Author: Kate Gardner

I live in Bristol and I like to read books and share what I thought about them here. I read mostly general or literary fiction, with pretty much every genre making an appearance from time to time. I love to receive comments, whether you've read the same books or not!

Top reads of 2021

It’s a few days late, but I have finally picked my favourite books from the last year. They include the second book I read in 2021 and the last one I read, so it’s a good thing I did wait until the year was well and truly over!

In total I read 67 books last year. Only 8 were in translation and, despite good intentions, only 4 were by African authors, so I will try to improve on those stats this year. That said, 17 were non-fiction, including several that I loved, so working towards that has been positive for me.

But the real question is: which were my favourites? I tried really hard to whittle it down to a top five, but just couldn’t so here are my top six reads of 2021, in no particular order.

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December 2021 reading round-up

Christmas day walk with Tim, my brother Adam and the dog

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!

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Book review: Fire: the Unexpurgated Diaries 1934–1937 by Anaïs Nin

Fire by Anais NinI spent six months reading Fire: the Unexpurgated Diaries 1934–1937 by Anaïs Nin, which is just one volume of Nin’s massive collection of diaries. I kept the chunky tome on my bedside table, reading a few pages at a time. It took me a while (clearly) to get into the flow of it and I am still torn as to whether I want to hunt down the several other books that would complete the story.

This is not volume one (it’s books 48–52 of the hundreds of handwritten diaries Nin left behind). It’s not even the first part of the most famous trilogy of Nin’s diaries, known as A Journal of Love. But a loose note in the front of my smart hardback copy confirms that I ordered this from a secondhand book dealer in 2011, so I clearly wanted this specific volume and can only speculate that I had read a recommendation somewhere. I had read a few collections of Nin’s short stories and one of her novels, so I knew that I liked her writing. And her life is certainly a fascinating one to me.

Nin wrote diaries from a young age and edited her adult diaries for print during her own lifetime. Initially published from 1966 onwards, the first public versions of these books were cut heavily, removing all mention of her husband Hugh Guiler and several other of her more prominent lovers; changing names and details of other characters in her life. After the deaths of both Guiler and Nin, her long-term partner Rupert Pole took on the mammoth task of editing a new set of “unexpurgated” diaries, restoring those deleted details. His preface states “nothing of importance has been deleted”.

Obviously, this being Nin, this book is very sexually explicit (though I suspect that’s not what was cut first time round). It’s also probably worth knowing before you read this that she struggles with depression at times. Her mood swings wildly, and she acknowledges this. She is also unpredictable beyond her state of mental health. At times Nin will do everything she can to keep everyone she loves happy, pushing herself so hard it seems inevitable she will snap. But at other times she seems wilfully cold and cruel, refusing to acknowledge how her actions must affect her beloveds.

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Contemporary African fiction – reviews in brief

Since starting this blog, I have been on a journey to expand my reading horizons. These days, I read very few dead white men – if anything I read a majority of living women. But they’re still mostly white, mostly writing in English. I’ve been gradually increasing the translations in my reading mix, especially contemporary translation, but in the last couple of years I became aware of a glaring gap in my bookshelves: African fiction.

I’ve read some of the big hitters – Chinua Achebe, Ahdaf Soueif – but I have almost certainly read more books by white Europeans about Africa than books by African authors. Which is not great. So I looked up some lists of recommended books and authors. Here are mini reviews of three recent novels by African women that I have enjoyed.

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November 2021 reading round-up

Beckett in one of our local parks

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…

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Book review: Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith

Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith is such a lovely book. Using that word, I fear undersells or even undermines it, but it’s precisely how I feel about it.

Sisters Anthea and Imogen live together in what was their grandparents’ home in Inverness. Their relationship is strained, fractious, as they see the world very differently. Imogen enjoys her job in marketing at Pure, a large corporation that is looking to bottle and sell the local water. She even got Anthea a job there too, but Anthea is less keen. Corporate isn’t really her.

