Look. Books!

A small tower of 2020’s books. Harder to photograph the Kindle.

I have drawers filled with notebooks filled with nonsensical scribblings which I really must burn, before I die and leave my family to sort through my stuff and discover I’m a dickhead. My current notebook has served as a marker of the year our lives went from what used to be to what they have become, thank you pandemic. In December 2019, I wrote a list of 38 things I wanted to achieve in 2020, because I was turning 38 and that’s just tidy.

Number one: Go on 12 hikes (one a month).

Those brackets are there in the notebook: I gave myself a hint for how to break 12 hikes down over the course of 12 months. I had low expectations for 2020. 12 hikes! I now bash out 12 hikes before breakfast, as per my previous post.

I underachieved in almost all the other 38 ideas, seeing as they involved leaving the house.

Except: ‘Read a book a month.’

One book per month seemed realistic, as I had a diary full of fun and not a lot of time set aside for reading. But if you can say one thing for 2020, it’s that it came up trumps in the book dept.

I have some Very Special Friends who kindly send me books, such as A Little Life which had me exclaiming to Gaz: ‘You’re not going to believe what’s happened to Jude now, the poor sod.’ There was Expectation - about how the friendships of our 20s change in our 30s and while friendship ebbs and flows and comes and goes, some last a lifetime. Friendship is one of my favourite things about life. In a year that we’ve been kept so far apart from our friends, I’ve never been more thankful for them.

There were the books I hoovered up on the Kindle, on the treadmill. Animals by Sara Pascoe, all about the female body (and mind) was so good, I immediately bought Sex Power Money. Plus, Pascoe is vegan so I like her extra. She has a warm turn of phrase and it feels like reading an email from a witty friend. In fact, she reminds me of my actual friend who writes very funny emails and, indeed, books. This friend of mine is a ridiculously talented writer, one of few people I know who can make me laugh as much in the written word as the spoken - no mean feat. She’s also beautiful and bouncy and lives far too far away. Who even invented Sheffield anyway? Could we Tetris the UK, maybe move Sheffield down a bit? Anyway, read Just My Type quick, because the next smasher is coming this summer.

Pascoe got me in the mood for books written by comedians. I loved Politically Homeless and The Actual One but Perfect Sound Whatever immediately became my Book Of The Year, albeit an early contender as we hadn’t even hit lockdown yet. James Acaster is so funny yet honest, as he describes a year in which he broke up with his girlfriend and manager and struggled with a serious knock to his wellbeing, while introducing brilliant musicians I’d never heard of as he attempts to argue 2016 was the greatest year for music ever. I spent the entire book going back and forth to Spotify to listen to the albums he loved. I then sent my music-mad nephew a copy of the book. I can still remember the last sentence of the last chapter, because it made me laugh so much.

I read No-one is too small to make a difference pre-lockdown in the sauna of the gym where we used to be members, before we stopped leaving the house. I love reading in the sauna. I think I can last longer in the heat, plus it stops strangers striking up a chat. One guy loved telling us every detail of his bonkers love life, while we sweated it out near-naked. I prefer sauna silence. Greta’s book of speeches is little, but big. And it shut up Chatty Sauna Man.

The problem with books like We Are The Weather is they leave me feeling hopeless. We have the solutions to narrowly avoid a climate crisis but we, collectively, globally, just don’t do it. We Are The Weather is about how saving the planet begins at breakfast - what we eat has a massive impact on the planet. I’ve got a pretty massive vegan agenda, clue’s in the URL isn’t it? This book confirms my suspicions that I am right.

I can’t hyperlink To Die On This Mountain because I read a preview… my brother wrote this book! My brother, the author. I’m proud to say that sentence. He has written a beautiful, powerful book full of complex, rounded characters and adventure. Coming to a bookshop near you soon.

An Emotional Education is a profoundly necessary read. Big love for the School of Life in our house, we both read the entire book twice, in a bid to truly absorb the wisdom. I will read this one again, regularly throughout my life, for further schooling.

HumanKind made me want to hug humans (frowned upon). We’re okay, guys! History has the proof. This book dismantles some well known examples of bad people, to show the story has been misrepresented by the media / time and is actually another example of good people doing kind things.

Like, the 1964 stabbing of Kitty Genovese and the apparent 38 witnesses who did nothing to help. A classic example of what terrible, selfish, evil people we all really are… Except in reality, loads of witnesses called the police and Kitty died in the arms of her best friend. But that didn’t make for a good story.

I bought Sea Legs in a bookshop in Scotland during the lockdown sandwich, then read it to Gaz while we sat out the rain in our motorhome. Guy Grieve was bored by life, so he bought a boat and took his family on an adventure. It reminded me of my childhood adventures on the sea, so I loved it.

I bought Guy’s other book, Call of the Wild, about a winter he spent wild camping in Alaska while his wife raised his young children alone at home. Sea Legs, written second, made me think he was an eccentric adventurer. Call of the Wild, written first, made me question Guy’s decision making and wonder if perhaps therapy may have been a better idea.

The plan was to read How to Think Like a Roman Emperor and float around being all wise and Stoic as fuck.

I couldn’t get into it. Didn’t like the author’s style, he missed opportunities to be funny and / or charming, which I need if I’m going to attempt to learn. Human Kind managed it. All School of Life books manage it. I guess I’ll just carry on being terrified of death. Nothing learned, nothing gained.

The Opposite of Loneliness was recommended by a dear friend. As someone who likes to think she can string a sentence together I am of course entirely jealous of anyone who can write better than I. Marina Keegan should have had an incredible career as a writer - her natural talent and love of words were abundant, but she died in a tragic car accident just after graduating university. This book was published posthumously by her family and the collection of musings and short stories are all the more poignant for knowing Keegan never got to fulfil her destiny as one of the world’s best writers.

How to break up with your phone stopped me idling away my precious time scrolling Instagram. It got me charging my phone at night in another room rather than by my head. It got me to stop looking at emails - or indeed my phone at all - in the evening.

‘What good will come of this?’ I now ask myself before I check my emails in my down time. I’m not about to delete Instagram, but I unfollowed a ton of accounts and don’t come out of a dirty haze 20 minutes after ‘having a quick look’. It’s not about chucking your phone in the bin, it’s about re-evaluating your relationship and getting back the power.

I read a ton of children’s books to my sister Pip. It helps motivate me if I’m enjoying the story too. We’ve been chasing the David Walliams high of Grandpa’s Great Escape for years now, but none of his other books have been quite so fantastic, although we did love The Ice Monster. Pip loves all the fart jokes which permeate his books, but I’m bored of them. Bloom was written by an old friend of mine and was enchanting and magical. I’d recommend Evie and the Animals to any budding young vegans in your life. Continuing my quest to read books written by comedians, we read The Day I Fell Into A Fairytale, by Ben Miller, a clever blend of classic fairytales and new adventure.

We finished 2020 with Tinsel - The Girls Who Invented Christmas and while I loved giving Christmas a feminist twist and sprinkling new ideas over old themes, Pip could not get her head around the idea that anyone other than Santa could be in charge of Christmas.

I read three times as many books as I aimed to in 2020, which is good, but I hope I never have enough time to read so much again. By which I mean, reading so much is synonymous with the pandemic for me, and the pandemic can go to hell.