The ‘Andy’ Awards for Best Books of the Year (that I’ve read), 2023

(Long and convoluted) intro

To paraphrase a well-known Leeds jokester, one-time Britain’s Got Talent hopeful, and past collaborator with yours truly (on a comedy about a boyband called Love Triangle – yes I’m talking Micky P Kerr – below) I love reading; reading’s really cool (Micky’s words were “I like drinking” which holds equally true for me).

I read a lot. For the usual reasons: escapism, to learn, to see where I could do better (if I ever start writing properly again… I nearly did, back in June, actually. Got two chapters deep into a crime thriller set in south west Wales… ran out of steam). I also read a lot because I’m a weirdo stats and numbers obsessive (like my Dad) who loves making lists (like my Mum) and who is overly competitive (with myself).

Customary SK sidetrack

How much do I love reading? A lot. More than my author-hero, in fact. Quantity-wise. In November this year, Stephen King tweeted (below) that he read around 60-70 books per year. So I’m winning… Mind you he also writes at least one a year… and I’m sure generally has other things to do.

I agree with King’s sentiment, above, though. And it is what I most like to do with my time. Other than drinking. Drinking’s really cool. So’s football. And podcasts (Top Flight Time Machine, Athletico Mince, some brilliant sports pods from the US – Lights Out, which is about American Football). And TV shows (The Bear; Fargo). Mags (United we Stand fanzine; FourFourTwo; Viz). Movies (actually I haven’t seen a jawdroppingly good one for ages). Check out my Twitter feed for my ‘winners’ in all of the above categories… #mybestof…

I do wonder just how much time I spend reading. But it’ll probably scare me to actually work it out. So instead let’s work it out in terms of volume.

Stats and stuff

This year I’ve smashed through 89 books, which is some going. July and October were my bookwormiest months – in both I read a grand total of nine books, which – stat fans – works out at nearly two a week. This month I’ve been a lot slower, getting through one a week.

So how does that compare with previous years? Well, I’ve beaten my total for 2022 (in which I read a grand total of 84 books. (Here’s the chart for the year – the winner was Dave Eggers with The Every.) But it doesn’t come close to my total for 2021, in which I read a frankly astonishing (until you remember we were locked down and had little else to do) 93 books. The previous year, 2020, I read a total of 77 books (again during various lockdowns, national crises, and the like). In 2017 I read 75; in 2018, 61; and in 2019, 57. That’s a shed-load of books all in all.

Rabbit-holes

And here’s where you can see those charts, if you want to get sucked down a rabbit hole. Here’s 2021’s chart (my winner was – at last – Stephen King for – miraculously – one of his shortest books, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption). Here’s the 2020 chart (won by William Landay, for his book The Strangler). Here’s the 2019 chart: Dennis Lehane was my winning novelist. Here’s the 2018 chart: Paul Tremblay topped it, and you may – spoiler alert – be hearing more from him later in this blog. And here’s the 2017 chart: Dave Eggers won out here, and the same goes for him as goes for Tremblay. I’m nothing if I’m not an avid reader of works by authors I’ve previously enjoyed, and you’ll see lots of the same names popping up across these charts… but you’ll also see all kinds of new names too. I like to take a chance on writers who are new to me, and again some of the ‘randoms’ on my reading list this year have come from (an increasing number of) friends and family, from the Little Free Libraries which have popped up on several street corners round my way (like characters from The Wire) and from, well, at times judging books by their covers and not by the names which grace them.

But enough already.

I’ve kept you hanging long enough, haven’t I?

