This is my first post in over a year. But if the pandemic hasn't been a good time for my blogging, it's been great for reading: in these eighteen months I've read twenty-three works of fiction and two collections of poetry.
What struck me when I listed them was that the majority of the authors were women, sixteen of the twenty-five in fact. That wasn't a plan, it just somehow turned out that way.
Picking the next book to read is a bit of a convoluted process for me. I research carefully, reading book reviews, recommendations by authors I like, as well as word-of-mouth from others readers I know. I don't want to waste my reading time. And there were several authors whose book I liked so much I decided to read more of their work so they show up several times in my list: Ali Smith, Francis Spufford, and Madeleine Thien.
Of the books I read for the first time, it would be hard to say which one I loved the most. But if I were forced to choose it would be hard not to say Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell, so she's on my 'must read more by her' list.
So here's the list of fiction and poetry I've read since March 12th 2020. There's not one here I didn't enjoy greatly:
Fiction
Snow, by John Banville
Night Boat to Tangier, by Kevin Barry
Quarantine, by Jim Crace
The Hours, by Michael Cunningham
Outline, by Rachel Cusk (my second reading of it)
Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernadine Evaristo
Travellers, by Helon Habila
Sudden Traveller, by Sarah Hall
A Ghost in the Throat, by Doireann ní Ghríofa
The End of the Road is a Cul de Sac, by Louise Kennedy
Dinosaurs on Other Planets, by Danielle McLaughlin
Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell
Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
Autumn, by Ali Smith
Winter, by Ali Smith
Spring, by Ali Smith
Summer, by Ali Smith
Golden Hill, by Francis Spufford
Light Perpetual, by Francis Spufford
Do Not Say We Have Nothing, by Madeleine Thien (my third reading of it)
Dogs at the Perimeter, by Madeleine Thien
Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf (my third or fourth reading of it)
Poetry
A Poet’s Dublin, by Eavan Boland
Call Me Ishmael Tonight, by Agha Shahid Ali
