These are my final reads of the year and a Top 5 of the best books I read in 2020.

December Books

The Invention of Love by Sara Schaff

This Ok, but completely forgettable collection of short stories was an advance copy I got from Netgalley, and tbh I feel like maybe one story out of the lot was interesting. I feel like recently my reading choices are very hit and miss. Schaff’s stories focus on women, and quite a few of them have no dimensions at all, and some are just completely dull, like the story about siblings trying to sell a rundown house. Yawn.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Das Parfum. Die Geschichte eines Mörders) by Patrick Süskind

What a disappointment. I felt like my expectations of this book couldn’t be further from what it actually was. I thought I would get a creepy Paris set novel that follows a warped murderer as he terrorises the city. Instead, it was a boring story that flirted slightly with the creepiness but felt more like something Flaubert would write (which isn’t necessarily bad in itself I just didn't expect this tone). I nearly gave up when he was in the cave for years, and then the weird perfume induced orgy was a massive eye roll moment. All in all, I don’t get the hype it was a complete waste of my time, and I could probably have read a few other books in the time it took me to force myself to finish this one!

The Englishman by Douglas Stuart

I read this short story by recent Man Booker Prize winner Douglas Stuart for the very reason of seeing whether I like his writing style enough to read his award-winning book Shuggie Bain. Short answer, Yes, I do. The Englishman was published in The New Yorker and follows a young gay Scottish man who takes a trip down to London to stay with the eponymous Englishman as part of an “arrangement”. The short story is beautifully written and explores the naivety of the narrator wonderfully. I will most likely be picking up Shuggie Bain very soon as a result.

I Have the Right to Destroy Myself (나는 나를 파괴할 권리가 있다) by Kim Young-ha

This is my 3rd re-read. I don’t normally re-read books very often, but this concise book fascinates me. I love Kim’s writing, his imagination and how dark this story is. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend it but be warned it is very dark.

Best Books of 2020

Last year I read 58 books, some of them were short stories (do they even count?) and others were absolute mammoths! Overall, these are the 5 books that stood out above the rest, the books that had me hooked and voraciously consuming page after page.

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

This book was introduced to me through Uni as it was on my year 3 reading list, which I will forever be grateful for as this novel blew me away. It’s dark, unexpected and beautifully written and has helped me expose how ignorant I was (and still am) about colonialism. I will forever continue to re-read this book and recommend it to everyone as it’s not only an important portrait of Black Arab culture in Post-Colonial Sudan; it’s a stunningly realised novel.

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

This book is hardcore sci-fi but infinitely readable that in itself is a feat. I found The Three-Body Problem unputdownable and being a slow reader that can take weeks, months or sometimes a year to finish a book this is high praise. I love how it mixed past and present and how the layers of mystery unfolded as you read on. I have the rest of the trilogy ready and waiting, and I have actually made a start on the next book The Dark Forest.

Heroes and Villains by Angela Carter

I’ve been a fan of Carter ever since reading and studying The Bloody Chamber back in school for A-Level literature. I think she will forever be one of this country’s greatest writers. Heroes and Villains is set in a post-apocalyptic world and reads like a dreamy, nightmarish fairytale.

Untold Night and Day by Bae Suah

This book unravels like a strange dream or a fragmented film where recurring motifs become unsettling and have you guessing where the boundaries between reality and fantasy merge within the narrative. Suah’s prose is also rather magical, and this is perhaps my favourite work of hers that I’ve read so far.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

I really enjoyed Madame Bovary, and that’s probably mostly down to Flaubert’s wit, and perhaps to a certain degree, the translation by Magaret Mauldon as this book reads very easily which isn’t always the case when it comes to classics. I also think Emma is a fascinating protagonist. She almost feels quite modern the way her imperfections are laid bare and her distaste for the banality of marriage and provincial life.

Honourable mentions: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Naiv. Super. by Erlend Loe and The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.