Well, without further ado, here’s my top twenty, and the best of the rest…

The Andy Chart 2023

1. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
2. Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd
3. Devil House by John Darnielle
4. The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis
5. Sort Your Head Out by Sam Delaney
6. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver*
7. Three Women by Lisa Taddeo
8. The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith
9. Duncan Edwards: Eternal by Wayne Barton
10. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
11. Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
12. Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
13. Middle England by Jonathan Coe
14. The Beast You Are by Paul Tremblay
15. Void Moon by Michael Connelly
16. What Just Happened?! by Marina Hyde
17. Boy Parts by Eliza Clark
18. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
19. The Long Knives by Irvine Welsh
20. The Dark Remains by William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin

Above: My winning book – and not only because the cover image is the same as a tattoo on my back. This book, about gaming of all things, made me cry. I read it voraciously on holiday, and wished I could start it all over again once I’d finished…

And here’s the best of the rest:

Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris; The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson; A Heart full of Headstones by Ian Rankin; The Way Home by George Pelecanos; The Last Chairlift by John Irving; Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson; The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay; Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng; Holly by Stephen King; Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford; American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins; Moving the Goalposts: A Yorkshire Tragedy by Anthony Clavane; The Jigsaw Man by Paul Britton; Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan; The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly; Inshallah United: A Story of Faith and Football by Nooruddean Choudry; Good Girl Bad Girl by Michael Robotham; The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller; Sparring Partners by John Grisham; Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang; Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus; Darkest Fear by Harlan Coben; Uncommon Type: Some Stories by Tom Hanks; The Push by Ashley Audrain; The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King; When She Was Good by Michael Robotham; Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen; Nocturnal by Scott Sigler; I’ll Keep You Safe by Peter May; Lessons by Ian McEwan; McCarthy’s Bar by Pete McCarthy; Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk; Enough: Breaking Free From the World of Excess by John Naish; The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein; Gwendy’s Magic Feather by Richard Chizmar; The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins; Parenting Hell: How to Cope (or Not) with Being a Parent by Rob Beckett & Josh Widdicombe; The Unusual Suspect: The Remarkable True Story of a Modern-Day Robin Hood by Ben Machell; The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave; The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp; The Pact by Sharon Bolton; The Judge’s List by John Grisham; Something Bad Wrong by Eryk Pruitt; Dark Hollows by Steve Frech; The Friend by Joakim Zander; The Killing Habit by Mark Billingham; The Funny Thing about Norman Foreman by Julietta Henderson; The Maid by Nita Prose; The Lost Man of Bombay by Vaseem Khan; Setting Free the Bears by John Irving; Fortitude: Unlocking the Secrets of Inner Strength by Bruce Daisley; Dadland by Keggie Carew; The Satsuma Complex by Bob Mortimer; What Never Happened by Rachel Howzell Hall; Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler; 1979 by Val McDermid; The Snow Angel by Anki Edvinsson; The Holiday by T.M. Logan; The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins; The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell; In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware; Rant by Alfie Crow; It Will All Work Out: The Freedom of Letting Go by Kevin Hart; Atlantis by David Gibbins; Hospital by Han Song; Friend Request by Laura Marshall; The Godfather of Kathmandu by John Burdett; The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien; Slaughterhouse Prayer by John King.

Notes and observations

• Weirdly, I read two jointly written books in a row in May (one by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan, and one by William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin). Apparently the Picoult/ Finney collaboration came about as the result of a dream and a random Tweet on the part of Finney… If I were to jointly write a book, you know who I’d pick. Yes, it’s back to Stephen King…
• It wasn’t all fiction this year. Each year I’m trying to up my ‘input’ (in a Johnny Five stylee) by also reading some non-fiction. This has taken the form of a lot of self-help tomes, reflecting a bad year for me personally (see titles by Sam Delaney/ Kevin Hart/ Bruce Daisley), but it’s also taken in the trials and tribulations of parenthood (see Josh Widdicombe) or geography (Bill Bryson) religion (I finally got around to reading Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and found it pompous) environmental issues (John Naish), or politics (Naomi Klein). Of course, there’s also been plenty of sport, with Anthony Clavane’s Moving the Goalposts standing out, as well as Inshallah United and Wayne Barton’s excellent new Duncan Edwards biog. Special mention to the crime story about a ‘modern-day Robin Hood’, which I enjoyed tremendously.
• I’ve returned to short story collections this year after pretty much ignoring them for a few years. Great stuff by some familiar names – Paul Tremblay, John Grisham, and, of course Tom Hank’s surprisingly well-written Uncommon Type, which I feel recalls Stephen King in terms of voice.
• Two appearances by Ian Rankin in my top twenty… also Tremblay comes close to a double (again)
• There’s some ‘repeat offenders’ in the top twenty – authors who have appeared in several of my charts: Celeste Ng, Ann Patchett, John Darnielle, Paul Tremblay, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, and Kate Atkinson.
• But some ‘newbies’ too. Namely my winner Gabrielle Zevin. But also Sam Delaney, Eliza Clark, Charmaine Wilkerson,
• Finally, I’ve re-read a couple of old favourites – go-tos for my all time top ten, or so I thought. Fight Club didn’t stack up as well as it once had. We need to talk about Kevin was a different story. I’d read it before parenthood (way before) and now read it through a completely different lens, with two kids approaching double-figures in years… You’ll note that I’ve added an asterix by We Need to Talk About Kevin. I think I was quite hard on the book, having previously read it. If I’d have been reading it for the first time it would have probably scored higher.

