My favourite five books of 2019

In 2019, on Goodreads, I set myself the challenge of reading 52 books. I succeeded — I wanted to read more, and the challenge did the trick. There were periods where I hardly read at all, and to stay on track I found myself choosing shorter books. I read ten books in November and December, so while I had fallen a little behind, I was pretty consistent all year.

My favourite five books of 2019:

• The Comfort of Strangers, Ian McEwan (1981)
• You Were Never Really Here, Jonathan Ames (2013)
• In the Cut, Susanna Moore (1995)
• The Sea Inside Me, Sarah Dobbs (2019)
• My Name is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout (2016)

I’m reading less in 2020, and even my more relaxed target of 35 books is feeling a little too much. I didn’t help myself by picking The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Tales, by HP Lovecraft, and then getting stuck in his prose stodge.

Alice’s Masque, by Lindsay Clarke, is the book I’m reading right now. I picked it up from a secondhand book shop years ago and never got around to it. It’s good. I’m a third of the way in. I don’t know where he’s taking me, but he’s earned my trust. I’m hopeful it’ll be on my 2020 list. Time will tell.