Well, that was quite a year. Again. Kind of longing for a return to normality, but I can’t see it happening any time soon. Anyway, you’re hopefully here for the books and these are the favourites that I read during 2021. First up are some honourable mentions that I gave 4.5 stars to:

Fire, Storm & Flood – James Dyke

Fox Fires – Wyl Menmuir

Where – Simon Moreton

Thin Places – Kerri ní Dochartaigh

How To Be Sad – Helen Russell

Skylarks With Rosie – Stephen Moss

Shearwater – Roger Morgan-Grenville

Much Ado About Mothing – James Lowen

Light Rains Sometimes Fall – Lev Parikian

On Gallows Down – Nicola Chester

Springlines – Clare Best and Mary Anne Aytoun-Ellis

The Heeding – Rob Cowen & Nick Hayes

Red Sands – Caroline Eden

Summer In The Islands – Matthew Fort

Slow Trains Around Spain – Tom Chesshyre

Water Ways – Jasper Winn

 

I can now reveal my books of 2021:

First are two books on books. The Book Collectors of Daraya is about people seeking out an existence in the war-torn country of Syria and how they collected books for others to read and find a little bit of inner peace. My second is White Spines; the story of Nicholas Royle and his obsession with collecting the Picador White spined books.

     

I finally finished the Discworld series this year. I had intended on doing it in 2020 but didn’t read these four. They are here because I think that he is a genius, his ability to shine a light on our world and the peculiarities of our society and make us laugh about it are unlikely to be equalled.

   

   

I read several books on London in 2021, but these two were outstanding. They are very different, but each has that special something that makes London such a different city compared to others in the UK.  Budden captures the surreal nature of the place in his book and Chivers shows how the very bedrock the city is built on can be traced if you know where to look.

   

Two of my favourite natural history books this year were The Screaming Sky and the Circling Sky. Charles Foster is obsessed with the swift and he has distilled that into this short volume. Neil Ansell’s book is more wide ranging, but equally well written. He takes us on many journeys into the 1000-year-old landscape that is the New Forest, recalling past trips there when younger. I was lucky enough to spend some time with him there this year too.

   

We live in a biased world and that bias is particularly prevalent when you look at how men and women are treated. Most things are designed for the male mind and body, which means that when women come to use them they are often put into danger. Not only could they hurt themselves, but some of these examples that Criado-Perez uses show how these poorly made product have killed. Eye-opening stuff and an essential read.

My final two books are travel. You didn’t think that I would not have any travel books on this list, did you? First is a book on the extraordinary Island of Madagasgar, written by John Gimlette. It is lavishly illustrated and his prose is top-notch as ever.

 

My final travel book and my book of the year for 2021 is The Bells of Old Tokyo. Anna Sherman has captured a part of Japan that I knew nothing about and her prose is sublime. Just get a copy and read it. A friend call Jeremy who runs Travel Writing World has an interview with her here.

Thank you to those that have read, commented and shared my post all this year. I know that there are not that many of you reading this, but I appreciate every one of you.

 

These are my favourite covers of the books that I have read over the course of 2021. They are in no particular order, but the one at the bottom is my cover of the year. The way I see it, the cover of the book has one job only and that is to be catching or attractive enough to make me want to pause, pick them up and then make me want to read it. In my opinion, all of these covers do that.

     

     

     

 

    

     

     

 

     

 

 

     

     

And my book cover of the year is:

 

 

 

The build-up to Christmas starts in August so by the time it comes around, I am a mix of bored and fed up by it. That said we had a nice quiet Christmas with a couple of family members over and met up with small numbers of other families too. Ate too much, but that kind of goes without saying really. I was only given one book for Christmas, but did get a new bookcase! Anyway this is mostly about my December reads, so here we go. I only read 12 books which I needed to get to the 190 books I needed for my Good Reads challenge, and then started pre-reading for 2022.

The books are a right of mix of types and genres and the first is David Howe’s, Extraction to Extinction which is about the way we have exploited the minerals from the surface of our planet and the impending ecological crises coming from these extractions. Bleak but worth reading.

Possibly the most surreal book that I read this year is Mordew by Alex Pheby. It is about a boy who lives in this magical world that has echoes of Victorian London about it and the story concerns his growing powers over his Lord and master. It is an immersive fantasy story.

A Christmas book, but not the sort that has any mention of tinsel within the covers. Rather these are stories that will give you goosebumps.Ii liked all the stories bar one and whilst it wasn’t scary, it was slightly unnerving!

A subject that is capturing my interest more and more is folklore. This was a library book by two of the contributors of #FolkloreThursday on Twitter and in here they look at folk stories from the rivers and seas around the world. It is not an in-depth study, but a overview.