The ‘Andy’ Awards for Best Books of the Year (that I’ve read), 2022

How was it for you? For me, 2022’s been another strange year. Though we haven’t experienced lockdowns, home-schooling, social distancing and all that jazz, it still feels to me like we’ve been kinda distant from reality as we once knew it. Known-knowns and certainties which we’d once thought were locked down, never to be changed, have altered inexorably. The Queen died – not many of us have known the UK with any other monarch. We’ve had about 13 Prime Ministers. The World Cup was fixed in winter. It’s seemed – just as the previous two years – to have been written by some sci-fi writer or satirist. Like an extended version of Black Mirror, or like we’re all living in Big Brother.

But onwards and upwards, my friends, and after that inauspicious start I’d like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and all the very best for the new year, for the very sci-fi-sounding 2023. And as it’s that time of year, as the one-time Big Brother contestant Craig Phillips once sung, I’m pleased to introduce my weird virtual ‘diary’ of the year which is my chart of all the books I’ve read across 2022. Yeah, I hear you, it’s little to late to get some of these suggestions onto your letters to the North Pole – even Santa don’t move that fast – but maybe if you get vouchers or book tokens (are they still a thing?) and you’re looking to maybe read something a little less ordinary as we move into 2023(!) then this chart could be of help to you. If not, then feel free to cancel me or vote me out or whatevs.

Where I talk about how weird I am…

For those of you who don’t know I follow in a long line of Kirbys (and Worthingtons) who are addicted to writing lists. The precocious (and probably intensely annoying) me of eight, nine, and ten produced early versions of this chart and I used to read it out to my parents around Christmas tme in a Bruno Brookes voice. Most of my winners and runners-up were very virtue-signally. I don’t think they were my actual favourites. I also spoilt many a family holiday in sunny Wales by obsessively charting our daily ice cream selections. The Cornetto ‘Big One’, Magnifico, was a perennial winner by virtue of it being massive.

More recently when I became a reviewer for The Short Review, a role which necessitated reading shed loads of short story collections to try and give them a bit of publicity – they’re always the poor relations of the fiction world – I put together charts of the best short stories I’d read that year. And that quickly grew arms and legs when I also started reviewing all kinds of books for the New York Journal of Books (amongst others). So my chart kept growing and growing, as did my reading list. What changed from when I were a lad, only knee-high to a grasshopper, was the virtue-signalling. See I wanted to be honest, and I no longer had to show off to my parents.

Before I reveal my chart, a bit more waffle from me, though. Because these obsessively curated charts which probably only get looked at by about three people are an act of extreme navel-gazing, perhaps even solipsism, let me indulge myself still further and reveal a little more of my madness. See, despite the fact I’m a creative type, I’m also a little bit obsessed with numbers, with data, with statistics.

Let’s break it down

In 2021, I read a frankly astonishing (until you remember we were locked down and had little else to do) 93 books. That’s nearly two a week, maths fans. The previous year, I read a total of 77 books (again during various lockdowns, national crises, and the like). In 2017 I read 75; in 2018, 61; and in 2019, 57. That’s a shed-load of books.