This month has basically been a marathon of short fiction, a final trudge through Dune and me discovering a new favourite book and a desire to read classics again. Oh and I read one of the most obscene books ever written!

Dune by Frank Herbert

I wrote a separate review for Dune as I felt like I had a lot to say, and I did. So TL;DR I liked it but I didn’t like it. It’s complicated and it depends on how you read it and from which POV. But if you fancy reading the full review then click here.

At The Sign Of The Cat And Racket (La maison du Chat-qui-pelote) by Honoré de Balzac

This month I decided to start tackling French author Balzac’s The Human Comedy (La Comédie Humaine) a collection of interlinked works which is made up of novels, novellas and essays set in during the Restoration period and July Monarchy. Balzac could be seen as a French Dickens, as both wrote about society and with a focus on realism. This novella follows a few characters who work at a small shop in Paris and the owner marries his daughters off to two very different men. The themes of money, happiness, status, faithfulness, art, and work run throughout. At some point when my French is up to scratch, I’ll probably try reading some of The Human Comedy in French so stay tuned for that (let’s hold me accountable please!)

Also, Balzac’s At The Sign Of The Cat And Racket has forced me to reconsider the genre of realism, and particularly whether I was wrong about Dickens! I have for many years refused to touch a Dickens novel after reading A Christmas Carol at school and finding it veritably boring. I even avoided reading Bleak House for my degree because I thought I knew that I would hate it (ended up reading Walden by Thoreau and despised that instead) but maybe I would have liked it! Maybe I need to reconsider Dickens, and that folks is something I never thought would happen!

Micromegas by Voltaire

More French lit, I think I often coincide my cinematic choices with my book choices as recently I started watching French films again and suddenly all I want to read is classic French Literature. It’s a bit strange but I’ll go with it (I’ll have to because I have ordered so many French Lit second-hand books recently). I read Candide for Uni last year and really enjoyed Voltaire’s wit and seeing that I was miles behind on my 75 books in a year challenge I thought to myself “why not read this tiny little book by a French author that you’ve read before”. So I did. Micromegas is a rather strange little thing, it is essentially Sci-Fi before Sci-Fi was a thing.

The short story follows a giant from a planet called Sirius as he journeys through the solar system, he meets another giant (though much smaller than Micromegas) on Saturn and they soon find themselves on Earth. For these giants, Human life is so small (literally) and they find our behaviour (waging wars) perplexing due to how insignificant we seem, as in comparison, humans are tiny, and live such short lives and have a much inferior intellect to them. Voltaire’s brand of satire is fantastic and I can’t wait to read more of his works.

Record of a Night Too Brief (蛇を踏む) by Hiromi Kawakami

I like abstract stories, I like bizarre and challenging stories. But I did not like any of the short stories in this volume. I also have in the past read Kawakami and enjoyed her prose, but this collection of three stories just didn’t do anything for me. I found them too strange and I was unable to connect with them on any level. All I can say is nevermind, you win some and you lose some. Will I continue to check out Kawakami’s work? Sure, I think she’s an interesting and talented writer, it’s just that these stories didn’t touch me.

A Spy in the House of Love by Anaïs Nin

I have found a new author to consume wholeheartedly. Her prose is deliciously poetic, and the way she writes Sabine is so vivid and relatable but alarming and deplorable at the same time. I loved this novel and I feel like I need to get a physical copy (I read it on Libby) to underline all the moments of poeticism and to read it over and over again.

Femme Fatale by Guy de Maupassant

This Penguin Little Black Classics book contains four short stories set in 19th Century France was nothing particularly fantastic, just ok in my opinion. But for 80p you can’t really go wrong and I might read Maupassant’s most famous work Bel-Ami as a result.

Story of the Eye (Histoire de l'œil) by Georges Bataille

This is a book that will leave an impression on you. It’s interesting to analyse from a psychological angle but my goodness it is utterly depraved and probably the most f***ked up book I have ever read. All I’m prepared to say is that I can probably never look at eyes and eggs the same way again.

December Books + Top 5 Reads of 2020