The Vikings are portrayed as a grim, violent and brutal bunch of reprobates that raped and pillaged their way along the coastlines of Europe. They did do that, but they were also capable of fine art, cultural nuance and were in contact with peoples all over the middle east and even further. Well worth reading.

Most people don’t think about maths again after leaving school, but modern society is built on maths, equations and numbers. Brooks takes a number of concepts that you might or might not have come across and explains their significance to modern life.

I am not a big reader of philosophy but decided to give this a go after being sent it by the publisher. I struggled with some parts of it but found other parts that were absolutely spot on. May need to have another read of this at some point.

The two natural history books that I read this month could not have been any different. The first, Mistletoe Winter is another collection of essays from Roy Dennis about some of his favourite subjects and a reminded of the mess we are making of the environment. To say he is livid would be an understatement. The second is the debut by Nicola Chester. In this memoir, she takes us through her life in the natural world and the political stance that she has taken against the damage being done by various organisations. Compelling reading.

    

The Black Sea is surrounded by a number of countries that have been through or are still going through a significant upheaval. To find out what life was like in these places Jens Mühling circumvented the region and tried to find out what made these people tick. Really enjoyed this and it is a great companion book to Caroline Eden’s Black Sea cook book and travelogue.

I have two books of the month for December and they are the final two books in the Discworld series, Raising Steam & The Shepherds Crown. Needless to say, I loved them. R I P Terry Pratchett, thanks for everything

   

 

Has anyone read any of these? Or are there some now that you now want to? let me know in the comments below

Can someone tell me where 2021 went? How it went so quickly and also why it took sooooo long? I thought that I would be a little more ahead, but I am not. Again…

Suddenly it is TBR time again. You know the drill, he is an unfeasibly large list that I will be picking my books from:

 

Finishing Off (Still!)

Lotharingia – Simon Winder

Sea People- Christina Thompson

On The Marsh – Simon Barnes

Another Fine Mess – Tim Moore

Elephant Complex – John Gimlette

Opened Ground – Seamus Heaney

Thicker Than Water – Cal Flyn

Tall Tales and Wee Stories Billy Connolly

Nests – Susan Ogilvy

A Thing Of Beauty – Peter Fiennes

 

Blog Tours

None this month

 

Review Copies

The Fairy Tellers – Tales Nicholas Jubber

The Cure For Sleep – Tanya Shadrick

Astral Travel – Elizabeth Baines

The Germans and Europe – Peter Millar

Britain Alone – Philip Stephens

We Own This City – Justin Fenton

Spaceworlds –  Ed. Mike Ashley

The Power of Geography – Tim Marshall

Finding the Mother Tree – Suzanne Simard

The Four Horsemen – Emily Mayhew

The Spy who was left out in the Cold – Tim Tate

The Devil You Know – Gwen Adshead & Eileen Horne

Letters from Egypt –  Lucie Duff Gordon

The Sea Is Not Made Of Water – Adam Nicholson

Above the Law – Adrian Bleese

Somebody Else – Charles Nicholl

Scenes from Prehistoric Life – Francis Pryor

The Turkish Embassy Letters – Mary Wortley Montagu

Survival of the City – Edward Glaeser & David Cutler

Wish You Weren’t Here – Gabby Hutchinson Crouch

Black Lion – Sicelo Mbatha

The Babel Message – Keith Kahn-Harris

Biography of a Fly – Jaap Robben

The Heath – Hunter Davies

An English Farmhouse – Geoffrey Grigson

 

Library Books

The White Birch – Tom Jeffreys

Planetfall – Emma Newman

After Atlas – Emma Newman

 

Poetry

Opened Ground – Seamus Heaney

History of Forgetfulness – Shahe Mankerian

 

Challenge Books

Wintering – Katherine May

An English Farmhouse – Geoffrey Grigson

Biography of a Fly – Jaap Robben

Nests – Susan Ogilvy

Thirteen Ways to Smell a Tree – David George Haskell

The Night Lies Bleeding – M.D. Lachlan

Divided – Tim Marshall

The Wonderful Mr Willughby – Tim Birkhead

The House of Islam- Ed Husain

Asian Waters – Humphrey Hawksley

Blue Mind – Wallace J. Nichols

21 Lessons for the 21st Century- Yuval Noah Harari

The Restless Kings- Nick Barratt

To Obama- Jeanne Marie Laskas

What We Have Lost – James Hamilton-Paterson

 

Clearance Books

Our Game –  John Le Carré

The Tailor of Panama – John Le Carré

Year of the Golden Ape – Colin Forbes

Dreaming in Code: – Scott Rosenberg

 

Photo Books

Lost Dorset: The Towns – David Burnett

 

All Year Reads

Word Perfect – Susie Dent

A Poem For Every Night Of The Year – Allie Esiri

 

Er. That’s it. I think…

These are my reading intentions for 2022.

