stats for the last year’s reading. He is a word cloud from all the titles:

My total pages read was 43081  (5990 pages less than last year!) and my monthly average of books was 12.5. This broke down into these monthly totals:

January – 13
February – 12
March – 15
April – 12
May – 12
June – 14
July – 13
August – 13
September – 14
October – 10
November – 11
December – 11

 

Author Splits

Male – 89
Female – 61
Person of Colour – 14 (My target was 12)

Sources

Review – 38

Library – 47

Own – 63

 

Genre

Non-Fiction – 94

Fiction – 44

Poetry – 12

 

Random Stats

Longest Book: Seveneves – Neal Stephenson – 869 pages

Shortest Book: The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You – Paul Farley – 49 pages

The total cost of the books read was £2072.36

 

Most Read Author

My most read author was Kate Mosse; I read three of her books

 

Stars Awarded

5 Stars – 7
4.5 Stars – 11
4 Stars – 52
3.5 Stars – 33
3 Stars – 30
2.5 Stars – 13
2 Stars – 5
1.5 Stars-  0
1 Star – 0

 

Genres

I use a spreadsheet to keep a note of the types and genres of books that I read. These are detailed below:

 

Fiction 34
Travel 30
Natural History 18
Poetry 12
Memoir 9
Science Fiction 8
Science 5
Miscellaneous 4
History 4
Food & Drink 3
Humour 3
Gardening 2
Weather 2
Fantasy 2
Politics 2
Business 1
Mental Health 1
Woodlands 1
Landscape 1
Architecture 1
Environmental 1
Art 1
Photography 1
Writing 1
Biography 1
Social History 1
Information Society 1

 

Publishers

These are the number of books read by each publisher. Amazingly I read books from 88 different publishers and only ten less than last year. Five of them were independent publishers compared to four in 2023 so that is an improvement

Bloomsbury 8
Elliott & Thompson 5
Eland 5
Vintage 5
Summersdale 4
Faber & Faber 4
Picador 4
Canongate 4
Penguin Classics 3
Orbit 3
Jonathan Cape 3
Batsford Books 3
Saraband 3
Penguin 3
Orion 3
British Library Publishing 2
Abacus 2
Calon Books 2
Sphere 2
Michael Joseph 2
Sort Of Books 2
September Publishing 2
Unbound 2
4th Estate 2
Harper North 2
Sandstone Press 2
Arrow 2
Salt 2
Headline 2
Little Toller 2
Allen Lane 2
Icon Books 2
Bradt 1
Harper Collins 1
Countryside Books 1
Influx Press 1
Ten Speed Press 1
Corsair 1
Black Swan 1
Viking 1
Fum d’Estampa 1
Bantam 1
Greystone 1
Kelsay Books 1
Methuen 1
West Virginia University Press 1
Sourcebooks 1
Frances Lincoln 1
Shire Press 1
W&N 1
Hamish Hamilton 1
Michael O’Mara 1
Cornerstone 1
Thames & Hudson 1
Eye Books 1
Gollancz 1
Aurum Books 1
Penned In The Margins 1
Harvill Secker 1
Polygon 1
Granta 1
Sceptre 1
Octopus Books 1
Lydstep Lettuce 1
Profile Books 1
Tramp Press 1
Anvil 1
The Viking Press 1
Snake River Press 1
Hutchinson Heinemann 1
Manilla Press 1
William Collins 1
Two Roads 1
Fleet 1
Cranthorpe Millner 1
Arc Publications 1
The Borough Press 1
Simon & Schuster 1
Torva 1
Virago 1
Hachette Books Ireland 1
Dead Ink 1
Ward Wood Publishing 1
Unicorn 1
Carcanet 1
Foundry Editions 1
Head Of Zeus 1
Doubleday 1

 

So How Did My 2024 Reading Intentions Go?

Blogging

As I have said before, I have always tended to think of myself as a reader who blogs rather than just a book blogger. This is shaping how I blogged last year and even more so in this coming year. I will be scaling back the number of books that I will be reading and reviewing this year because of a mini-family crisis that needs some of my attention.

I am still here and still blogging. I am reviewing a bit less than before, but I am endeavouring to get through my review backlist. However, that might take some time… I have a series of blog posts about bookish related this for this year ( I was aiming for one a month, but only have eight ideas at the moment!)