And here’s where you can see those charts, if you want to get sucked down a rabbit hole. Here’s last year’s chart (my winner was – at last – Stephen King for – miraculously – one of his shortest books, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption). Here’s the 2020 chart (won by William Landay, for his book The Strangler). Here’s the 2019 chart: Dennis Lehane was my winning novelist. Here’s the 2018 chart: Paul Tremblay topped it, and you may – spoiler alert – be hearing more from him later in this blog. And here’s the 2017 chart: Dave Eggers won out here, and the same goes for him as goes for Tremblay. I’m nothing if I’m not an avid reader of works by authors I’ve previously enjoyed, and you’ll see lots of the same names popping up across these charts… but you’ll also see all kinds of new names too. I like to take a chance on writers who are new to me, and again some of the ‘randoms’ on my reading list this year have come from (an increasing number of) friends and family, from the Little Free Libraries which have popped up on several street corners round my way (like characters from The Wire) and from, well, at times judging books by their covers and not by the names which grace them.

This year I’ve read a grand total of 84 books. Which though not as many as last year is still a feck of a lot. And it wasn’t just quantity. There was a huge amount of real quality there too (but more on that later).

The above graph shows my most avid reading months. Relatively fallow periods tend to correspond with busy times at work or in my personal life. December, for example, wasn’t exactly heavy on the reading front. All those Christmas parties and – yes, despite my suggestion that I may boycott it – the World Cup. And it might look as though I didn’t read much in September, too, but I have to note that this was my Fat Book month. I read Robert Galbraith’s The Ink Black Heart (which weighs in at over 1000 pages) and the latest Stephen King (over 700 pages) in September…

For the third year running I read 10 books in January. Which is a pattern which probably says a lot about New Year’s Resolutions and about staying in a lot more after all those Christmas parties in December.

But enough already.

So I’ve kept you hanging long enough, haven’t I?

Well, without further ado, here’s my top twenty, and the best of the rest…

The Andy Chart 2022

1. The Every by Dave Eggers
2. The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay
3. The Women of Troy by Pat Barker
4. Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
5. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
6. The World According to Garp by John Irving
7. The Promise by Damon Galgut
8. Drood by Dan Simmons
9. The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux
10. Misery by Stephen King
11. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
12. Treasure Island!!! by Sara Levine
13. The Invisible Circus by Jennifer Egan
14. The Lost Man by Jane Harper
15. The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
16. The Searcher by Tana French
17. The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch
18. Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
19. Plutoshine by Lucy Kissick
20. A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks

That’s a pretty nice cover there, yeah. Feel free to judge my winning book by it…

Anyway, here’s my best of the rest:

Midnight Sun by Jo Nesbo; The Furies by John Connolly; The Salt Path by Raynor Winn; Fairy Tale by Stephen King; The Quiet Game by Greg Iles; The House of Fame by Oliver Harris; Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt; The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith; The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker; Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland; The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson; The Coffin Maker’s Garden by Stuart Macbride; Playing for Pizza by John Grisham; The Night Gate by Peter May; My Name is Yip by Paddy Crewe; The Nameless Ones by John Connolly; Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan; A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins; Camino Island by John Grisham; Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda; Lambda by David Musgrave; Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield; Their Little Secret by Mark Billingham; The Blood Divide by A.A. Dhand; Run Away by Harlan Coben; Sum: Forty tales from the afterlives by David Eagleman; The Night Fire by Michael Connelly; Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult; Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler; Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell; Pleading Guilty by Scott Turow; Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain; Shatter the Bones by Stuart Macbride; How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie; The Jealousy Man by Jo Nesbo; The Nature of the Beast by Frances Fyfield; A Darker Domain by Val McDermid; After the Crash by Michel Bussi; Love you Dead by Peter James; Hear no Evil by Sarah Smith; The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton; A Time for Mercy by John Grisham; Gone by Mo Hayder; Cold as Hell by Lilja Sigurdardottir; Stasi Child by David Young; Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain; Innocent Graves by Peter Robinson; Burnout: Solve your Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski; The Lifters by Dave Eggers; Trying to Save Piggy Sneed by John Irving; Gone for Good by Harlan Coben; The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse; One: My Autobiography by Peter Schmeichel with Jonathan Northcroft; The Hanging Valley by Peter Robinson; The Reader on the 6.27 by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent; Asking for It by Louise O’ Neill; The Cabin by WM Paul Young; The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodniow; The Couple on Maple Drive by Sam Carrington; Beyond the Bailey by Alan Devey; Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead by Brene Brown; The Dinner Guest by B P Walter; Simple Genius by David Baldacci; Ash by James Herbert.

