This year I read more books than usual – making this my best reading year post-PhD. I’ve also realised more than ever that reading – especially in this age when we have so many things competing for our focus, such as email and social media – is like a sport. A muscle that you need to exercise regularly. After those times in the year when life became too much and I couldn’t read regularly – for example, July, when I was travelling a lot, doing job interviews and trying to plan another house move across England – reading became more difficult and during August I had to ease myself back into it. The good news is that after three or four days of reading regularly focus always comes back, and I find that the more I read the longer I can stay with a book in my hands without falling asleep. It’s actually kind of amazing to think that when I was a child I had much more natural endurance when it came to reading and I could spend hours and hours stuck to a book…

Also, libraries are wonderful, I still get a high every time I get to visit them and pick all the books I want to read and it’s for free! Nobody wants my money! It’s simple, accessible pure pleasure! Kindness! Let’s all please love libraries and care for them and never take them from granted.

So here we go with my best reads this last year.

Books that made me cry (and I almost never, EVER cry reading books, watching films… etc.)

Women Talking by Miriam Toews

Nothing much seems to happen in this book which focuses on a group of women, well, talking. The context of their situation is a terrible one: these are women in a small Mennonite community who have just discovered that they’ve been drugged and abused by the men who live with them (brothers, husbands, friends…) Now they have to decide if to stay in the community and forgive the men, stay but punish the men or just leave. This story comes close to a philosophy lesson – what do you do when the pillars of your vision of the whole world tumble and go down in front of your eyes? How do you reconstruct your identity as a woman in a space in which animals receive better treatment? I cried at the end when they reached their final conclusion.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

The horrifying story of an ordinary man in 1980’s Ireland who must choose between ignoring evil perpetrated by those in power – and face the consequences for his own status and his own family – or stand by those being abused.

For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain by Victoria MacKenzie

Set in the Medieval times it follows the stories of two English women – Margery and Julian – who wrestle with their own identity as expected by others (that of a wife and a mother) and their religious mysticism. Margery and Julian have many years in between and take very different choices, but their conversation at the end – when Margery goes on a pilgrimage to visit Julian, who has become an anchorite in Norwich – was very moving and made me tear up.

Books that challenged me and discovered me new things:

Anarquía Relacional (Relationship Anarchy) by Beatriz Herzog, Roma de las Eras… et al.

A graphic novel that blends in fiction with essays on gender and other ways of understanding family, friendship and love. It was very thought-provoking and contained a great bibliography of sources from which I got to know wonderful authors such as Virginie Despentes and Mari Luz Esteban.

Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown

A classic from queer and sapphic literature that it was discovered to me through friends – I can’t believe I’ve never heard of this book before, I wish I had read this when I was in my teens and struggling with a lot of internalised homophobia. A brave book published in XX whose main character, Molly, performs her female gender (perhaps could even be interpreted as genderqueer and non-binary these days?) in very interesting ways even if it costs her many things, including her family, and the chance to study at university. Hopeful, funny, also incredibly sad and frustrating. An essential coming-of-age novel.

King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes

Rude, too on the face, brilliant and thought-provoking. She put into words things I feel but I didn’t quite know how to express.

The Unfamiliar by Kirsty Logan

The description of birth was painful to read but also enlightening. I loved the honesty here on pregnancy fears and how couples deal with the loss that accompanies miscarriage. It was also inspiring to read about a family that’s not heteronormative. It was also very tender to way Logan’s relationship with her wife is portrayed.

A book that terrified me (and I adored for it)

Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfit

This author and this book were both a discovery to me. Set mainly in Brighton and following two deeply broken and twisted main character who used to be lovers. It encasulaptes all the horrors of English fascism and imperialism in the tropes of the haunted house. It also compares national identity with gender – binary thinking in both of them (citizen and outsider, man and woman) can be extremely damaging. I thought it was daring, experimental and also thought-provoking.

Books that I heard everyone hype about – and turns out they were right

Gideon the Ninth by Tasmyn Muir

Lesbian necromancers in space? Yes please. I loved how funny Gideon’s POV was, how Harrow was this perfect mix of evil and tender and how this was a book that didn’t shy away from horror when it needed to be horror.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

I loved the desolate landscapes and spaces evoked in this book and the philosophical questions it posed about identity, knowledge, freedom and parallel universes.

A re-read that I enjoyed even more this second time around:

West by Carys Davies

I read this book in a day originally, which was fun, but also, didn’t quite allowed me to enjoy all the details and complexities of the plot. This second time I was even more impressed at how funny and sad this story is, how it feels grandiose yet mundane at the same time. I love how Davies writes historical fiction and speculates about the past – she has made me interested in westerns that deviate from the common clichés and tropes.