A better reading month than October, but I still need to pick up the pace if I’m going to hit that arbitrary target I set myself on Goodreads of 65 books. It’s achievable but it might rely quite heavily on the week’s holiday I have for Christmas!

November alternated between miserably cold and wet, and gloriously sunny but still cold. Beckett and I have kept up our weekly run together and our extra long walks every Sunday morning, but we’re spending more of our evenings and weekends curled up on the sofa. Sometimes Tim joins us too and Beckett is in doggy heaven wedging herself between us.

My favourite book this month was Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith but everything I read was great, which is nice. My top films this month were Harriet and Portrait of a Lady on Fire. My favourite new discovery in TV land is Feel Good. From tomorrow my TV and film choices will be decidedly Christmassy, which may lead to a drop in quality. Or maybe not…

Books read

The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another by Ainissa Ramirez
In this non-fiction exploration of technology, materials scientist Ramirez looks at eight inventions from a slightly different perspective. She depicts society before each invention, the various people who contributed along the way, and how society was changed as a result. The conclusions are sometimes hammered home a little too hard but I learned a lot of fascinating facts on topics I thought I already knew pretty well. I have reviewed this book for Physics World.

Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith
In this novella about two adult sisters living together in Inverness, Smith explores Ovid’s Metamorphoses in a modern setting. It’s beautiful, funny, passionate, lyrical…I loved it. I have already bought another of Smith’s books and added two more to my Christmas wishlist.

His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie
In this novel set in Ghana, a young woman is set up with what appears to be a marriage beyond her hopes and moves from her village to a fancy apartment in Accra. But Afi discovers there is a reason her husband’s family was so keen to add her to their ranks, and she must significantly adjust her expectations of both Accra and marriage itself. I enjoyed this book, which explores the patriarchal nature of many traditions without entirely dismissing them.

Black and British: a Forgotten History by David Olusoga
The non-fiction tome accompanying his excellent BBC TV series, this is a very accessible history book as well as an educational one. I learned much that I hadn’t known before, and many more details about things I knew a little about. Olusoga makes a particular point that Britain’s Black history is not just the history of Black people living in Britain; it also has to take into account Britain’s trading and colonial past. I absolutely agree and Olusoga does a great job of covering the hypocrisy of, say, Britain’s anti-slavery crusade after outlawing slavery itself, while still hugely profiting from ongoing slavery. My only tiny criticism would be that Black women are almost invisible in this book. While I acknowledge that the history of Black people in the UK, made up as it was for centuries of soldiers, slaves, traders and diplomats, was heavily skewed male, there must have been more British Black women with interesting stories than the 3 or 4 Olusoga covers.