Through the sisters, their lives and love lives, Smith explores Ovid’s Metamorphoses in a modern setting, in particular the story of Iphis and Ianthe. It isn’t hidden away in the subtext; one character explains this story to another, but Smith makes that feel entirely natural. (There are also Shakespeare references that are a little more hidden, but I don’t think the reader who doesn’t spot them will miss anything. No doubt there are allusions I didn’t see too.)

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K-drama review: Squid Game

squid game poster
Seong Gi-hun (centre) is our hapless hero.

This is not the light, fluffy fare I usually review but it was still very much up my street. Squid Game (Netflix 2021) is a brutal, violent horror story that satirises capitalism, in particular how the rich prey on the desperation of the poor.

Usually when I write a K-drama review I can reveal the plot of the first two or three episodes – in fact, it’s often necessary to explain the concept of the show. And they’re not usually the type of shows that can be spoiled by knowing the storyline going in. But Squid Game is both shorter than most K-dramas and, as is common in the horror genre, contains many reveals and plot shenanigans from early on that it would be a shame to know before having watched any of it.

That said, it’s going to be difficult to review it without at least talking about some details from after the middle of episode one. I will try to keep it vague but I may have to write a second spoilery post.

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October 2021 reading round-up

Oh dear, I only finished two books this month and neither was very big. I did have a really bad cold that meant I spent a week mostly watching The Mindy Project and failing to read anything at all. I am currently halfway through three books and gave up on another that I was struggling with. But I was still surprised when I checked Goodreads and saw my October stats.

I did watch the usual quota of films, my top picks being Moxie and Summer of Soul.

Anyway, I’m over the cold and currently away in Devon for a long weekend with Tim, Beckett and our good friend Tushna, so I think things are looking up. Hopefully.

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K-drama review: Crash Landing On You

Ri Jeong-hyeok, Yoon Se-ri, Gu Seung-jun and Seo Dan are the lead characters in Crash Landing On You.

I know, it’s months since I last wrote a K-drama review and I choose now to come back but it’s not about Squid Game? Rest assured, I am watching Squid Game and a write-up will follow soon. But when that dropped I was halfway through this previous smash hit show. Crash Landing On You (TvN/Netflix 2019–2020) could not be more different. And I loved it.

Crash Landing On You has all the classic K-drama ingredients: a lead couple who are clearly destined to fall in love but whose circumstances make it impossible; a huge disparity in wealth; complicated power dynamics including a chaebol family where the father is retiring and choosing which child to name as his heir; nefarious villains who kill and kidnap at will; some really beautiful friendships that withstand tests of their strength; very cheesy romance and slapstick humour that are sometimes at odds with the rest of the plot.

So what makes Crash Landing On You different from other K-dramas? The obvious thing is that much of it is set in North Korea, and many of the lead characters are North Korean (though obviously the actors are South Korean and no filming took place in North Korea). I have never seen North Korea depicted in a K-drama before (possibly because South Korea has very strict rules about depicting North Korea in its media) but this felt like it was treading a fine line where it showed the infrastructure and political system in negative light but the people as for the most part good and generous.

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September 2021 reading round-up

Beckett and Tim in the woods

This has been a good month. The weather’s been beautiful, I read a lot, and today I got my third COVID shot so I am safer for the winter months to come.

My favourite read this month was The Street by Ann Petry, which was a staff recommendation at Stanford’s bookshop in Bristol. This is one of the many reasons why bookshops rule.

As always I’ve watched lots of films this month – including both Kate and Beckett, which are recently released thrillers on Netflix. Kate is the better film, starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead as an assassin in Tokyo. We’re hoping they release a thriller called Tim soon! I also really enjoyed Sylvie’s Love (a 1960s-set romance starring Tessa Thompson) and Sound of Metal (Riz Ahmed as a drummer who loses his hearing).

And having learned from our holiday in August that Beckett is up to walking for a couple of hours now that she’s all grown up, we’ve done a few longer walks lately. It’s nice to explore a little further afield and not just go to our three local parks every day. Though with winter weather and shorter hours of daylight coming soon, we might not have that choice for long. For now we’ll enjoy the autumn colours.

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