Well, besides buying presents for the cats (their first Christmas with us), and enjoying all the little flurries of snow we’ve had, I’ve also been quite busy reading.
2024 was a great year for reading for me, I managed my goal of 52 books. This is always my goal as it toes the line of being ambitious but still realistic. As someone with a fairly intense full time job, and other hobbies, this has always been my sweet spot. A goal I didn’t quite manage was finding 4 Christmassy books for December. But listen, I’ve never been good at planning my reading. Something always catches my eye at the Library or in Kindle Unlimited that I can’t help but keep it spontaneous.
One of my favourites was Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Tagisawa. I just loved it. It managed to give me exactly the cosy hit I was looking for, without losing itself in the kitsch. It had a moving plot, driven by the complex lives of the characters. Broken hearts and a place to heal are at the core of this novel.
The Bitter End by Alexa Donne was hugely enjoyable. I love a murder mystery in any form, but drop a host of rich, entitled high-schoolers about to head off to college into an isolated location and you know they’re about to drop off like flies. Donne has always proudly been a capital Y and A young adult author, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone writing in the genre progressively becoming more ambitious and sharply tuned to wider social issues. She reminds me a lot of the British author Juno Dawson, who similarly writes complex young adults, unafraid of wading into the dark and often sinister realities of today’s world. There is no coddling, no sugar coating, and it’s somehow still massively grounded – even as things escalate by the second. A fun, murderous romp with a massive impact.
This Charming Man by Marian Keyes was the only book of hers I hadn’t yet read. I came onto Keyes’ books during the pandemic, when I was grateful for their epic lengths and the dose of hilarious escapism they offer. Somehow, I’d missed this one, though I suspect in part because I knew it had a relatively weighty core plot. A politician wreaking havoc in the lives of the women he abuses. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a writer who can so comfortably inject humour into the darkest of themes, without ever once seeming insensitive about how she handles them. Yes, this is a book about domestic violence. But it’s also a story of survivors healing and finding each other. You know you’re in safe hands with Marian Keyes because no matter what, she never lets the sense of hope die. Even deep in the weeds, you know you’ll be safely delivered out the other side eventually.
Forest of Noise by Mosab Abu Toha. First published at the beginning of 2024, this is an essential collection of poems for anyone looking to understand the reality of life under occupation. A work I believe has the potential to reveal important truths better than any social media post, news story, or documentary. For the author to have offered up his family’s lives in such a generous way, immortalising them so beautifully, is quite simply the gift he’s able to give them even if they are no longer here to tell their own story.
The collection allows its readers into the uncertainty of life in refugee camps, of not knowing where your loved ones ended up. Of not being able to contact them, or know whether they are still alive. There is a daily reminder, no matter how beautiful your homeland or the lives you’ve rebuilt together after such frequent destruction, how temporary it all might be. It spares nothing in presenting the hope and pain found amongst the rubble, the communities searching for survivors, giving everything they have to care for one another – of a people who will not allow themselves to disappear.
Tim Wynne 