2020 wasn’t a great year for my blog, with a grand total of 3 posts. Although, bizarrely enough, it was better than 2019, with its complete radio silence. I don’t know what that says about me, or about anything really.

It wasn’t that I lacked time in which to write –  I was furloughed over the summer, after all. It was purely lack of inclination, at least in part because the sorts of things I tend to blog about seemed kind of frivolous against the backdrop of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID19. The scenery hasn’t really changed that much just because we’ve rolled over into 2021, but my muse seems to have made an appearance along with the new year. I’ve felt a tickle at the back of my mind, and a sort of tension in my fingers that tells me that I am missing typing out my random thoughts for other people to ponder and peruse.1

While I don’t generally do New Year resolutions, I’m not quite as cussed as my husband – who resolutely asserts every year that he is keeping the last annual pledge he made to never make a New Year’s resolution again2

It is probably obvious by now that I have been in quite a reflective mood recently, as I come  upon the end of my Christmas annual leave. This has included – or maybe been inspired by – looking back on my reading for last year. I do, in fact, have a notebook in which I keep track of what I’m reading – start date, finish date, and so on. It sounds a little obsessive – and maybe it is – but it also really interesting. For instance, it allowed me to make this:

These are all the books I read in 2020 – 49 in total. I can’t decide if that is a respectable number or not. When I fondly remember the days when I would read that many books just over a summer, it seems a little paltry. But in 2019 my total was only 33, so maybe 49 not so bad? 3

So let’s look at the 2020 metrics in a bit more detail. 

Of 49 books only 19 were new reads (dark blue borders), while 30 were books I have read at least once before (golden-yellow borders). The re-reads comprise 9 series by 4 different authors, 5 of which series are well established childhood favourites. The others are what I class as ‘new favourites’ that I discovered in the last 5 years or so.4

I conclude that 2020 was a year in which I, like many others, sought comfort and familiarity where I could find it. It makes sense when you consider my description of why I re-read books to a colleague at work. Reading a book that I’ve read before is like having a conversation with an old friend. You might reminisce about the same things each time, retreading old ground – but it is always an enjoyable experience. In a year where I couldn’t see my person-friends, I turned to my book-friends.

There is little point in analysing the genre breakdown of this list. 

It’s fantasy. 

They are all fantasy really, with a hint of magical-realism in period settings. It doesn’t take a genius to come up with a theory for why that might be. Escapism; into worlds and stories in which challenges or adversaries can be overcome. 

Go figure.

The other obvious breakdown is by author gender. Of the 22 authors I read in 2020 only 6 were male, and 16 female. Which actually surprises me a little – it’s definitely not a conscious choice. It might be a consequence of my taste for fantasy and young adult fiction, where women tend to dominate (a personal observation supported by this analysis of ‘New SFF Book’ articles published on https://www.tor.com/tag/fiction-affliction/ in the first half of 2020). I’m not going to dig into any other demographics such as race, sexuality or even nationality though, because I honestly find it creepy to look up details of an authors person or personal life in order to do statistics. Anyway, moving on.

The book cover collage is chronological, reading left to right from the top. It’s interesting to me to consider why I read what when. Obviously it is largely driven by what takes my fancy at the time, but this year in particular there have been other considerations – largely what I had available on my bookshelves (with the odd new release I was excited about thrown in). 

At the beginning of 2020 we were living in rented accommodation, and had a limited number of book shelves. When we move in 2019 I deliberately arranged my books for packing such that my To Be Read Pile (it was at least 5 piles and 2 shelves, to be quite frank) and Old Favourites would be unpacked into what shelf-space we had available in the new flat. The rest were transferred over a few weeks from movers cardboard boxes to high-quality, hermetically-sealed plastic storage crates until such time as we got our own place and were able to organise PROPER book shelves.5

The shelving-limit (combined with the trying to buy a house!)  also led me to attempt the impossible and… try not to buy new books. My brother commented recently that that way madness lies, and it’s true. I didn’t succeed entirely, but was quite good about holding off buying sequels until we have the space. There were 5 of my New Reads that were the first in a series that I would have like to continue, but didn’t have the sequel in my possession. (To those who may be interested, the first volumes in question were ‘Across the Nightingale Floor’, ‘Children of Blood and Bone’, ‘Jade City’, ‘Fire Logic’ and ‘Shadow of the Fox’. ‘Spellslinger’ was also a first-in-series, but  for some reason it didn’t leave me with a particular urge to follow it up.)

Then there were the times I’ve had an urge to read particular things (like the rest of Robin Hobbs Six Duchies books, some Georgette Heyer, all of the Stormlight Archive prior to reading ‘Rythm of War’, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, everything Dorothy Dunnett) but been foiled by the fact that everything is in boxes that I can’t face digging through to find were the exact book I want is hiding. 

It’s been a good thing really – it’s forced be to read more new stuff, which in turn created a list of new books to buy. And isn’t that really all that bookworm wants, when it come down to it?

FootnoteS

  1. Or at least to skim and smile at!
  2. You can see why we are well suited – I’ve always wanted to go to a halloween party dressed up as a person that doesn’t wear costumes for Halloween!
  3. At least it was a square number, which made making the layout of the visualisation nice and easy! 
  4. Does it show that the only things I’ve really written in the last year are experimental write-ups?
  5. Don’t worry, there will definitely be a celebratory blog-post expanding on this concept when we get these in place, hopefully sometime this year!

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