My total number of books read was slightly lower this year than my usual average—according to my record book it was 82, and Goodreads puts it even lower because I didn’t bother to log every single re-read there. Though I suppose I theoretically had more time to read, I very often found it hard to focus, which may also account for the high number of re-reads in this year’s total: about 18.
For the past few years I’ve included the titles that made my top-ten list in my yearly roundup, but this year, I frankly have just enough energy to produce a roundup post at all, so I’m going to keep it fairly short and sweet. My top-ten list is here. If you’re interested in the full list of books I logged on Goodreads, you can see it here; meanwhile as usual, I’ll hit the main highlights in this post.
Because there were so many re-reads, and most of them have appeared in previous years’ roundup or top-ten posts, I won’t go over them exhaustively, but I must mention a couple standouts that I revisited for the first time in years: Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell moved even higher in my estimation on this re-read and cemented a place among my favorite classics; and The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse was so much funnier than I remembered.
New-to-me classics were represented by a couple of plays that I greatly enjoyed: Much Ado About Nothing made Beatrice and Benedick my favorite Shakespeare characters; and Wilhelm Tell by Friedrich von Schiller was surprisingly fun and interesting. (The biggest surprise was probably that the famous apple scene was not the end of the story, as I’d always assumed.) The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton was…well, I’m not sure what it was. It began as brilliant and ended as bewildering, and I think I’ll have to read it again sometime to try and figure out exactly what G.K. was trying to say (if he knew himself).
My nonfiction reading was mostly history, as usual. I read a couple of interesting biographies—Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery by Eric Metaxas, and Crown of Blood: The Deadly Inheritance of Lady Jane Grey by Nicola Tallis. Shotguns and Stagecoaches: The Brave Men Who Rode For Wells Fargo in the Wild West by John Boessenecker and A Cowboy Detective by Charles A. Siringo (okay, okay, Charlie’s subtitle is too long to inflict on you here even in comparison to the rest) carry us over into…
…westerns! The Proud Sheriff by Eugene Manlove Rhodes, Amelia Rankin by Charles O. Locke, Van Patten by B.M. Bower, and A Trooper Galahad by Charles King were all moderately enjoyable. I also read Luke Short for the first time this year and was rather surprised both with the quality of the writing and the historical grounding of the plots. They’re pretty hard-bitten and action-centered, but depend far less on the face-down gun duel than, for instance, does L’Amour. Where the Wind Blows Free and The Whip were the standouts of the few I read.
Mysteries, as I mentioned in my top-ten post, formed a major part of my reading this year. Aside from the ones that made the top-ten list, these were some of the highlights: Dead Man’s Quarry by Ianthe Jerrold, Henrietta Who? by Catherine Aird, S.S. Murder by Q. Patrick, Traitor’s Purse by Margery Allingham. Touch and Go by Patricia Wentworth was fun mystery-suspense, though with a rather fizzly ending; Vultures in the Sky by Todd Downing was a very well-crafted train mystery set in 1930s Mexico, but somewhat more grim and almost morbid than I was in the mood for when I read it.
(While we’re on the subject of mysteries, I have to say that Hide in the Dark by Frances Noyes Hart was probably the biggest disappointment of the year. It has some competition from The Golden Unicorn by Phyllis A. Whitney, but Hart’s was probably worse because I had higher hopes for it!)
One book I meant to review, but never did, was The Burning Chambers by Kate Mosse, a historical novel set during the Huguenot persecutions in 16th-century France. I was excited to read it because I feel like this is a fascinating and under-utilized period for historical fiction; and it was indeed very well-written and vivid in its evocation of the setting. However, the threads of the plot involving the book’s villains featured way more violence and sexual content than I care for (verging on the downright bizarre by the end). Also, while the depiction of Huguenot beliefs was decently accurate, the book of course focuses far more on the political than theological conflict, and can’t quite escape the lack of basic understanding that one always finds in depictions of Christianity by secular writers. So I finished it with mixed feelings.
And finally, miscellaneously, Bewildering Cares by Winifred Peck, Olivia in India by O. Douglas, Half Portions by Edna Ferber, and The Blue Envelope by Sophie Kerr.
Previous years’ reading roundups: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012.
photo credit: Ylanite Koppens / Pixabay
