Another year is over. December has been hectic but once we finally reached Christmas (which was lovely, if not quite what we’d planned) I had free time and devoured several books. Also, most of this month’s books have been really good. It’s nice to end the year on a high point.

My top book this month was in fact the last one: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. As always, I watched a lot of films – most of them Christmas-related. My top picks would probably be Single All the Way, The Long Kiss Goodnight and of course Die Hard. Still a great film no matter how many times we rewatch. Oh, and I finally watched the 2019 Little Women directed by Greta Gerwig and I loved it. TV-wise I recommend the French Christmas romcom miniseries Christmas Flow.

I got a beautiful stack of new books for Christmas, which I’ll post about soon, as well as my top reads of 2021. But for now, I hope you have a fabulous 2022. Happy reading!

Books read

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar
In this historical novel, a shopping merchant (Jonah Hancock) and a prostitute (Angelica Neal)’s lives are forever changed when Hancock comes into possession of a strange object that he is told is the body of a mermaid. It’s very entertaining but I can’t quite decide why the title references “Mrs” Hancock as that’s surely a spoiler (Hancock is a widower at the start of the book).

Around the World in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh
The book club at work picked this for our December meeting and I’m so glad I was encouraged to read it. It’s a travel memoir where (almost) all the travel is by train. Speeding from London across Europe to Russia in the first chapter, the bulk of the journey time is spent in Asia, with a hop by plane to North America. I enjoyed Rajesh’s candid assessment of each train and her sense of humour but she was sometimes dismissive of people/places. And I did feel that she skipped a lot of the world – her journey didn’t include any of Africa or Latin America or Oceania. But I’d still recommend this if you’re missing real life travel at the moment.

Fire: the Unexpurgated Diaries 1934–1937 by Anais Nin
Just one of several volumes of Nin’s journals, this feels like an honest soul-baring account of what her life was truly like, and it’s mostly obsessing over men (and occasionally a woman). Sometimes dull, sometimes lyrical, Nin’s life was certainly packed with interesting people and events.

The Curie Society by Heather Einhorn, Adam Staffaroni, Janet Harvey and Sonia Liao
A comic that feels like the first volume of a new series, this follows three young women arriving at university who are recruited by a secret society. The concept is that they use their science knowledge and skills to solve puzzles and fight crime. Which is cheesy but also fun.

The Exodus Incident by Peter Schattschneider
Austrian physicist Schattschneider has written sci-fi stories for years, as well as using sci-fi classics in his teaching. In his latest novel, a near-future detective is investigating a series of murders. The planet is quickly becoming uninhabitable so a project is under way to send a spaceship full of humans to Alpha Centauri, where a planet has been identified for a human colony. These two narratives come together in a thrilling adventure with a lot of physics.

An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine
In this novel Aaliya is a woman living alone in Beirut who every year translates a novel into Arabic. As she gets older, she muses on her life, what books mean to her, the people she has lost and the time she has left. There are a lot of literary references here, as well as the recent history of Lebanon, but what I really enjoyed was the stuff about Aaliya getting older and finally facing her loneliness.

Tracts from the Tracks: the Ridgeway Poems by Mark Griffiths
Tim and I picked up this poetry collection on holiday in Devon several years. They’re all inspired by local walks that Griffiths took but their subjects are more varied than that suggests. Their quality is also varied.

My Epileptic Lurcher by Des Dillon
This is such a strange, funny, sad but also uplifting novel. A young Glaswegian couple move to the seaside and get a dog. They’re struggling for money, all the locals are snobs and then the dog starts having fits. It’s sweary, with sections written in the pseudo babytalk the couple talk to the dog in. I wasn’t sure at first but wound up loving it.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Half-sisters in 18th century Gold Coast begin the two lineages tracked by Gyasi through this saga depicting how slavery and colonialism shaped the histories of Ghana and the USA. One sister was sold into slavery, the other married a slaver. It’s a brilliant way to tell a long, complex tale, devoting two chapters to each generation. Sometimes Gyasi gives us a whole life in a handful of pages, sometimes just a snapshot of a key moment. It’s educational but also highly readable.