My top reads of 2020

I read 76 books in 2020. That’s a little more than I read in a normal year, but not much. I’m surprised actually – it’s been far from a normal year and I thought I’d have read more. I did watch the entire seven seasons of Buffy though, so that probably accounts for quite a bit of reading time… 

 

So, without further ado, my top reads of 2020: 

 

TOP NOVEL

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell 

A book that sweeps you up and tears out your heart. I’ll tell you how good this book is: I read this right at the start of the first lockdown and it managed to fill my head totally with something other than You-Know-What. 

 

TOP CHILDREN'S BOOK

 

Friend Me by Sheila M Averbuch 

 

I was bowled over by this middle-grade thriller. Tense, thrilling and with an attention to detail that would put a lot of adult thrillers to shame, plus an emotional core hits home. Clever, very clever. 

 

TOP NONFICTION

 

A Sting in the Tale by Dave Goulson 

 

At the start of the year my family decided that we were each going to recommend a book for all the others to read. I would never have picked up a non-fiction book about bees of my own volition, but Dave Goulson made the subject entirely fascinating. 

 

TOP REREAD

 

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman 

 

I got a Folio Society beautiful set of His Dark Materials from my family for my birthday. I used to love The Subtle Knife the most. In fact, I think the first time I read The Amber Spyglass I didn’t really understand what was going on, which seems odd now, as it’s absolutely clear and so magnificent. What books these are! 

 

TOP OLD BOOK

 

Wildfire at Midnight by Mary Stewart 

 

I spent several weeks at my mother-in-law’s when the first lockdown happened and started working my way through old books on her shelves. It’s been hard to pick a ‘top book’ from those I read, as I wouldn’t unequivocally recommend any. I don’t know why it comes as a surprise that books date. Of course, we all love books we’ve read years ago, but when we read old books for the first time nowadays… so much exposition, such slow build, not to speak of casual sexism, racism, treatment of children that ranges from bizarre to abusive… Of course they’re of their time, and that’s fascinating, but it’s hard to lose yourself in the story with all these alerts going off. The Mary Stewart book I’ve chosen is a mystery with a slightly supernatural air. It was diverting rather than gripping, but the Scottish countryside was gorgeously brought to life.  

 

 

 

 

Read-it-twice books

The Costa Prize this year got me thinking about book prizes. The Costa is an odd one. Five category winners, novel, first novel, poetry, biography and children’s book going head-to-head against each other. How’s that going to work? Surely the poetry and the children’s book are always going to lose out. Well, not always, as shown by this year’s fabulous winner, Frances Hardinge’s The Lie Tree (see my review). But if you look at the the list of previous Costa winners, it’s clear that most of the time the children’s books are passed over. On only one other occasion has the children’s book won. And I’m ready to admit, it’s a pretty tough call asking judges to choose between the disparate adult categories, without throwing in the puzzle of how to judge a children’s book against adult books. Some judges may even be under the impression that children’s books can never measure up to adult ones (see the cringe-making quotation from the University of Kent in this blog by S F Said).

So that got me wondering what adults who judge children’s books value in them. It’s interesting to compare a book prize given by a panel of children, such as the Blue Peter Book Awards or the Children’s Book Award  (formerly the Red House Prize), with a prize given by adult writers or librarians, such as the Costa or the Carnegie. Not invariably, but often, the children will go for what, if we were talking about adult fiction, we’d call ‘popular’ fiction and the adults will go for what we might call ‘literary’ fiction, and I like to think of as read-it-twice books.

It’s those read-it-twice books that I want to talk about. They’re the ones that most children will never read on their own. Not because they’re bad, of course not. It’s because they perceive them as hard. Most children will read these books in class or because they get them as a present or because they’re all they can find in the library. If they’re lucky, a marvellous teacher or parent or librarian will guide them through the tricky bits, or persuade them to keep at it when the plot doesn’t come at them as thick and fast as they’re used to. Or they’ll come across one of these books when there’s nothing and no one else to distract them, so that they can surrender themselves to it thoroughly. These are the books full of ideas and references to things they’ve never come across before. Books that’ll make them  think and wonder about things they don’t know, and toss them out at the end a different person from the person they were before they started reading. Books that’ll make them wonder about the past or architecture or religion or the Arctic and make them reach for other books. Books that’ll never leave them. Why do I call them read-it-twice books? Because they’re deep books, books that no one’s ever going to get completely by wolfing them down breathlessly, thoughtlessly. You need to stop and think. Savour them. Or else wolf them down, but then go right back to the beginning and start again.

And what is more, these are books adults should read too, and books adults should value. They may be readable by children, but they’re books with plenty to say to adults. And that’s why they win those prizes that only adults judge. And why they deserve their chance at the Costa.

Ten read-it-twice books everyone should read
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Skellig by David Almond
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
Jennie by Paul Gallico
Once by Morris Gleitzman
The Iron Man by Ted Hughes
Call of the Wild by Jack London
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D Pearce
The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman
Holes by Louis Sachar

Don't forget the ending!

Publishers love a series. Of course they do. Think of the saving on publicity alone. You grab your audience once but they buy more than one book from you. Where’s the downside?

And kids love a series too. Right from the moment they first show an interest in what you’re reading them, they don’t just want one Mr Men or Thomas the Tank Engine or Meg and Mog book. They want them all.

 But.

(You knew there’d be a but, didn’t you?)

It is all very well to produce a series of books in each of which a set of characters have a separate adventure. I have no problem with that. Detective story format, you could think of it as. Each book is a story in its own right, beginning, middle, end. The characters are familiar perhaps, but they don't develop in any significant way. It wouldn’t matter if you read this one or that one first, there’s none of that ‘story so far’ nonsense.

The trouble comes when there is a progression between the books, when each leads on from the last. Too often, it seems to me, the publisher and author’s desire for a series conflicts with the reader’s desire for a good read. What starts out as a rollicking adventure ends up on a cliffhanger, which, if it is a new book, the child reader may have to wait a year to have continued. It’s so unfair! Imagine the disappointment when the character doesn’t find their long-lost mother or escape from slavery or whatever. I can appreciate that if an author has planned a plot that spans a number of books it may be hard to find an appropriate mini-arc of narrative within that plot for each book, but it seems to me that if you can’t, you haven’t actually got a book at all, just part of a book, and maybe you should be labelling them ‘part one’ etc, or waiting until you’ve written the whole thing before you publish it.

And of course the trouble with the second and subsequent books in a series is that so often they start with that great wodge of what’s already happened. How dull if you already know. And if you don’t, what a way to put you off reading the first book. Notice I am avoiding damning any particular series here, but I do want to mention that I have just read a particular book in a fairly long sequence which was almost entirely made up of explanations at to what the characters had lately discovered about themselves and how that changed their mission. I won’t stop reading the series now (it’s pretty good), but imagine if that one had been the first book you’d picked up!

How hard can it be to write each book in a series in such a way that you could start reading anywhere without spoiling the stories that have gone before? I read the Harry Potter books out of order and the His Dark Materials series and enjoyed every book. Well done J K Rowling and Philip Pullman! They have managed the trick.

Ten of my favourite series:

Narnia books             C S Lewis

Green Smoke etc       Rosemary Manning

Anne books (just the first 3 really) L M Montgomery

Flambards                  K M Peyton

Discworld (especially the Tiffany Aching stories) Terry Pratchett

His Dark Materials    Philip Pullman

Mortal Engines          Philip Reeve

Harry Potter              J K Rowling

Mary Poppins            P L Travers

Mantlemass                Barbara Willard