OVERVIEW: 2020 highlights (?)
I didn’t post much until the end of March, did I? Oops.
The best girls own(ish) book I read in 2020 was Bright Island by Mabel L. Robinson. It was a delightful surprise, because I wasn’t expecting much from the title and after having read more poor to mediocre girls own books than I posted about last year, as they lacked distinguishing features like the realism of ‘The Wishing Well Mystery’ or the depiction of ballet in ‘A Time to Dance’ and weren’t quite bad enough to rant about like ‘The Testing of Tansy’. But from the first page, I realised Robinson could write, and the story of American Thankful Curtis’s coming of age, on and away from her beloved island in the mid twentieth century was one of my favourite reads of the year.
Henrietta’s War written and illustrated by Joyce Dennys was another discovery, a lightly fictionalised autobiography by way of letters to a friend in uniform about life at the home front in a coastal town during the second world war. Funny and moving, it rather confirmed me in the view that wartime metaphors weren’t that helpful in helping us live through a global pandemic. I enjoyed most of Helena McEwen’s The Big House , about the synaesthete narrator’s childhood in the titular big house. There were less successful bookends that put all the childhood events in a darker context, one of the signs that it was the author’s debut novel, I thought. Singled Out, about the two million single women/surplus women after the first world war was one of the few non-fction books I read in a year when I was reading a lot of the news, and influenced my reading of subsequent books in December.
I moved on to children’s books in my Eva Ibbotson reread, enjoying Journey to the River Sea, finding particular poignancy in orphaned Maia’s relationship with her unexpected governess Miss Minton. Frances Hodgson Buenett’s influence jumped out at me, partly because I’d reread (and not thought much of) ‘The Little Princess’ this year, although ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’ is referenced quite heavily by Ibbotson. The only book by the Big Four I read last year was Elinor M. Brent-Dyer’s The School at Skelton Hall, I also read a new-to-me Miss Silver mystery (there aren’t many left to hunt down, but it may be a while yet before I get to experience the serendipities and frustrations of visiting charity shops and second hand book shops) and a Marston Baines spy thriller, enjoying the first more than the other.
I felt like I read more steadily once lockdown started, but I actually read fewer books last year than the last couple of years. I bought far, far fewer books, so I feel like I’m working my way through my literal ‘to read’ piles more than I ever have, because they’re not being replaced anything like as quickly, I’m more targeted about the books I buy online. I did manage to read more short stories in 2020, somethig I'll try to continue, posting about Arthur Ransome’s The Coots in the North, which also contains story fragments, and the classic The Yellow Wallpaper.
I didn’t go to the theatre when they were open and didn’t post about any films at the start of 2020 either. But there was some tennis (surely they’ll find a way to put on Wimbledon this year?), and The Grea t British Sewing Bee cheered me up. This entry was originally posted at https://feather-ghyll.dreamwidth.org/183081.html. Please comment wherever you prefer to.
The best girls own(ish) book I read in 2020 was Bright Island by Mabel L. Robinson. It was a delightful surprise, because I wasn’t expecting much from the title and after having read more poor to mediocre girls own books than I posted about last year, as they lacked distinguishing features like the realism of ‘The Wishing Well Mystery’ or the depiction of ballet in ‘A Time to Dance’ and weren’t quite bad enough to rant about like ‘The Testing of Tansy’. But from the first page, I realised Robinson could write, and the story of American Thankful Curtis’s coming of age, on and away from her beloved island in the mid twentieth century was one of my favourite reads of the year.
Henrietta’s War written and illustrated by Joyce Dennys was another discovery, a lightly fictionalised autobiography by way of letters to a friend in uniform about life at the home front in a coastal town during the second world war. Funny and moving, it rather confirmed me in the view that wartime metaphors weren’t that helpful in helping us live through a global pandemic. I enjoyed most of Helena McEwen’s The Big House , about the synaesthete narrator’s childhood in the titular big house. There were less successful bookends that put all the childhood events in a darker context, one of the signs that it was the author’s debut novel, I thought. Singled Out, about the two million single women/surplus women after the first world war was one of the few non-fction books I read in a year when I was reading a lot of the news, and influenced my reading of subsequent books in December.
I moved on to children’s books in my Eva Ibbotson reread, enjoying Journey to the River Sea, finding particular poignancy in orphaned Maia’s relationship with her unexpected governess Miss Minton. Frances Hodgson Buenett’s influence jumped out at me, partly because I’d reread (and not thought much of) ‘The Little Princess’ this year, although ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’ is referenced quite heavily by Ibbotson. The only book by the Big Four I read last year was Elinor M. Brent-Dyer’s The School at Skelton Hall, I also read a new-to-me Miss Silver mystery (there aren’t many left to hunt down, but it may be a while yet before I get to experience the serendipities and frustrations of visiting charity shops and second hand book shops) and a Marston Baines spy thriller, enjoying the first more than the other.
I felt like I read more steadily once lockdown started, but I actually read fewer books last year than the last couple of years. I bought far, far fewer books, so I feel like I’m working my way through my literal ‘to read’ piles more than I ever have, because they’re not being replaced anything like as quickly, I’m more targeted about the books I buy online. I did manage to read more short stories in 2020, somethig I'll try to continue, posting about Arthur Ransome’s The Coots in the North, which also contains story fragments, and the classic The Yellow Wallpaper.
I didn’t go to the theatre when they were open and didn’t post about any films at the start of 2020 either. But there was some tennis (surely they’ll find a way to put on Wimbledon this year?), and The Grea t British Sewing Bee cheered me up. This entry was originally posted at https://feather-ghyll.dreamwidth.org/183081.html. Please comment wherever you prefer to.