Here are my best reads in English during September through December. My total for 2022 was 60 books, which is a lot for me. 55% of the total were e-books.
Find me at Goodreads! Dear Reader, what were your best reads of past few months?
- The English Eccentrics. Edith Sitwell 1933.
- The Queen and I. Sue Townsend 1992.
- Homeland. Cory Doctorow 2013.
- A Celtic Miscellany: Translations from the Celtic Literatures. K.H. Jackson 1951.
- Sherlock Holmes Through Time and Space. Ed. Isaac Asimov et al. 1984.
- Rivers of London. Ben Aaronovitch 2011.
- Once Upon a Tome: the Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller. Oliver Darkshire 2022.
- A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail. Bill Bryson 1998.
- New Moon. Ian McDonald 2015.
Aardvarchaeology - by Dr. Martin Rundkvist 
Aaronovich has written both “ordinary” novels about the ‘genius loci’, ghosts and magically talented gangsters of London, but also *graphic novels* with the same people. The protagonist (a London bobby) with his nominally functioning family (a jazz-playing father who is addicted to drugs until a literally divine intervention – It is useful to have a goddess as a girlfriend) is always interesting, as is his efforts to shoehorn things that go bump in the night into the robust bureaucracy of the London police.
His new boss, Nightingale, was born ca 1900 and has stopped ageing after the WWII catastrophe when German and British wizards were wiped out.
The antagonists are seriously weird, more so than in any TV series you have seen. The author has a great imagination and an even greater talent for making it believable.
Also, some urban foxes display great conversational abilities.
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I’m confused about how to do these lists since I switched from my reading habits as a child (reading novels and pop nonfiction in my native language cover to cover) to my reading habits as a grad student (dipping in and out of things as references, working with books in languages I am not fluent in). If I dive into a book five times reading a chapter or so at a time does it count? My reading habits changed again in 2022. So I think I will schedule a post on the things I read in 2022 for January.
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Not many in English (I’m adjusting to a job change): one graphic novel/memoir: Roz Chast (2014), “Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir”; and one ‘object biography’: Warren Ellis (2021): “Nina Simone’s Gum”, London: Faber.
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I have donated my Rivers of London books to the library after reading them, otherwise I would have sent the others in the series to Martin.
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Authors to watch: Adrian Tchaikovsky.
And a bunch I am too tired to recall right now.
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