Some notes and observations

Dave Eggers magnifico of a novel – both in size and subject matter – justifiably carries off this year’s prize. It’s the companion book to The Circle, which topped the chart five years ago. Eggers also charts highly with his fantastic true-life story of New Orleans in the wake of Katrina and with a young adult book The Lifters. Paul Tremblay is another repeat offender – my 2018 winner rocks up in second place this time around. Completing my top three is Pat Barker’s The Women of Troy. This is the second book in her Greek trilogy: the first, The Silence of the Girls, was runner-up in 2019.

It’s not only new books which do well in my chart. There are four old stagers in my top ten too: The World According to Garp by John Irving, Drood by Dan Simmons, The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux and Misery by Stephen King. Modern classics, all.

It only remains for me to say have a wonderful Christmas and a great 2023. Here’s hoping for a little less madness.

The ‘Andy’ Awards for Best Book of the Year (which I’ve read) 2021

Well, my friends, it’s been another… um… interesting year in real life (which due to mostly remote working has felt like virtual life anyway). When I look back at this year personally I see some massive positives (I got married; we even managed to venture abroad on holiday; I got promoted, twice) but it’s had more than its fair share of grim-ness too (possibly less so than the vast majority of others, given the reasons listed above) and as we limp towards the line at the end of the year I find myself thinking, just like last year ‘let’s put this one behind us and go again in the new year’.

I hope. Spoiler alert, that’s the last line of a certain novel by Stephen King… but more on that later.

Another thing which has been positive this year has been the sheer volume of books I’ve been able to consume. One of the few plus points of remote working is the time you get back from not having to commute. With that, and the fact we pretty much ‘completed’ Netflix and for the vast majority of the year I haven’t been able to travel to football… well, it’s all added up to a big amount of reading time to fill the void.

And how. This year the quantity of books I’ve devoured scares even me. Scares me enough to put in a disclaimer here: no, I did not spend all day when I was supposed to be working reading books. And to be fair the number of screen hours I’ve racked up on Teams meetings, socials, the like practically forced me to pick up a paperback after work hours anyway.

The grand total

Last year I read a total of 77 books, during various lockdowns, national crises, and the like. Frankly I thought it was an unbeatable number. (Incidentally, in 2017 I read 75; in 2018, 61; and in 2019, 57.)

But this year I’ve topped it. I’ve read 93 books. (Incidentally II, The Guardian also tells me I’ve read close to 6000 articles on their website this year and I also subscribe to the excellent football magazines FourFourTwo and United we Stand.)

The above graph shows my most avid reading months. Relatively fallow periods tend to correspond with busy times at work or in my personal life (a wedding). March was my most active reading month. I can scarcely credit it now, but back then I was averaging an unbelievable three books a week, or near as dammit. The reasons why? I suppose home-schooling had ended (fingers-crossed forever) and spring was springing and I suppose there was positivity in the air.

Quality and quantity

But it’s not been all about the quantity, it’s also featured a great deal of quality. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed most of the stuff I’ve read this year. Mainly, I think, because of the sheer diversity of it. This is thanks to my regular use of the Little Free Libraries (four of which are within walking distance of my house), my subscription to the (free with Prime) Amazon First Reads programme, but also loads and loads of recommendations from friends, family, and colleagues. Every year I run The Andy’s I get more. Keep ‘em coming.

