2010 - what a year to end the decade. This time ten years ago I was a sixth-former, studying for my A Levels. I was waiting with baited breath to find out if I'd got into Cambridge (I hadn't) or St. Andrews (I had, and thank goodness for that). If my recollection serves I was reading Philip Pullman's Northern Lights; my new favourite novel was The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, which I'd just studied for my English Lit coursework. Weird to think that it was ten years ago - it feels like yesterday, and a lifetime ago. I hadn't met the Alexandrians; I had never heard of blogging; I'd never visited an archive; I owned no more than a dozen books. I'd never paid an electricity bill, or been supermarket shopping on my own, and I'd only recently discovered the internet. I think that was the Christmas I got my first mobile phone. I could never have predicted what my life would be like in 2010. I was just a kid.
The intervening decade has been the university era, defined by undergrad, then post-grad, and finally vocational post-grad. I will always think of this year as the year when I finally shed the last vestiges of those student days. In 2010 I finished my diploma in Archives Administration, and got my first professional post as an archivist. With that came the realisation that I now have a career, with responsibilities and prospects of progression, and that I have settled into a new city and a new stage of my life. I'm not a vagrant anymore, with one foot in my parent's house and one foot in temporary student accommodation that changes every nine months. I'm at home in my own house of five years standing; not so far geographically from where I started but thousands of miles from my 17 year old self. I'm as close to being a grown up as I've ever been.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I won't remember 2010 as a year of reading though. Between the end of the Archives course and the new job, I haven't had an awful lot of time for sitting down with a book (unless it was a book about archival description or preservation). It hasn't been a year of blogging either - I've neglected Alexandria and relied on Nic to supply the content that I didn't have the energy to produce. Because, although reviewing is a pleasure for me, it is time-intensive and mentally demanding. Coming home and collapsing in front of some rubbish TV has been the order of the day over the last three months.
Which isn't to say that there haven't been good books and bad books, and even the odd reading feat, this year. After all 2010 is the year in which I finally managed to read the entire Orange Prize longlist. I've been trying to do this for the past four years and failed miserably. Ironic that in the year that I had the least time, I had the most success at it. It supplied me with some of my favourite and least-favourite reads of the year, from the glorious heights of M.J. Hyland's This is How and Clare Clark's Savage Lands, to the painful lows of The Wilding by Maria McCann and The Very Thought of You by Rosie Allison. Without it I would never have listened to the audiobook of The Help by Kathryn Stockett, which I count as one of this year's greatest pleasures, reading or otherwise.
2010 was also the year that I started thinking seriously about reading fiction by African writers. Inspired partly by my continuing reading-affair with Doris Lessing, and partly by my vehement reaction to another Orange long-lister (and Guardian First Book finalist) Nadifa Mohamed's Black Mamba Boy. It was during a blog-versation about it with Buried in Print (another reading discovery of 2010) that I realised how little I knew about writing from the continent, and decided on a course of reading. Which is how I came to read Amos Tutuola's extraordinary novel-cum-myth-cycle The Palm Wine Drinkard and Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions. And how I came to accrue a whole shelf full of classics from Heinemann's African Writer's Series (thank you to all those students selling off their course texts)! I have enough to keep me going for another decade or two now.
At the same time I embarked on my chapter-by-chapter reading of Rachel M. Brownstein's study of women in literature - Becoming a Heroine - first reading the book that the chapter was about. Without it I doubt I would have read Charlotte Bronte's last novel, Vilette, in 2010; I doubt I would ever have read George Meredith's The Egoist in my whole life. With 150 pages of the latter left to read I can't thank Rachel Brownstein enough for introducing me to the wordiest and most pompous Victorian author I've yet to meet (yes, even more pompous than Hardy, which is saying something). Beneath the not-very-witty witticisms that hinge upon an obscure reference to Horace, and the descriptions of rainy days that extend to three pages, there hides a cast of minutely drawn characters, whose actions and decisions are subtly but forensically examined. Who knew that the arguments of feminism in the 1970s were being articulated by a 60 year old Victorian man as early as 1879? Not me, anyway.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Looking through my trusty Moleskine at my reading notes, I fear that I've been guilty of enormous gender bias in my literary adventures this year. I've read so few books by men that I'm embarrassed at myself. The Orange Prize marathon didn't help, but only nine books by male authors is a shockingly low total even for me. And three of those books - the first trio of the Matthew Shardlake novels by C.J. Sansom - were by the same man. I never thought I'd say this but: must address my internalised prejudice against male writers in 2011. The same goes for books written before 2000 - only nine of those too (it would be almost none without the African writers or the Heroine's project). Number of books in translation also rubbish: a grand total of - ahem - two. One, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; the other, Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada.
Genre analysis shows bias too. 2010 has been another year of historical fiction, following the vintage year of 2009 (should I re-read Wolf Hall over Christmas? Tempting, tempting). I count 19 read in total. This is opposed to only four sf titles (and that's counting Guy Gavriel Kay's Under Heaven, which could arguably go into either category). Amongst these four, though, are two of my favourite books of the year: Karen Russell's St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (I'll be watching out for her debut novel next year) and Kit Whitfield's In Great Waters. The latter has my heart for best book of my reading year, although it has some stiff competition in the form of The Spire by William Golding (one of the aforementioned historical novels). Impossible to compare the two really, because they couldn't be more different in style, although both are set in medieval worlds.
Over Christmas I plan to write up my best books of 2010, and also look ahead to my most anticipated books of 2011. But I should spare a moment for all the books I meant to read this year, but didn't get to. There are so many I can't name them all, but special mentions have to go to Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi, David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and Everything Matters by Ron Currie Jr. I picked you up so many times and then put you down again: most humbly begged apologies. I'm sure I'll be adding to that list as I read more and more of the Best of 2010 articles and blogposts. In the meantime, what should I have been reading this year? What books have you loved and hated? Tell all. Another thing I've learnt in 2010: I never get bored of this bookish talk.
~~Victoria~~