Blog Archives

Out with the old, in with the new (once we’re all vaccinated, of course)

31/12/2020

See what I THOUGHT 2020 would bring

Adieu 2020, you won’t be missed! Although we won’t be fully done with you until we’ve all been vaccinated (and for we poor Remoaners, until we rejoin the EU). Nevertheless, our internal clocks insist it’s stocktaking season: the time to review our successes and failures, to measure ourselves against January’s goals. Starkly unblinkered this year, we gaze back at what seems the Age of Innocence, adjusting our aspirations for 2021. But however we’ve fared, since the pandemic makes staying alive an achievement, we can congratulate ourselves on arriving here.

Amid the lows and lows, I’ve made some progress with my reading, writing and promotion, with some positives that wouldn’t have happened without lockdown. Let’s have a closer look!

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Twelve novels and two non-fiction books: my favourite reads of 2020

29/12/2020

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Proof, if proof were needed, we are living through strange times: I’ve selected two non-fiction books among this year’s favourite reads. But fiction still gets preferential treatment on Annethology… or could it be I’m saving the best for later?

I hope you’ll browse through my choices, the novels listed in the order I read them, and let me know if any chime with yours.

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Sex and the consulting room: Lying on the Couch & Portnoy’s Complaint

26/12/2020

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Two novels featuring sex and psychotherapy: can you guess which one I couldn’t finish? The other is both entertaining and educational, so put your feet up and read on.

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Belatedly cancelling Christmas is a missed opportunity for growth

20/12/2020

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How lovely to see the Prime Minister’s delusions of Churchillian grandeur cast aside as he’s forced to adopt his rightful role as Scrooge. Sadly, not because he required a twenty-three-year-old footballer to pinpoint the appropriate response to childhood hunger but, in this year of disappointment and deprivation, we must grab consolation where we can.

How distressing, however, for the millions whose hopes for Christmas gatherings are scuppered with little time to make alternative plans. But hey – silver lining alert! – we can use it as a dress rehearsal for a no-deal Brexit, this Liar of Liars’ principal vanity project. As he didn’t say at a recent press conference: What, no croissants? Let them eat sovereignty instead!

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Strange goings-on at a house party: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle & Earthlings

18/12/2020

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Large gatherings at country houses are common enough in fiction, but these two recent reads, both involving family secrets, couldn’t be more different. It’s not so much that the first is set in England and the second in Japan, but one’s crime and the other literary translation. But even within those genres, they’re oddballs. In a good way? Read on for my thoughts!

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Twins groomed for jihad: Home Fire & The Orange Grove

12/12/2020

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A novel and a novella featuring twins pulled apart when one is targeted to be a pawn in a war they don’t fully understand: in the first, nineteen-year-old Londoners; in the second, boys in an unnamed Arab country brainwashed into self-sacrifice at only nine.

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Memorial Memoirs: Absolutely Delicious & Apprenticed to My Mother

7/12/2020

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I’ve recently read these two memoirs which celebrate the fortitude of the authors’ mothers, especially in later life. Both stories are precipitated by a death: in the case of Alison Jean Lester’s memoir, it’s her mother’s confrontation with terminal cancer; for Geoff Le Pard, it’s the revelation of a new side of his mother’s character on becoming a widow. Both are touching tributes, peppered with poetry and humour.

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Dreaming of a coronavirus Christmas?

6/12/2020

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Ho Ho Ho, bah humbug! This blogger who feels a misfit each December, finds herself, in topsy-turvy 2020, miraculously on track. Or is she? (Am I?) If everyone’s having an alternative Christmas, am I once again out on a limb? If I always opt for a minimalist Christmas, then my festivities will be (unlike most people’s) little different this year to last.