Oops I Did It Again…

1622-stacked-and-wrappedYep, once again I have left Savidge Reads dead and deserted for far, far, far too long. Two weeks roughly, who do I think I am?

I was thinking about closing the blog until the end of the year and wishing you all a Merry Christmas and then returning with a slight revamp in the New Year but I still have so many brilliant books to tell you about that I have read this year so am going to focus on getting them up and out there.

That said I will be making some blog resolutions and changes for 2017 though, nothing too drastic, in fact kind of the opposite, it’ll have me blogging more regularly I think. Yes I know I have said that before. I do think moving and the end of the year has played quite a part in my book and blog funk. As have work, which is mental as I have taken on a lot more work, which is very exciting and seeing me work on some amazing events which I am very happy about. Plus there is the relaunch of The Green Carnation Prize 2016, which you can find out all about here.

Speaking of the end of the year, is anyone else freaking out about how soon the end of the year is and how all those books they so thought they would read in 2016 might now not get read. I have been having some right old strops and stresses at myself in the last few weeks. That said most of my books are still in boxes with no sign of being unpacked until the library is built (with walls being knocked down and all sorts first) until mid to late January so I can’t get to them anyway which I think has added slightly to my book and blog funk in the end part of this year. I have unpacked all the books I have read and loved though and the sitting room is looking lovely and oh look suddenly I am blogging again, funny how my bookshelves and my book psyche seem so linked with one another.

How is all with all of you lovely lot? I would love to know what books you have been reading and loving, any favourite books of the year yet? Any books you are desperate to get for Christmas or buy for your nearest and dearest? Anything you think I should be getting to before 2016 disappears? Do let me know. Let’s have a natter in the comments below, I have missed it.

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21 Comments

Filed under Random Savidgeness

21 responses to “Oops I Did It Again…

  1. I was very glad to see you start unpacking the books via YouTube yesterday. Slowly but surely, eh! I just started reading “The Many” by Wyl Menmur, which was a gothic novella that was longlisted for the Man Booker this year. I have to say my favorite this year was “The Night Manager” by John le Carré. I think you said you weren’t a big fan? In either case that novel was so nuisanced and subtle that I don’t think I can ever read another espionage novel. Bar has been set impossibly high.

  2. Ann

    Merry Christmas & Happy New year to you also Simon. Understandable since you just moved not long ago that you do not have the time to blog as much as before. Enjoy anything & everything you do write though. I am reading Redbreast by Jo Nesbo. The war part at the beginning made it hard for me to get into – but now it is very good like the first one I read of his.

  3. Reader Of A certain Age

    Station Eleven is the perfect book to get you out of a reading funk. 2016 has been a somewhat bleak year and this novel, despite its dystopian bent, does provide the promise that humanity (the good bits) will prevail.

  4. Putting together my favourites list for year end and finding it hard to keep it short. Having said that, I’d recommend The Nix by Nathan Hill on the fiction side, and Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari if looking for a good non fiction read.

  5. Hi Simon, Great to see you back on here and look forward to more of it in 2017.
    One of my best books of 2016 was Slade House by David Mitchell. I know you said that you didnt like his books and nor do i normally but this is so un David Mitchell and is brilliant (hope he never reads this, sorry David) I really think you’ll enjoy it, trust me!
    I am giving books this year and one of them is The Victoria Letters which ties in with the fab series on ITV which i know you have loved.
    I want to wish you a very Merry Christmas Simon and thanks for all the great videos and blog posts and tweets this year.
    Here’s to 2017!

  6. My five star reads this year have been:
    The Shepherd’s Life: A Tale of the Lake District by James Rebanks
    The Running Hare: The Secret Life of Farmland by John Lewis-Stempel
    The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman
    Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
    Wood by Andy Goldsworthy
    Snow by Marcus Sedgwick
    Arboreal: A Collection of Words from the Woods by Adrian Cooper

    Mostly non fiction!

  7. Linda Stormonth

    I wondered where you had gone. When you are moving/tidying, do you do that thing where, putting books away, you come across one and think oh I had forgotten that one, and in the midst of chaos start reading?
    I was reading an old post of yours on reading habits, prompted by our latest Book Club read this month, The SYMPATHIZER by Viet Thanh Nguyen. When to finish a book? Some did, some didn’t. I pushed on and overall am glad I did. It won the Pulitzer and I can see why because of the brilliant writing, satirical and cuttingly witty, but it is episodic and uneven we felt. Some longueurs.
    While reading up on the author, I happened on an interview where he explained that as a young boy in the US he watched Apocalypse Now and did not know which side to identify with being both Vietnamese by birth and American growing up. At a time of change for the US (Trump etc), at a time when immigrants here and in the US are being seen as scapegoats for every societal ill, it was a fascinating shift in viewpoints.
    I thought this was a hard read, a flawed book with brilliant parts, and an illustration of when you really should push on to the end.

  8. Where to start? I know this year I really enjoyed The Martin by Andy Weir.

    Quick question. Do you keep all your books 📚? I know books I consider 1-3 stars ✨ find there way to the charity shop. I only keep my favourites these days, saves me some space.

  9. Moving’s a bitch isn’t it? I still feel traumatised from our move last year!!

    I enjoyed some great books this year – Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift, Do Nor Say We Have Nothing by Madeline Thien, His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnett.

    I’m currently reading Graham Moore’s The Ladt Days of Night & thoroughly enjoying it.

    Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk has also had a curious afterlife in my reading memory.

  10. I’m trying to finish the year with a batch of Non-fiction reads which is actually rather refreshing!

  11. Bet

    I just finished The Little Red Chairs and was wondering what your thoughts were on that– hope you’ll blog about it soon. I don’t have my list of books read in front of me and I haven’t compiled my best of 2016 list yet, but off the top of my head, 3 favorites were Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead; This Must Be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell; and To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey. Next up is Dark Circle by Linda Grant.

    Hope you have a marvelous holiday in your new home!

  12. Simon, I’m absolutely dying to talk about the lesser bohemians by eimear mcbride. Have you read ?

  13. I just finished an ARC of a book I think you will like — The Book Jumper by Mechthild Glaser. It’s not out in the UK until the first week of February so you don’t have to squeeze it in this year. (Good news, right?!) But it’s got teens entering books and it all ties together with a lost fairy tale and it’s pretty amazing. I’m not even sure what I’m reading for the rest of the year. I started a reread of A Christmas Carol just to have something going while I decide! I’m very overwhelmed at the moment.

  14. Diane Challenor

    My very favourite read this year was A Year of Reading Dangerously by Andy Miller. So good, I’m reading it again.

  15. Came to your blog after seeing a ref to your Rv of The Essex Serpent which I’ve just finished. Liked it ver much but moved straight on to George Saunders’ Pastoralia short story collection which could hardly be more different and I loved. Some favourites this year have been Fred Uhlman’s Reunion, Walter Kempowski All For Nothing, Francis Spufford Golden Hill, Magda SzAbo The Door and Iza’s Ballad, Lena Andersson Wilful Disregard, Helen Dunmore Exposure, Antonio Tabucchi Pereira Declares. I see you’re readin The Gustav Sonata, must come back and see what you think.

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