Blogging

I have always tended to think of myself as a reader who blogs rather than just a book blogger. This is partly why not every single book that I read gets a review written for it. And in the past year, there have been occasional moments when I have thought about stopping blogging. There have been various reasons for this, partly it sometimes feels like a job, where I think that reading should be a pleasure, secondly that I am not sure if I am having that much of an impact when I see others who have 10,000 plus followers on their various social media platforms. That said, I have been doing this for five years now (in April 2021 and I missed it) so I am going to keep going.

Review Copies

I am grateful for every single review copy that lands on my doormat. Thank you to all publishers and publicists that keep filling my bookshelves. I am sorry that I can never read them as quickly as I would like, hence why I have quite a big backlog. I am going to try not to ask for too many this year, partly because of space issues, but also because it is not fair on them to send me a book and I take waaaay too long to get around to reading it.

My Own Books

I have a lot of books at home and I mean a lot. Nine bookshelves in total as well as lots of Tsundoku around… I seriously need to make a list of the books that I want to read and pass on to family, friends and donate to the library and start reading them to relieve some of the pressure on my creaking bookshelves. I really need to stop buying books too, but can’t see that happening any time soon… This is something that a fellow blogger, Lisa of Owl Be Sat Reading, (https://owlbesatreading.wordpress.com/) is doing this year, Follow the hashtag #BeatTheBacklog on Twitter to

Library Books

I do have far too many library books out, and I am finding that having a full card means that you don’t get that chance to pick things up at random as there is no room. I would like to get from 100% to around 75% or ideally 50% full on my two library cards

Female and BAME Authors

I have been hovering around the 35% mark of female authors read each year and I am hoping to get to 40% this year. I am aiming to read more by BAME authors too. I have a number at home lined up, but I kept a list from the Observer that I will be picking others from.

Poetry

I didn’t manage to read twenty-four poetry books in 2021 so I am aiming to read eighteen poetry books in 2022. If I read more that will be great. I found a copy of A Poem For Every Night Of The Year in a charity shop and I am aiming to read a poem from that every day too.

Literary Awards

Last year I was a bit rubbish at reading some of the shortlisted books from my favourite prizes (again). I get too distracted by other books! Would like to have read all the books from the past three or four years on both the Stanford and the Wainwright prizesby the end of 2022.
Wainwright
Royal Society
Baillie Gifford
Arthur C Clarke
I would like to read some of the winners from other prizes too, including:
Republic Of Consciousness Prize
Rathbones Folio Prize
Women’s Prize for Fiction
Jhalak Prize
The Portico Prize

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 and about a third of the way through and even though I thought I could complete it in four years, I didn’t. It is not a problem, I am going to keep going with it and if possible I’d like to read another 20 books towards it.

Nature Challenge
I recently joined a nature book group on Facebook and they are setting a challenge for 2022 to read 45 books that meet particular categories or themes! I have a spreadsheet. The scary thing was that I already have 37 books that meet the challenge

Read the Decades Challenge
This is for a group that I kind of still run on Good Reads. At the moment, I haven’t got the mental time and energy to keep it going and the other moderators have to a certain extent dropped by the wayside too. But I do set up a challenge each year for the few members that still participate. All this is, is to read a book from each decade from the 2020s going back as far as you like.

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.

Photobooks

I have bought an awful lot of art & photobooks in the past year (some of which are shockingly valuable) and I want to read some of these books next year. Aiming to read at least six.

Other Bookish Stuff

As I mentioned above, I have a lot of books around the house. Even though I know a lot of what I have read in the past, when I am perusing charity shops and second-hand books shops, I have been known to buy the odd duplicate. Sometimes this is deliberate, it is in better condition or signed etc, etc. Sometimes I do not realise that I already have a copy and then find the earlier purchased copy… So, what I want to do this year is to actually catalogue my books, partly so I know what I have at home, but also, I have an idle curiosity to know just how many books are sharing the house with me. Does anyone use a book cataloguing app that they can recommend?

The main way that I manage my reading is through Good Reads, but as a backup I use spreadsheets. This is mostly for security, so I don’t lose records of all that I have read and want to read. The way I have configured them means I can extract a lot more data than I get from Good Reads. At present I must have around 30 different spreadsheets that all do different things and what I want to do is start to combine them to get down to about five or so. I have always tried to keep the layouts very similar so I can cut and paste between them easily and that is another thing that needs a little bit of tinkering…

I finished 190 books in 2021, the same as 2020 and many other years. I did reach my Good Reads Target again.  Here are my stats for the last years reading.