Resolutions

But as I do every new year I will resolve to read better, and more widely. My promise to myself this year was that I would read at least as many women writers as men, having spotted an imbalance in previous years’ charts. I haven’t managed this in 2021, but I will again make a concerted effort in 2022.

One thing I did manage was to read more non-fiction (my charts are completely dominated by novels). This year I’ve read completely random stuff over and above my usual sports-dominated agenda. There were of course a couple of footy books which sneaked their way in, but in fairness they weren’t all about Manchester United. I also read Ray Parlour’s autobiography, for example. I loathed him as a player as he played for Arsenal, our biggest rivals (on the pitch) at the time. I liked him in the book. You know what they say about reading opening the mind…

Beyond soccerball I also read autobiographies (John Cooper-Clarke), true life tales of a junior officer in Afghanistan, a Michael Palin travel book on North Korea, a book on the existential threat of big tech, a book on utopias, and a book on the malevolence of big corporations. I read books on the art and science of leadership. I read books I quoted in (successful) interviews: The Chimp Paradox (no, I wasn’t going for a role as a zoo keeper).

I also read No Strings Attached: The Inside Story of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop which just so happened to have been penned by my boss! I enjoyed it and I’m not just brown-nosing: it made me watch Labyrinth again and The Storyteller series. Which was handy after completing Netflix…

Another piece of non-fiction which stands out is The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper. This was recommended by my father-in-law, and I would in turn recommend it to anyone else. It’s about reclaiming the lives of the women so brutally murdered by Jack. Making them more than victims. But also about exposing how society at the time was at times as cruel as he was.

Patterns

Some weird patterns I noticed during my reading year:

In April, bizarrely I read two novels with cats amongst the main protagonists: the excellent The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward and French Exit by Patrick ‘Sisters Brothers’ de Witt. And in October, two books on the trot which featured snakes (as an instrument of torture and as a part of a religious ceremony) in CJ Lyons’ Snake Skin, and The Nowhere Child by Christian White

But you don’t want to read any more of this build-up, do you? You want to know WHO’S WON!

So here are my top twenty:

1. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
2. Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
3. Billy Summers by Stephen King
4. The Dirty South by John Connolly
5. The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
6. The Thrill of it All by Joseph O’Connor
7. The Children Act by Ian McEwan
8. The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
9. The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward
10. A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne
11. Fair Warning by Michael Connelly
12. Summer by Ali Smith
13. NW by Zadie Smith
14. Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh
15. The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
16. The Naturalist by Andrew Mayne
17. Beneath Devil’s Bridge by Loreth Anne White
18. Mystery Man by Bateman
19. The Dying Detective by Leif G.W. Persson
20. Cunning Folk by Adam L.G. Nevill

King’s coronation:

So finally my favourite writer lands a top spot in my chart. As well as the gold medal, he carries off the bronze medal, too. I mean, he had a podium finish last year (with his short story collection If It Bleeds) but this is something else…

I think the reason King so dominates my chart this year is – as well as being an obsessive, I’m also a completist. I realised that although I devour all of his new stuff on an annual basis, there are some gaps in my Kingly knowledge. So I’ve been back and revisited some classics from his back catalogue which I haven’t read. Which explains my number one choice. I mean The Shawshank Redemption has always been one of my favourite films and the images in my head of Red and Andy Dufresne will always – indelibly – be Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins. But I don’t think that explained my resistance to reading the book. I think I was maybe just scared I’d be disappointed. That the hope would blink out.

It didn’t. Remarkably I’ve read seven novels by King this year but Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption is the ultimate. And I did start thinking of Red in a slightly different way and I did see Andy differently (he’s diminutive in the book: Robbins is massive). And now I have two massive favourites in two different media. So all round, a big win.

