Open Thread: best reading of 2023 and what you're reading this Christmas.
Tell us what you're reading in the comments.
Next week I will post the list of books I have enjoyed most this year. Before that, here’s an open thread where we can all share the books we most enjoyed and the books we are looking forward to reading this Christmas. (As well as a pile of Iris Murdoch novels, I’m looking forward to reading Waverley by Walter Scott.) Put your best reading in the comments and we’ll end up with a list of reading ideas for ourselves and maybe some good present recommendations too… You can also ask for reading recommendations and someone will oblige.
Also, I have paused paid subscriptions until early January, when paid posts will resume, with much to come about Shakespeare, and more on how to read a poem.
I do a history podcast (some other episodes too) so I have mostly read history books. There have been some great reads but maybe my favourite was The Lion House by Christopher de Bellaigue. It tells the story of the early years of Suleiman the Magnificent’s reign. Narrated in the present tense (a bit like Wolf Hall) Bellaigue told me the aim was to have a narrator that knew everything except the future. The effect is a real immediacy you associate with fiction. I’m not sure I want too much of this style but it works brilliantly here.
Anyway here is the episode and there are lots of other good ones!
https://www.buzzsprout.com/207869/12232452
I read "The Colony" on your advice, and thought it was absolutely excellent (also, I'm learning Irish at the moment). I just finished "Arboreality" by Rebecca Campbell, which recently won the Ursula K Le Guin Prize for fiction.