Bringing my list over (Highlights in bold- as you can see, the year started well, not had a real page turner for weeks)
1) This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay
2) Paper Aeroplanes by Dawn O’Porter
3) The Glass menagerie by Tennessee Williams
4) Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler
5) Endurance by Alfred Lancing
6) Lord of the Flies by William Golding
7) Animal Farm by George Orwell
8) Hagseed by Margaret Attwood
9) Tin Man by Sarah Winman
10) Heartstone by CJ Sansom
11) The Light Between Oceans by ML Steadman
12) Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
13) Weird Thing People say in Bookshops
14) Educated by Tara Westover
15) Llywbrau Cul by Mared Lewis
16) Lamentation by CJ Sansom
17)Jane Seymour -The Haunted Queen by Alision Weir
18)The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne
19) 12 babies on a bike by Dot May Dunn
20) Everything I Never told you by Celeste Ng
21)Becoming Michelle Obama
22) Elizabeth II – The Life of a Monarch
23) A Month in the Country by JL Carr
24) The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend
25) Eighty Days around the World by Michael Palin
26) The Librarian Salley Vickers
27) Mortal Engines by Phillip Reeve
28) Notes from a Big Country by Bill Bryson
29) Artemis by Andy Weir
30)Just William by Richmal Crompton
This was a real nostalgia trip for me as my mum is a huge William fan and I have lots of childhood memories of having bits of these stories being read aloud and laughing about them.
I think the stories have dated a bit, for example having a maid and a cook in the house, but William's unshakable logic and eloquence when he is trying to navigate the bewildering adult world of rules and expectations is still funny and excellent writing.
An easy, comfortable read.
31)Small Island by Andrea Levy
This is the story of Hortense and Gilbert, a newly married couple from Jamaica whose migrate to the UK after the end of WWII, and their white landlady Queenie who befriends them.
I thought it would be the story of a young Jamaican couple and their experiences as they try to make their way in post war Britain, but there was actually very little of this.
There was a lot of back story of childhoods, which were marginally interesting but not really relevant, and then a lot about Queenie's husband Bernard during the war.
It was an easy read but really didn't hold my interest in the early part of the book and it was a bit of a chore. It did pick up a bit but not enough to make it the great read about the Windrush generation I was looking for.
32)Take Six Girls by Laura Thompson
I have read quite a lot of historical books on 20th Century British history and royalty as this period fascinates me, this seemed like a logical next read and while I was vaguely familiar with the Mitford name I really didn't know that much about them.
As the title suggests, six sisters - Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Jessica, Unity and Deborah, all from a privileged, now disappeared world of country houses, governesses and society parties. As the didn't go to school, they grew up almost solely in each others company and their strange insular relationships were well documented through letters.
All of them became remarkable in their own way - Nancy was a well known novelist, Diana was married to the massively wealthy heir to the Guiness empire but left him for Oswald Mosely the leader of the British Fascists and spent most of WWII in Holloway Prison, Jessica joined the Communists, Unity was friends with Hitler and shot herself in the head the day war broke out, Deborah became the Duchess of Devonshire and restored Chatsworth.
It was an interesting read, but found it difficult to follow as the timelines jumped around so much and it was not always clear which sister the author was talking about at any given time.
Would read more about the Mitfords though, interesting family.