 

Books

Review Books

I am forever grateful for every single review copy that I receive. I am making a concerted plan to work through all of the review books that I have been sent and much reducing the number that I request still further. That said, I would be delighted to receive some of the books that were on my anticipated list

I feel that the advent of TikToc means that some of what I am doing and reading will be seen as unfashionable and not hip. I don’t really mind; I am going to keep reading the books I want to do and helping the small publishers that still send me books by supporting them where ever I can.

 

My Own Books

I have been cataloguing the books that I have in the past few months, and have found several duplicates, some of which I have passed on and others will be given away on social media channels occasionally. I have passed 2000 books so far and have a growing list of books that I want to read and pass on.

I have been cataloging my books this year and have passed on the last of the duplicate this week. I have a lot to read that I don’t want to keep so there will be more being passed on to others.

 

Library Books

I have managed to reduce the number of books that I have out from the library and on one card even got down to half full! But I know that I can do better on this and I am aiming to have only one shelf of library books. I am not that far off achieving this.

I have only got 33 books out across both cards now so it is coming down steadily. Won’t stop using the library though, they are still a key resource in this day and age.

 

Reading Plans

I am fairly happy with the mix of books that I am reading at the moment. I feel that I got the balance right between travel writing and natural history books last year, but as these make up the bulk of my collection, then I want to read more of them. I also want to read more science fiction and fiction, because, hey, why not? I also have some other intentions detailed below, that whilst not set in stone, I would like to achieve.

Still fairly happy with this mix.

 

Female Authors

I am going to keep my target of reading women authors at 40% for 2024.

And I achieved it!

 

BAME Authors

I had my target set to 12 last year and I am going to set the same again for 2024. Slowly more BAME authors are being commissioned in the genres that I like reading, but it is sadly too few still.

I read 14 in the end. I have changed from BAME to P of C, though I may revise that to ethnic minority as that seems to be what the official guidance now recommends. Any thoughts?

 

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Aiming again to average at least one a month for this. Science fiction is good for expanding the mind and as Terry Pratchett says: Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.

Didn’t quite make this as I had only read 10 by the end of the year.

 

Fiction

I don’t read or buy a huge amount of fiction, but I do have a lot around that I have acquired or been sent. This year I am going to make an effort to read at least one fiction book a month. I probably won’t review them, but it depends on the book.

My target was 12 for 2024, but read 34 in the end!

 

Poetry

I am aiming to read one poetry book a month this year.

Met this target too.

 

Photobooks

I have bought an awful lot of art & photobooks in the past two years and I want to read some of these books next year. Aiming to read at least around six of these in 2024.

Er. One. Oops!

 

Literary Awards

Last year I was a bit better at reading some of the shortlisted books from my favourite prizes (as usual). I did manage to read some from the minor prizes too, but still have a long list of books that I haven’t quite got to read yet… The same list of prizes from last year:

Wainwright

Stanford

Royal Society

Baillie Gifford

Arthur C Clarke

I would like to read some of the winners from other prizes too, including:

The Republic Of Consciousness Prize

Rathbones Folio Prize

Women’s Prize for Fiction

Jhalak Prize

The Portico Prize

I have all bar the winner of the 2024 Dolman travel award books and Read eight of the twelve longlisted Wainwright prize. Didn’t really read many outside of those two prizes

 

Challenges

I quite like book challenges. It is a way of finding new books that you might not have come across before to fit a particular brief. It kind of follows my philosophy of reading widely and reading deeply.

The World From My Armchair Challenge

My ongoing challenge is to read a travel book set in or that passes through every country, sea and ocean in the world. I did really badly at this last year as I only read one book (!!!) for the challenge. Aiming to read at least twelve for this and there will be an update on a blog post sometime in February.

Nature Challenge

There is no challenge this year for the Nature group that I am in so I will roll over the books that I didn’t read to this years reading to complete it.

20 Books of Summer

This is run by the blogger, Cathy of 746 books. I normally sign up to read 20 books and will do so again this summer. Last year was the first time I completed it too!

Completed this. In November. Oops!

