Book stats for 2019

This year I read 120 books (probably more), many of them re-reads and some very long.
Dead tree: 51
Kindle: 53. The high proportion is due to getting books from NetGalley, buying 99p Kindle bargains and getting free books with Prime. Full marks to Amazon (I know!) for telling me how to update a ten-year-old Kindle so that I can still use it. Very different from Apple, whose younger iPad mini has just about had it and *can’t* be updated.
iPad: 15
Library: 1, rather shameful. I’ll be the first to complain if the library is closed.
These numbers actually add up! Thirty-six were by men and eighty-three by women. I know that’s one short; I think I missed out the Mitford Letters.

Looking back at a year’s reading I find that, apart from re-reads (Hardy, Dickens and many others), the books I’ve enjoyed most are all non-fiction. They are:
Books of the Year
Backroom Boys: the Secret Return of the British Boffin, Francis Spufford

A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle, Julian Jackson

Anything by Ben Macintyre
Ma’am, Darling, Craig Brown (imaginative biography of Princess Margaret).
Plus, special fiction mention for Mick Herron.

Some fiction I enjoyed
Achachlacher, Emma Menzies

A Girl Called Justice, Elly Griffiths (excellent children’s book).
Joe Country , Mick Herron. The 6th Jackson Lamb mystery
The Art of Dying, Ambrose Parry
The Word is Murder, Anthony Horowitz

I’m sorry now that I gave up my monthly book bulletins, which would at least have mentioned all the books I read, added some fairly praiseworthy books to the list and explained why I disliked so many of the modern fiction books I read.

Cheese and Onions: RIP Neil Innes

I’m so sorry to hear that Neil Innes has died. Once you’d heard Canyons Of Your Mind by the Bonzos, you’d never forget it. As for the songs he wrote for The Rutles, they are so like the Beatles songs they parody that I’ve found one segueing into another in my head until I hardly know which is which. What a brilliant man.

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