And the best of the rest (no particular order):

Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King; The Punishment She Deserves by Elizabeth George; The Nowhere Child by Christian White; The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold; Later by Stephen King; Jpod by Douglas Coupland; Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz; The Law of Innocence by Michael Connelly; The Cove by Ron Rash; ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King; Lazarus by Lars Kepler; The Quarry by Iain Banks; Swimming Home by Deborah Levy; Nightingale Point by Luan Goldie; The Soul of Discretion by Susan Hill; Damnation Falls by Edward Wright; 1922 by Stephen King; The Castaways by Lucy Clarke; Gallows View by Peter Robinson; Love all the People: Letters, Lyrics, Routines by Bill Hicks Foreword by John Lahr; The Lost Village by Camilla Sten; The Second Sleep by Robert Harris; Pine by Francine Toon; Utopia for Realists (and How we can Get There) by Rutger Bregman; The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan; Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens; The Junior Officers’ Reading Club by Patrick Hennessey; Twelve Days of Winter by Stuart Macbride; The Good People by Hannah Kent; Good Bait by John Harvey; Borzois and Bevuardos or Kiss That Steak Slice Goodbye by Alan Devey; A Song for the Dark Times by Ian Rankin; Death in Summer by William Trevor; Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd; The Noble Path by Peter May; The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye by David Lagercrantz; Snake Skin by CJ Lyons; These Toxic Things by Rachel Howzell Hall; The Heatwave by Kate Riordan; Dead Pretty by David Mark; Vox by Christina Dalcher; Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King; The Resurrectionist by James Bradley; The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman; The Burning Girl by Mark Billingham; World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech by Franklin Foer; Girl A by Abigail Dean; The Girl Beneath the Sea by Andrew Mayne; Darksoul by Anna Stephens; The History of Bees by Maja Lunde; The Red Apprentice: Ole Gunnar Solksjaer: the Making of Manchester United’s Great Hope by Jamie Jackson; I Wanna Be Yours by John Cooper Clarke; The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman; French Exit by Patrick de Witt; My Uncle Oswald by Roald Dahl; Guantanamo Boy by Anna Perera; The Romford Pele: It’s Only Ray Parlour’s Autobiography by Ray Parlour with Amy Lawrence; The Broker by John Grisham; The Things You Didn’t See by Ruth Dugdall; No Strings Attached: The Inside Story of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop by Matt Bacon; Denial by Peter James; North Korea Journal by Michael Palin; Stranded by Stuart James; Still Water by John Harvey; Grantchester Grind by Tom Sharpe; Red Mist by Patricia Cornwell; The Reluctant Leader: Coming out of the Shadows by Peter Shaw and Hilary Douglas; Someone we Know by Shari Lapena; The Catch by T.M. Logan; Touch by Claire North; The Chimp Paradox by Dr. Steve Peters; Death on the Rive Nord by Adrian Magson

Winners! We scoop Blog of the Year 2021 award…

Last Friday at a prestigious (virtual) ceremony my colleague Jude Tipper and I won the comms2point0 Blog of the Year award for 2021 for our piece on constructing strategic narratives. We chose to participate live from my local, the Roundhay Fox, which was nice. It was also very nice that so many of you voted for us so thank you so much!

You can read the full story here.

And you can read our winning blog post here.

Please vote for me for Blog of the Year

Exciting news! I’ve been nominated (TWICE!) for Blog Post of the Year in the comms2point0 ‘Unawards’. I’d be honoured if you’d vote for me. You can read all the posts which are up for the award here:

https://lnkd.in/eQnnHjuc.

There’s some fantastic writing here and some extremely strong competition (not least my boss!) and also myself (did I mention I’ve been nominated twice)…

So, as I’ve got two horses in the race, so to speak, the one I really want you to vote for is my joint piece with Jude Tipper. It’s about key messaging and strategic narratives… work that I’m really proud of.

Vote here:

https://lnkd.in/e_DR6SKs

It’s the penultimate one on the list…

It’s worth noting that the link works best on mobile phones…

THANK YOU!

My new blog on setting up a new communications team in a public sector organisation, published on comms2point0

My new blog, ‘Child’s Play’, on the process of setting up a new communications team with a heavy impetus of storytelling in a public sector organisation has been published by comms2point0. You can read it here.

