Earlier this year I decided I wanted to pick up reading. I’ve never been much of a reader and I didn’t expect much from the new habit as I picked up my first book, a copy of The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson. To be honest, I only started reading because I hoped it would improve my focus! But, as I started immersing myself in the story, I found myself really enjoying reading and now, a few months later at the end of the year, I have a long list of covers on my to-read list, I’m a proud member of my library’s book club and I finished reading 29 books!
I want to share my favourites from my first year of reading. It was supposed to be a “Top 5” list, but I had trouble cutting one out, so “Top 6” it is!
1- Magôkoro by Flavia Company
Magôkoro is simply an amazing book. It’s a letter a dad gives to his daughter. It’s difficult to say what it’s “about” beyond that, because it’s not really about anything, just some thoughts a man has had. I’m not really an emotional person but it made me cry multiple times and even write a letter to my parents telling them how much I love them! I read the library copy but later bought one for myself so I can re-read it in the future. It’s a quick read but I think, as of this year, it only exists in its original Catalan and Spanish. Best book of the year, hands down.
2- Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith
Besides Magôkoro being number 1, the rest of the books are in no particular order. Morality for Beautiful Girls is the third of a series (I haven’t read the first two, but the 4th and 5th instalments are also good!): set in Gaborone, Botswana, Mma Ramotswe is a detective and is called upon to investigate many different cases. It was a wonderful look into a country I don’t often hear much about and I loved that it made life feel so simple. The characters feel real but at the same time fresh. It’s a nice reminder that sometimes we just have to look at things for what they are and forget about all the complications we make up in our minds!
3- Factfulness by Hans Rosling
The author tells us why the world is actually going much better than we think it is. We all have many stereotypes about how terrible people in other countries have it, we are constantly bombarded with bad news and a doomsday mindset on TV and in newspapers. For the first time in history, more people are overfed than underfed, yet we still think of starving children when we think of “poor countries”. But, the idea of “poor countries” isn’t an adequate picture of reality, the author says, because the situation has changed. Hans Rosling (and his family) proceed to tell us why a lot of the negative ideas we have about the world are wrong, with a big dose of humour. It changed the way I see things!
4- The Gift of Stones by Jim Crace
I asked my dad what his favourite book was and he gave me this one. It was indeed a very good book! The story follows a man from the Neolithic period as he listens to his desire for more out of life rather than just working at his home town, an important stone village. It’s written in a curious way and is definitely an interesting story!
5- Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich
This was the first book we read in my book club! Svetlana Alexievich won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. In this book she travels around the old URSS interviewing common people about how they lived and felt the fall of communism and arrival of capitalism. Every chapter is the story of someone new. It’s a hard book to read at times, but it gave me a wider understanding of what actually happened: from the point of view of the people who actually lived it. Some interviewees are communist, some are very against Stalin, some were sent to camps and others are sick of politics. The author doesn’t change their stories, just writes them.
6- The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
This was the only audiobook I listened to this year. I made a rule that said I could only listen to it if I was walking, and by the last chapters I spent my day walking around the fields for a couple hours just because I wanted to keep listening to it! I was hesitant to read it because I enjoyed the movie, but the book was better and the plot had little in common with the movie. An enjoyable must-read classic!
Well, those are my favourite books of the year. Which books did you enjoy? I’m excited to see what next year holds! If you want to see all the books I read:
Another Day, another chance 