My total pages read was 50665  and my monthly average of books was 15.8, the same as last year. This broke down into these monthly totals:

January – 17

February – 16

March – 17

April – 17

May – 16

June – 16

July – 18

August – 17

September – 16

October – 15

November – 13

December – 12

 

The split of books read

Male Authors – 124

Female Authors – 66 (35%)

BAME / BIOPC – 2% (5 authors in total)

 

Sources

Review Copies – 112 (last year was 94)

Library Books – 45 (last year was 42)

Own Books– 33 (last year was 54)

 

Split

Non-Fiction – 137 – 72.5%

Fiction – 37 – 19%

Poetry – 16 – 8.5%

 

Random Stats

Longest Book – Behind the Enigma – 823 pages

Shortest Book – The Less Deceived – 32 pages

 

 

Most Read Author

Dervla Murphy – 5 books

 

Stars Awarded:

5 Stars – 13
4.5 Stars – 16
4 Stars – 74
3.5 Stars – 45
3 Stars – 32
2.5 Stars – 8
2 Star – 2
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. There are detailed below:

Natural History	32
Travel	29
Fiction	22
Poetry	16
Fantasy	11
Miscellaneous	8
Science	8
History	8
Memoir	7
Books	6
Technology	5
Food	5
Mental Health	4
Environmental	4
Landscape	3
Science Fiction	3
Social History	2
Business	2
Information Society	1
Archaeology	1
Spying	1
Britain	1
True Crime	1
Economics	1
Maps	1
Politics	1
Conspiracy Theories	1
Maths	1
Folklore	1
Language	1
Architecture	1

Publishers

These are the number of books read by each publisher. The top eight are all independent publishers. Eland were top last year.

Eland	11
Bloomsbury	10
Faber & Faber	9
Elliott & Thompson	8
William Collins	7
Little Toller	6
PIcador	6
Saraband	6
Canongate	5
Head of Zeus	4
Corgi	4
Fum D’Estampa Press	3
September Publishing	3
Pan Macmillan	3
Salt	3
Particular Books	3
Unbound	3
Headline	3
Haus Publishing	3
Sandstone Press	3
Profile Books	3
Octopus Books	2
John Murray	2
Oneworld	2
Liminal 11	2
4th Estate	2
Penguin	2
Jo Fletcher Books	2
Chelsea Green	2
Quirk Books	2
Europa Editions	2
Summersdale	2
Icon Books	2
Indigo Dreams	2
Chatto & Windus	2
Century	1
Duckworth	1
Eland	1
Michael O’Mara	1
Pelagic Publishing	1
Rodrigues Court Press	1
Quadrille	1
Gollancz	1
Wood Wide Works	1
Liliput Press	1
Scribe	1
Leaping Hare Press	1
Trapeze	1
Melville House	1
Salt Publishing	1
Penguin Classics	1
Burro Books	1
Hutchinson	1
Transworld	1
Paper + Ink	1
Virago	1
Quartet Books	1
Dead Ink	1
Hamish Hamilton	1
Bodeian Library	1
White Fox Press	1
Granta	1
Tinder Press	1
Michael O’Mara Books	1
Emma Blas Publishing	1
Orbit	1
Harvill	1
Reaktion Books	1
Two Roads	1
Penteract Press	1
Mudlark	1
Octopus Publishing	1
Jonathan Cape	1
Eye Books	1
Batsford Books	1
Mortimer Books	1
Route Publishing	1
W.W. Norton	1
Brewers	1
Allen Lane	1
Portobello Books	1
Bradt	1
Bodley Head	1
Yale University Press	1
Monoray	1
Galley Beggar Press	1
Exisle Publishing	1
Chroma Editions	1
Sagging Meniscus Press	1

A review of my intention that I laid out last year and how I did underneath it.

My Own Books
Sarah has said again that I have too many books piled up (Tsundoko) around the house. (Note to self, try not to buy so many books). Did manage to read 25 of my own books, but that isn’t enough. That said, I am allowed to get some more bookshelves! So that is a new year project to sort that all of that out and unhaul some books. I am looking forward to having all my Little Toller and Eland books together in one place too!

Partial failure at this. I did buy and immediately fill two new bookshelves. And bought way too many books this year. Again… Ho hum…

Review Copies
According to my spreadsheet, I have 124 outstanding review copies to read. Even though there is a lot of books on the two shelves that I have for them, I’m not sure if this is right as I counted way less than that on the shelf!!! I am grateful for every book I receive through the post from publishers, so thank you to you all. I fully intend to read and review as many of those as possible as soon as I can, but also see the blogging post below.

