Another year gone - another 95 books read (one of which I wrote myself, so whether I "read" it is a point of debate, because I certainly have, but not in order and more just while it was going along), which is by far my record, beating 2017 (which was my dissertation year and everything) by over twenty - and thus, another yearly recap post (see here for last year's). Admittedly a significant number of those read this past year were very short children's books, but I've got a solid number of challenging books under my belt too. Covid aside this has been a much less dramatic year for me than the last few have, so I don't have too much autobiographical plonkage to spew at you here, so I'll refrain from giving any and just get straight to the meat of the post.
- A book I wrote myself - The Improbable Interplanetary Revolutions of Naomi Moss
- Page-for-page most stimulating Christian book - playing
- Overall most stimulating Christian book - the Cloud of Unknowing
- Best Christian prophetic provocation - Punk Monk
- Best Christian living primer/reminder - the Poet, the Warrior, the Prophet (although Holy Habits, the Soul of Wine, the Prodigal God and Counterfeit Gods also deserve a mention)
- Best Bible study - Romans 1-7 for You
- Best Bible meta-study - the Book of the People (although in a comparative religion sense, you cannot beat the Lost Art of Scripture)
- Most concise Christian exhortation - Talking about Jesus without sounding Religious
- Most creative Christian apologetic - Phoebe
- Most comprehensive Christian apologetic - Rumours of Another World
- Most philosophically edifying - the Path
- Most spiritually questionable - either the Gospel of Judas, the Corpus Hermeticum or Living Dangerously
- Best poetry book - can't decide between witness or the Waste Land. Oh, and The Sheffield Anthology definitely deserves a mention, as probably do Budapest to Babel and Mary Wilson
- Best children's poetry - Rhyme Stew
- Best (okay, only) Doctor Who-themed poetry - Now We Are Six Hundred
- Worst poetry - Phantasmagoria
- Best book about poetry - Poetic Diction
- Best fantasy/sci-fi novels - Stardust, the Dying Earth, and A Wizard of Earthsea & its sequel the Tombs of Atuan (and though I don't think I entirely or even particularly understood it, I did also very much enjoy Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - conversely, I fully understood and somewhat enjoyed Axiom's End)
- Best non-fantasy/sci-fi novels - either A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius or Fight Club - with an honourable mention to the Man Who was Thursday
- Darkest yet funniest novel - All My Cats
- Steamiest novel - Reckless
- Best humour book - Pistache, with the runner-up being either Husbands: Don't you just love 'em? or Sloth Life (with an honourable mention to All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome)
- Best comic or graphic novel - Watchmen
- Weirdest comic or graphic novel - either Ozma of Oz or this Spiderman story
- Best children's book - Little Turtle Turns the Tide, with Jeremiah Jellyfish Flies High and Holes as close runners-up. Honourable mentions to Fox, the Diary of a Killer Cat and Emil and the Sneaky Rat; and in Christian considerations also A Pair of Sinners and the Tale of Three Trees
- Best probably-intended-for-children non-fiction - Daredevils & Desperadoes
- Best play - Arcadia
- Not a great non-fiction book but it includes discussion of the play mentioned above so there's your tangential reason for the inclusion of this book in my recap - Life in the Garden
- Most daring non-fiction - Ten Days in a Mad-House
- Most practical non-fiction - How to Argue with a Cat
- Best audiobook - Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue
- Best thing to read if you want to become a detective - Know yourself through your handwriting
- I started playing Dungeons & Dragons properly this past year, as DM no less, and would heartily recommend this activity to anyone - for which you should probably check out the Player's Handbook and Dungeon-Master's Guide (and if you want to go really nuts, swap it up for a sci-fi world with Dark Matter)
- And finally I'm not sure how to categorize this but it's a book by (in fact the only book by) Neal Cassady so it warrants inclusion here - Grace Beats Karma
As for my intentions to try to read less by white males and more by women, people of colour and the queer community (don't @ me for missing out your favourite minority, I can't list everyone), I think I'm doing better than I have in previous years, but the sad fact remains that most of the books I own are by white dudes, and I'm not going to not read them just because of that sad fact. In any case, the effort continues.
That's it from me folks - happy New Year and may 2021 bring you many blessings.
Peace & love
Isaac Stovell
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