 

Other Bookish Stuff

Cataloguing Books

I have started cataloguing my books now. I have catalogued five bookcases and have five more to go, plus the piles that are scattered hither and thither around the house. So far I have 2150 books and actual shelf locations for about half of them. In the end, I decided on a spreadsheet rather than using an app. I have found several duplicates and these have been passed on. Around 10% of my collection is signed too, I hadn’t realised that I had so many books scribbled in by the author.

I am still going on this. It was quite eye-opening just how many books I have and have been reliable informed that I have to get rid of some!!

 

Spreadsheets

I wrote about this back in 2023 here. I have now made further refinements and will write another post about these changes later in the year. So far these changes seem to be an improvement on what I have used up until now.

I have refined what I am doing on this and it is working much better, I have the notes to type up soon for a blog post for the part 2.

 

Bookshelves

I wrote a blog post showing all my shelves here. I have drawn up a plan for what genre of books that I want on which shelf, and this will be implemented following me reading a clearing out a fair number of books. There will be a mid-stage post later in the year when I have made significant progress on tiding up!

This might happen. Depends on how tidy I can get them!

 

December 2024 Review

How are we finished with that year already? I was just getting the hang of it. Anyway, here is what I read in December:

 

Books Read

An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: A Personal Journey into the Magic of Rewilding – Eoghan Daltun – 4 Stars

Oaklore – Jules Acton – 4 Stars

Foothold – Pam Zinnemann-Hope – 3 Stars

The Lost Future of Pepperharrow – Natasha Pulley – 2.5 Stars

Cornish Horrors: Tales from the Land’s End – Ed. Joan Passey – 3 Stars

The Masquerades of Spring – Ben Aaronovitch – 3.5 Stars

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics – Tim Marshall – 3.5 Stars

A Year Of Garden Bees & Bugs: 52 stories of intriguing insects – Dominic Couzens & Gail Ashton – 4 Stars

Prisoners of Geography: The Quiz Book: How Much Do You Really Know About the World? – Tim Marshall – 3.5 Stars

Nature Writing for Every Day of the Year – Ed. Jane McMorland Hunter – 3.5 Stars

 

Book(s) Of The Month

The Heart Of The Woods – Wyl Menmuir – 5 Stars

 

Top Genres

Fiction – 34

Travel – 30

Natural History – 18

Poetry – 12

Memoir – 9

Science Fiction – 8

Science – 5

Miscellaneous – 4

History – 4

Food & Drink – 3

 

Top Publishers

Bloomsbury – 8

Elliott & Thompson – 5

Eland – 5

Vintage – 5

Summersdale – 4

Faber & Faber – 4

Picador – 4

Canongate – 4

Penguin Classics – 3

Orbit – 3

 

Review Copies Received

A Quiet Evening – Norman Lewis

The Haunted Vintage – Marjorie Bowen

Summoned to the Séance: Spirit Tales from Beyond the Veil – Emily Vincent

 

Library Books Checked Out

A Tree A Day – Amy-Jane Beer

 

Books Bought

Transit Of Venus: Travels In The Pacific – Julian Evans

The Pharaoh’s Shadow: Travels In Ancient And Modern Egypt – Anthony Sattin

The Undefeated – George Paloczi-Horvath

The Place of Tides – James Rebanks (Signed)

On the Shadow Tracks: A Journey through Occupied Myanmar – Clare Hammond

Stormforce, an Otter’s Tal – David Chaffe (Signed)

Parallel Lines: Or, Journeys on the Railway of Dreams – Ian Marchant

Woodsman: Living In A Wood In The 21st Century – Ben Law

The New English Landscape – Ken Worpole

Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project – Iain Sinclair

A House in Sicily – Daphne Phelps

Blue Highways: A Journey into America – William Least Heat-Moon

Heida – Steinunn Sigurðardóttir

In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor – Deborah Devonshire, Patrick Leigh Fermor & Charlotte Mosley (Ed)

Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld – Paul Kidby

Lot: Travels Through a Limestone Landscape in SouthWest France – Helen Martin

Hermit Of Peking: The Hidden Life Of Sir Edmund Backhouse – Hugh Trevor-Roper

Dawdling Through The Danube – Edward Enfield

 

I have been told that I need to clear some books too 🙁

 

So are there any from that list that you have read, or now seeing them, now want to read? Let me know in the comments below.

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