In total, I read 110 review copies this year and I am proud of that. I still have lots and lots left to read and I am slowly working my way through the backlog and passing them onto the library or others when they have been read. Thank you once again to the publishers who are brave enough to send them on for my thoughts.

Library Books
As I said last year, these places are a precious resource. Sadly, our present government seems hell-bent on eradicating them from our cities, towns and villages. I still have too many library books out, and will still keep getting them out too. The author gets a small amount every time a book of theirs is borrowed and for the reader, most books are free or have a nominal reservation fee. I am fortunate that I have two library cards, and I am going to try not to max each one out…

Still have too many library books out, but I think I need to use them to keep them going. Support your local library

Female and BAME Authors
In 2019, 35% of my reading was by female authors. Had intended to raise that for 2020, but have dropped back to 33%. So will be aiming for 40% in 2021. I want around 5% of my reading to be BAME authors too.

In the end, 34% of the books I read were written by female authors. Less than I wanted so aiming to try and read more in 2022. This may mean that I end up reading more fiction as sadly publishers are slower moving to publish women in some of the genres that I read.
I read books by five BAME authors this past year, which equates to 3% and not the 5% I was aiming for.

Poetry
Last year I managed to read a poetry book each and every month and sometimes read more than one. I like poetry, even though I don’t always get it, so am going to try to read around two books a month in 2020.

In the end, I managed to read 16 poetry books this past year. Less than I wanted to but I am happy with that. I do find poetry difficult to review, it feels like I am back at school again with the teacher getting me to look for meaning which I can’t really see. So I think I am going to change the way that I review poetry next year

Literary Awards
I will be aiming to read all of these again (Next year I might get to the Baillie Gifford list as I didn’t this year)

Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards (I am judging the Adventure Travel next year)
Wainwright
Royal Society
Baillie Gifford
Arthur C Clarke

Failed at this to a certain extent, but have managed to read most of the Wainwright bar five. Same with the Stanford’s prize where I have all the books from the shortlist but still not got to five of them. Have read two from the Baillie Gifford Prize and non from the Arthur C Clarke. 🙁

The World From My Armchair Challenge
Managed to read 13 more books for this long term challenge bringing my total read so far to 65. I have been acquiring books for it though, and have a further 41 books on various bookshelves scattered around the house to read for other countries. I am still looking for travel books (or non-fiction) that are set in or pass through these countries, below. So if you know any, please do let me know.

Antigua and Barbuda
Brunei Darussalam
Capo Verde
Central African Republic
Chad
Dominica
Gambia
Grenada
Kuwait
Micronesia
Persian Gulf
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Sao Tome and Principe
Seychelles
Swaziland
Timor-Leste
Trinidad and Tobago
Uruguay
Balearic Sea
Ligurian Sea
Alboran Sea

I read another eight towards this challenge and this brings my total to 73 now. Still a long way to go but I have decided not to set a deadline on it at all and just keep going.

Discworld
Managed two more from the Discworld series, but these are still to go:

I have finished Discworld!!!!! And it made me sad. Really sad.

Science Fiction
Only read two (yes two) science fiction books this year which I am ashamed of really as I had high hopes of getting more than that read. Aiming to read at least one a month.

I did really poorly at this and only ended up reading three in the end. That said, I did read eleven fantasy books so I am going to take that as a win.

Blogging
I have always been a reader first and foremost and I get immense pleasure from reading and talking about books. It was reading that introduced me to NB magazine and the blog came off the back of that. After a lot of thought, I have decided that I am going to change the way that I am blogging. I am going to still be reading and reviewing on here and Good Reads and so on, but will be drastically reducing the number of review copies that I request as I can’t keep up. I am still happy to receive a book if a publisher or publicist still wishes to send them to me, but will not guarantee when I will get to read it. Instead, I have decided that I will either get the newly released books in 2020 from the library or buy them myself to read as and when I can. I will still take part in Blog Tours, but only a maximum of once a month as I don’t always like reading to a deadline.

I managed to usual 190 for my challenge this year. That seems to be my natural limit for reading, but I could get through more if I spent less time on Twitter. I requested far more books than I could get through as usual… I did buy a lot more new books than usual, partly to support my great local bookshop and partly because I can. More importantly, I am still blogging and when I get told things like this by a publicist then it makes it all worthwhile:

you’re one of the most respected bloggers around… you cover such an interesting range of books too. And your BTR pile is probably even higher than mine!

Thank you to all those that have commented and engaged. Here’s to 2022