Welcome to my bookshelf

At the beginning of 2022 I decided I would keep a note of all the books I read during the course of the year, partly to satisfy the pure sense of achievement I always get out of seeing a list grow and partly to keep an aide memoir of titles and authors I might otherwise, all too easily, simply forget.

I allowed myself a grading system of one to three stars to note levels of enjoyment or marks of success, in my opinion, of each book. This simple three-level-score forced a ruthlessness upon my rating and in turn made me think hard and clearly about the merits, or otherwise, of the book, or the author. I tried not to let expectation or reputation of either, colour my personal opinion and my distribution of ‘stars’ certainly wouldn’t stand the scrutiny of the review pages of respected journals and newspapers, but I found it fun to do and it enabled me to think more critically about what I read. I have to enjoy the book, I want to feel an urgency to turn the pages, but I also want to be left feeling enriched by the reading, as though I have learnt something: about life, about the world, about human interaction, about ‘seeing’, observing, about the writer’s craft.

2023 has got off to a slower start with my reading, although the TBR pile is ever-expanding (power for the cause) but I am continuing the note-keeping from last year and now, to expand the critical element, I will write a few lines here, on some of the books I read, by way of expressing my personal and very subjective opinions. I don’t intend for these to be book reviews but more like a journal of what I have read. I’ll see where it goes, what form it takes; I’ll be led by the books I read…