A Retrospective of Two Years in Books
As the New Year approached, bracketed as it is by my habitual winter break which makes use of the concentrated series of Bank Holidays to achieve a maximal period of relaxation with a minimal expenditure of leave days, my mind wandered to reading (okay, it didn’t have far to go, I grant you) and looking back over the books I’ve read this year. This was followed by the thought that I should make my ‘traditional’ “Year In Books” blog-post. Then I looked back at my blog, and realised that having done it once at the beginning of 2021 does not qualify it as a tradition! For some reason, I had assumed the I had posted something similar at the beginning of 2022 – but apparently not. This made me reflect back on the beginning of last year – and I can’t honestly put my finger on why I didn’t. I’m sure I remember an intention to do so, but it clearly never came to fruition. I think this was at least in part due to my leaning into other hobbies at the time – in truth, I had been doing so for a fair chunk of the previous year. As a result I found that I had read a somewhat paltry seeming 21 books in 2021. That is less than two books a month – and that was terrible!
I think I identify myself so much as a reader that I was embarrassed to have ‘achieved’ so little in the span of a year. It’s not as if I have a reading target, or am being graded or evaluated on how much I read. And yet I felt… disappointed in myself. The grand total of 49 books read in the previous year hung over me – never mind the fact that lockdowns and furlough gave me a huge amount more reading time in 2020 than a full work schedule and actually going out and socialising with people did in 2021! I had also spent a lot of time engaging with stories in different ways – primarily through the medium of streamed D&D games – while working on more creative endeavours, like the library cross-stitch design that my mother in law helped me plan out and was finally underway by the 2021 Christmas break. I had also been running periodic “Call of Cthulhu” games for our D&D group, actually getting to the gym now and then and working damned hard in the lab on a project with tight deadlines and challenging demands. And, as it turns out, there is only one of me…
But what about those 21 books that I did make time to read in 2021? Well, here they are:
They actually skewed more towards new reads (13 out of 21) than re-reads (the remaining 8), which was a change from the previous year. This encompasses 5 new authors, only one of which I would not pick up again. Indeed, one of the reasons there were relatively few new authors in the pack was that some of those writers I did try out kept me wanting more and so I read through a trilogy by Laura Lam and a duology by Elizabeth Lim. The book I was most excited to read was ‘Terciel & Elinor’ by Garth Nix, a prequel to his ‘Abhorsen’ trilogy. The original trilogy consists of ‘Sabriel’, ‘Lirael’ and ‘Abhorsen’ which are wonderful books that I first encountered in my late teens or early 20’s. Indeed it took some effort to keep up with the new reads after finishing ‘Terciel and Elinor’ since it left me with quite the hankering to revisit those old favourites. Instead, I channeled that inspiration into designing a Garth Nix ‘Old Kingdom’ cross-stitch sampler a few months later (I wanted something more portable than the epic library cross-stitch to take with me whenI was travelling). But I digress – this is a book post. The cross-stitch posts will come later.
2022 has a different cast in terms books read; there was a lot more re-reading among these 33 books, and out of the 10 that I hadn’t read before there were only two new (to me) authors represented.
As is all too evident from the image above, this was the year that I re-read ‘The Wheel of Time’ by Robert Jordan (and Brandon Sanderson)… This could have been enough to make me too embarrassed to write a book round up post this year , but I decided to be brave. Why embarrassed, you ask? Well, at this point I should like to submit Item A into evidence: https://atriflebazaar.wordpress.com/2017/10/21/how-i-discovered-a-favourite-author-and-why-i-let-another-go/
This is where I admit that I made a mistake. I did want to read the whole of ‘Wheel of Time’ again, and I thoroughly enjoyed it when I did. Curiously enough, this was inspired by watching the first season of the TV adaptation which came out toward the end of 2021. I quite enjoyed the series, even though the creators made some decisions that I disagree with and the production quality wasn’t quite up to that seen in other fantasy TV shows. When I say decisions that I don’t agree with these are mostly thematic; they decided to make the core set of characters older than they are in the books and as a result advanced one relationship from an ‘almost courting’ stage to a ‘established, unmarried, couple’… in a society that, in the books, places a great deal of import on the institution of marriage. That couple bothered me less than one other, whose love story was accelerated to the point of implied consummation (once again before marriage!) for dramatic effect. I know I sound a bit marriage obsessed here, and I’m not really (fond as I am of my own!), but in the second example this is a fundamental change in both the characters involved, and I can’t help but feel that making everyone we meet free and easy in their sexual relationships in the show is far less tolerant of the range of attitudes to, and experiences of, sex that occur in the real world than the books are. Which is odd, give that the author is often criticised for being ‘regressive’… In a slightly tangential point, the TV adaptation also appears to have completely shed all the exploration of the themes of masculinity and femininity that are present at the core of the books’ lore. I can kind of understand why – these can be volatile topics these days – but it does feel like a betrayal of the source material.
However, as I mentioned before, I actually quite enjoyed the TV series. It had enough of the heart and soul of the original to make me want to go back and re-read the books. And this is where I put make a full confession; I used to have hardcopies of the entire series, but donated them to a charity shop thinking I would never read them again. I am now the somewhat sheepish owner of an entire new set of ‘The Wheel of Time’. To my parents and brother, who were appalled at the idea of me giving aways books, I must say; I was wrong! (In this case! Not in all cases!) The plus side is I now have a nice matching set, instead of a mixture of mismatched paperbacks and hardbacks…
I am currently working through a second series that I was introduced about the same time as ‘Wheel of Time’, that being Stephen Donaldson’s ‘Chronicles of Thomas Covenant’ – there are three Chronicles; the original , the Second and the Last. I have read the original and Second chronicles before, but the Last has sat on my shelves for years unread. I hope to remedy that in 2023. This series is even more controversial that ‘The Wheel of Time’ because the protagonist, Thomas Covenant, is not a good man. He fulfils the role of hero with extreme reluctance, and commits a horrible crime early in the first book. His only saving grace is the he genuinely regrets the harm that he wrought; it does not excuse the act, but it does make the further exploration of his character and ongoing search for some kind of redemption valid, in my eyes at least. I would also argue that while he is not a good man, Thomas Covenant is a great character. He is hugely flawed, and as such a fascinating study in many different facets of humanity. And the world and secondary characters in these books are second to none – I defy anyone not to love the sea-faring, story-loving Giants, or the great horses known as the Ranyhyn.
So, what is on the reading horizon for 2023? I already mentioned that I would like to finally read ‘The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant’, and I have several other books I am keen to read: Guy Gavriel Kay’s ‘All the Seas of the World’ has been sat on my shelf since its release back in 2021; and there are a number of sequels to books I read in 2020, 2021 and 2022 that I now have in my library just waiting for me. Among these are ‘The Atlas Paradox’ by Olivie Blake, ‘Jade War’ by Fonda Lee and ‘Earth Logic’ by Laurie J. Marks. So hopefully this time next year I can report at least 8 new reads (there are four books in ‘The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant’). Beyond that, who can say? We will just have to … read and find out!
A Trifle Bazaar 