After last month’s My Year in Nonfiction post, I thought it would be fun to look back on my fiction reading this year and see what patterns or themes might emerge. The results were enlightening — I see that I’ve done a lot of unchallenging comfort reading, including loads of light comedy and rereads of childhood favorites.
This is no doubt understandable given the stress we’ve all been under lately, and I do love and appreciate the value of good comedy and of beloved children’s classics. However, I would like to start edging the balance back towards some more new and challenging reads. We’ll see how I do with this next year.
My favorites? Of the new-to-me books, I enjoyed all the novels I reviewed for Shiny New Books: Featherweight, The Wolf Den, and Daughters of the Labyrinth. The Corner That Held Them was another especially memorable read from Sylvia Townsend Warner Reading Week. I also loved Malafrena and A Tale for the Time Being. The new novel by Franny Billingsley, The Robber Girl, was definitely worth the wait.
My rereads were nearly all of firm favorites that still give me pleasure even after multiple readings. I also enjoyed all the light fiction, though a sequential read of Wodehouse’s Uncle Fred books got repetitive after a while.
Here’s what I read, organized by category rather than strictly chronologically. Links are to my blog posts or to my Goodreads shelf — I’m pleased that I have kept up with my goal of writing at least a brief note there about each book I finish this year.
And please tell me: What fiction have you enjoyed most this year? Do you notice any patterns in your reading?
New-to-me Adult Fiction
- A Tale for the Time Being
- Malafrena
- Orsinian Tales
- The Mask of Apollo
- A Man Called Ove
- Featherweight
- Actress
- The Wolf Den
- Parable of the Sower
- The Corner That Held Them
- Daughters of the Labyrinth
- A Stranger in Olondria
- The Other Bennet Sister
- True Grit
- In the Mountains
- Captain Blood
- The Meursault Investigation
- A Single Thread
Beasts of a Little Land
Other languages
Rereads — Children’s books
- Nobody’s Family Is Going To Change
- Dragonsinger
- The Magicians of Caprona
- Charmed Life
- Aunt Maria
- Archer’s Goon
- Fire and Hemlock
- Wise Child
- Juniper
- A String in the Harp
- Power of Three
- A Little Princess
- The Lost Prince
- The Silver Crown
- Little Town on the Prairie
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
New-to me Children’s Books
- Shadow Spinner
- Mohawk Valley
- Very Far Away from Anywhere Else
- The War That Saved My Life
- The War I Finally Won
- The Robber Girl
- A Single Shard
Light midcentury fiction (some rereads, and mostly featuring Stella Gibbons, PG Wodehouse, and Barbara Pym)
- The Swiss Summer
- A Pink Front Door
- The Weather at Tregulla
- The Snow-Woman
- Nightingale Wood
- Uncle Dynamite
- Young Men in Spats
- Uncle Fred in the Springtime
- Cocktail Time
- Service with a Smile
- Rhododendron Pie
- Less Than Angels
- A Glass of Blessings
- No Fond Return of Love
- Quartet in Autumn
A few mysteries
Adult fiction – rereads
I also had a higher than usual proportion of comfort reads and rereads this year, it’s perfectly understandable!
Yes, I’m sure that is a common experience so i don’t feel bad about it. 🙂
Some good reads there! I loved A Tale for the Time Being and I’ve read a lot of your middlebrow reads myself!
They were a lot of fun.
A few familiar titles here, Lory, but also many new to me. I’m hoping to have a look back at my reading patterns later this month but having been prompted by a few book themes and memes this year I think the range will be quite varied — oddly, fewer classics than I’d hoped.
I was completely off my classics reading this year, except for those light middlebrow reads. Maybe I’ll get back to it next year. Looking forward to your review!
A Tale for the Time Being is one of my all-time favorite novels (and I am totally pissed that the print proof copy I got to read was lost when I moved house last year)!
Oh no, sorry to hear that. 🙁
Very nice! I really need to try Ozeki soon!!
I think you’d love this book!
A Tale for the Time Being is a favourite of mine. I tried reading Ozeki’s new novel a couple months ago but alas, it didn’t catch my interest in the same way.
Tale is such a unique book. I think it would be hard to follow up.
I found that to be true. The Book of Form and Emptiness is similar in a lot of ways, but doesn’t have any of the key factors that appealed to me in Tale.
With 2021 being another tough year, I think comforting, easy, cosy reads and re-reads were really needed. Looking at my own stats, I have many multiple reads of favourites authors and series; a little more re-reading; and I have stuck closer to favourite genres, too. 🙂
I have no regrets about my comfort reading. Thank goodness those book friends are always there for us when we need them. 😀