Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Ever since I started my blog, it has served me as an adult replacement for the diaries I used to keep as a teenager. Yes, I know, the blog mainly features book reviews rather than confessional posts.  But on dates which are symbolically important, such as the last day of the year, it feels good to look back through my posts, recall some brilliant books and, inevitably, also remember the ‘context’ of when I was reading them.

According to my Goodreads statistics, I read 66 books this year, not all of which I have reviewed over here.  Among my posts, there are also write-ups about books I had enjoyed in the past.  Admittedly, in 2021 I did not read as much as I wished.  Sometimes, life got in the way.  This was the year which was supposed to bring (back) a “new” normal.  It didn’t. It’s been tough for many of us and that has sometimes also impacted on the things I love most.  But today is not a day to complain, but to give 2021 the benefit of the doubt, and count the good things it has brought (look well, and you’ll find them).  Amongst which, of course, some very good books. 

Any list of “favourite reads for 2021” would be incredibly subjective and unfair, and so I will, instead, simply set down my most-read new reviews for 2021 starting from the most popular one.  If, thanks to these posts, you’re tempted to seek out the reviewed books, I will certainly feel that keeping up with the blog will not have been in vain!

1.      The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories, Volume 1: Editors James D. Jenkins and Ryan Cagle compiled a wonderful anthology of world horror in translation, which has deservedly won widespread critical acclaim.  Looking forward to Volume 2, which is out in February 2022.

2.     Lemon by Kwon Yeo-Sun, translated by Janet Hong: a slender but engaging thriller-cum-coming-of-age novel set in Korea during the 2002 FIFA World Cup;

3.     A “musical review” of Alexei Remizov’s The Little Devil and Other Stories, translated by Antonina W. Bouis as part of the brilliant “Russian Library” series on Columbia University Press;

4.    Antonina W. Bouis features again in fourth place, with her translation of contemporary spy thriller Untraceable by Sergei Lebedev, a book I really liked;

5.    I’m happy to see a review of an Undertow publication making it to fifth place.  Seán Padraic Birnie’s collection of fourteen stories I Would Haunt You If I Could is a perfect example of why well-written speculative fiction should be more than a niche-interests for genre enthusiasts.  I can say that of the other Undertow books I’ve reviewed this year: The Ghost Sequences by A.C. Wise and To Drown in Dark Water by Steve Toase.

In a year in which many literary translators have lamented their lack of acknowledgment in the publishing industry, it is with some pride that I realise that my top four reviews featured fiction in translation.  I certainly intend to read more translated fiction in the coming year.  As for my plans for this blog… sometimes I am tempted to turn it into a more focussed blog, perhaps concentrating on horror and speculative fiction, or on reviews with a musical element, or, for that matter on fiction in translation, just to continue with the theme.  But that wouldn’t be “me”.  And so, if you do keep following and I do keep writing, you’ll find here my thoughts on fiction (and non-fiction) of all sorts, together with the occasional poem or piece of flash/short fiction.  Let’s raise a glass to another year together.