in the early pages of through the glassLewis Carroll’s Alice
Her kittens wonder if “the snow loves the trees and the fields, that it kisses them so tenderly?” and then it covers them nicely, you know, with a
white quilt; And maybe it says, ‘Sleep, darling, till summer comes
Then'”.
Somehow the feline keeps up with several paragraphs of this simmering tosh, confirming it as a fictional feline: any real cat worth its whiskers flinched at the first sign of wish-deceiving meteorological anthropomorphism. Will be
Recent winters have done little to inspire such literary lyrics for nature’s benevolence. An occasional hum of rain and a thunderstorm snatches the autumn beauty from the trees and sends floodwaters torrenting through rural neo-constructions. If there’s an upside to these relatively mild winters, in addition to driving away girls who are sick about snowdrifts, the seasonal darkness encourages acceptable periods of introspection, reflection — and reading.
The end of the year provides an ideal opportunity to scan the shelves and look back on yet another literary turn around the sun. It was the first year since 2019 not completely dominated by Covid, meaning book festivals returned to in-person events, even if some notable fixtures on the calendar reported disappointing ticket sales. Meanwhile, TikTok defied expectations by becoming arguably the most influential platform for literary discussion online.
Salman Rushdie was fatally attacked in August, costing him the sight of an eye, among other injuries, while the literary world mourned the deaths of Barbara Ehrenreich, Dervla Murphy, Jack Higgins, Raymond Briggs, Marcus Sedgwick, is poorer than Carmen Caleel and Hilary Mantel to name just a few.
There were other books, of course. a few words. Was this a good year for new books? Every year is a good year for new books. Every year has its smash hits and its stinkers, its word-of-mouth bestsellers and high-profile flops. Every year someone will find a book that resonates that they will read
And read again, give as a gift and tell about friends. A book they’ll pull from the shelf for years to come, peer through the pages torn and swollen from years of handling, think of the person they were the first time they read it and the person they became and with it again Will sit down, start with the first familiar line. Every year a book is published that means so much to someone; Every year is a good year for books.
In the world of narrative non-fiction, the Baillie Gifford Prize – the de facto non-fiction booker – was won by Katherine Rundell for her excellent. Super-Infinite: The Transformation of John Donne (Faber & Faber, £16.99). Rundell, best known as a writer of books for children, is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, whose examination of Donne’s life, work and his place in the world was a worthy prize winner. Beautifully written and hugely informative about a most unlike – and until recently overlooked – figure in English literature, this is a book that should stand as the definitive work on one of our most important poets.
The Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing, a genre that has retained its place as the most popular of non-fiction, was scooped by James Aldred Goshawk Summer: Diary of an Extraordinary Season in the Wild (Elliott & Thompson, £9.99), his immersive account of a pandemic summer spent filming goslings in the New Forest, when other humans were almost entirely absent and birds and other wildlife could reclaim the woodland as their own .
jeremy wilson Beryl: in search of Britain’s greatest athlete (Pursuit Books, £20), the long-awaited and remarkable biography of a remarkable cyclist, won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, while the Stanford Dolman Travel Award for best travel book of the year went to Amur River: Between Russia and China (Vintage, £10.99) by the great Colin Thubron, a typically erudite account of his journey along a river that few have heard of but which is the 10th longest in the world.
In addition to alligators, there were two other notable titles from this year’s travelogues. In recent years there has been a curious fascination with geological loss and decay and in Shadowlands: A Journey Through Lost Britain (Faber, £20) Historian Matthew Green, formerly in London
Experts explore our vanished places, from villages abandoned during the Black Death to the Atlantic archipelago of St Kilda, whose last residents begged to be evacuated during the 1930s. A book of ghosts that resonates strangely, as if echoing the political decadence we’ve experienced over the past decade.
Across the North Sea, I was thoroughly beguiled by Dorte Norse’ a line in
The World: A Year on the North Sea Coast (Pushkin, £16.99). Like Shadowlands,
It’s travel writing about places that don’t necessarily belong to anyone
bucket list, but which are more engaging as a result. The Norse evocations of Denmark’s Jutland coast are erudite and philosophical, a masterful mix of memoir and travelogue that dwells in an absence that is an ideal
Across the North Sea complements Green’s book.
Going back to winter, one book I particularly liked was by Eleanor Parker Winters in the World: A Journey Through the Anglo-Saxon Years (Reaction Books, £14.99). Parker, Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Oxford, highlights important dates in the medieval calendar and the festivals and celebrations that accompanied them. Her winter here is contrasted with Alice’s sojourn on her cat, a season of long nights, dark forests, rock-hard ground and bone-chilling cold, as expressed by accounts from between the fifth and 11th centuries. Is. This beautifully written account transports us through each season in a deeply sensual way, from freezing snow to warm, spongy loam, whose rituals are still downplayed by our own seasonal travels.
Jesse Childs is further in time Siege of Loyalty House: A Civil War Story (Bodley Head, £25), the kind of history book that reads like a novel and is all the better for it. The English Civil War is easily passed off as just another dramatic historical step among many others, but it certainly remains the greatest political and social upheaval to occur on English soil since the Norman Invasion. Is. Childs weaves broad themes and narratives of conflict through historiography of the highest quality with a superb cast of characters in his thrilling account of the besieged Royalist stronghold of Basing House in Hampshire between 1643 and 1645.
Good writing about popular music is often hard to find. For too long it was the preserve of male writers overwriting their wry, world-weary cynicism, but in recent years there has been an emergence of some articulate and intelligent take on music, particularly from female writers. mickey this year
Bereney’s Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success (nine eight
Books, £22) was the standout memoir, an honest account of his life and years spent in Lush confronting his own mistakes as well as documenting the inherent falsity of the music business.
The experiences of women in pop and rock are also well documented in This Woman’s Work: Essay on Music (White Rabbit, £20), a collection compiled by Irish author Sinead Gleeson and Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon. a series of
Women from Anne Enright to Julianna Huxtable charted women’s experiences and relationships with music in a hugely important book that became a landmark in music criticism. Enright’s essay on Laurie Anderson stands out even among the consistently high quality contributions.
My selection as non-fiction book of the year is a bit of a cheat as it was first published in 2005 and re-released in an updated edition during the summer.
Brigid Keenan was a pioneering female journalist, a bright young thing of the 1960s who became a fashion correspondent and women’s editor Observer And Sunday Times Before marrying an EU diplomat and embarking on more than three decades of traveling the world as Brussels required.
in Diplomatic Baggage: Adventures of a Trailing Spouse (Bloomsbury, £9.99), Keenan writes of her adventures brilliantly, vividly and hilariously
India to Syria, Trinidad to Kazakhstan, parties, receptions and charting
The frequent bouts of loneliness and homesickness as well as the dependents of diplomats bring many global locations to life.
Harking back to a tradition of daring 19th-century female travel writers, Keenan’s frequent self-deprecation can’t hide a sharp wit, a rare gift for observation, personal warmth and an ability to craft a well-timed zinger.
Questions were asked in the House when the book was first published
The Commons spoke about how the UK government could have allowed such a title to appear, at which point the Foreign Office had to admit that Keenan, having been married to an EU ambassador, was not one of them. . Thank goodness for that, and thank goodness for this thoroughly enjoyable memoir, which also explains the way the EU works beyond Europe’s borders.
A Good Non-Fiction Hall, 2022; But as we’ve established, every year is a good year for the books.
Next week: Best fiction of the year.