The ‘Andy’ Awards 2020

For many of us 2020 has been a year to forget. A year to consign to the dustbin. A bag of shite. Wringing any positives at all from it is very hard. But I suppose having the time to read more books (because of lockdowns and curfews and, quite simply, having nothing to do) has been one of them.

The good, the bad, and the bubbly

I’ve read an epic 77 books this year (which is my personal best since my records began; up from 57 in 2019, and from 61 in 2018… in 2017 I read a whopping 75 novels but that still don’t compete with – vidiprinter alert – SEVENTY-SEVEN). In that number have been the good, the bad, and the bubbly (which is the title of a book I didn’t read this year: an old biography of Georgie Best). I’ve read some absolutely fantastic stuff which I can highly recommend, and some stuff which was maybe less so, so you don’t have to. (Don’t, for example, chance your arm with Bill Clinton’s masturbatory novel in which he fantasises about president as superhero – see pic below.) Hence this chart. Pay attention to it if you like. But feel free to ignore it too. It’s just one man’s opinion after all (NB. Not George Best’s.)

I do this every year: I compulsively log everything I read after I’ve read it, marking it out of 20. It’s a pretty weird thing to do. But I’ve always done similar. On family holidays back in the day I used to compile ‘ice cream charts’ based on who had what every day. Cornetto Magnifico always used to come out on top because who wouldn’t want the biggest damned ice cream in the shop rather than a bog-standard size ‘other’ Cornetto?

Anyway, check out my list from last year, and from 2018, when the past really was a different place where they did things differently…

A weird book soup of a year

Anyhow this year I’ve read books by a wide range of authors – from a novel by the former president of the United states to a book by the son of the inventor of the table football game Subbuteo. I’ve read books on the psychology of traffic jams. I’ve read books on the squeam-inducing secret lives of doctors. And about some very weird American subcultures (yeah, at the back, that one was by Louis Theroux).

I’ve read a wider variety of types of books this year, too. I’ve read much more short story collections this year, for example, and those collections have charted higher this year than in previous years. It’s helped that two of my favourite authors – Paul Tremblay and Stephen King, both multiple ‘Andy’ award nominees (and winners) – both released collections in 2020. The Stephen King collection If it Bleeds is worthy of further comment, as it contains what it potentially the best short story I’ve read in many years: ‘Rat’. ‘Rat’ is the story of the painful nature of the creative process. I feel it, brother I feel it. I’ve read quite a bit more non-fiction. And I’ve even read a screenplay (again: King).

The numbers

The numbers this year have been read ’em and weep massive. SEVENTY-SEVEN. You could probably cross-reference my most prolific reading months against those data visualisations we’ve all come to know (and love and, yes, weep about) around lockdowns and Coronavirus numbers.

Though it was an all-round shitty year in most respects, it was redeemed – slightly – by the fact that a lot of my favourite authors put out new releases in 2020 (David Mitchell, Jo Nesbo, and Stephen King released books; Paul Tremblay put out TWO; I also read new stuff by Phillip Pullman and Margaret Atwood which although not officially released in 2020, were as near as damnit – certainly I didn’t have any time to read them last year)

But it wasn’t all about old school favourites, I also discovered new writers I really liked: Grady Hendrix, Camilla Bruce, Kate Weinberg, Shaun Hamill, Balli Kaur Jaswal, to name but a few.

It’s also worth noting books in my chart by (loose) connections of mine: Anna Stephens and Karis Dowsell.

The random nature of my reading list explained…

The reason for the very omnivorous nature of my reading list is, again, the Book Box at the end of our road (a little library enabling us to swap books with our neighbours). During lockdown we’ve called in at this many times, just for something to do, and we’ve also discovered three more in close proximity, so we’re getting even more random. It’s also helped that this year I’ve been a member of the Shelterbox Book Club* which each month sends a new book – one you’d probably never have encountered before – for you to explore.

One final point of note

Transcription by Kate Atkinson is worthy of a mention. Though it wasn’t my favourite book of the year (or even in the top twenty) it was one of the most resonant.

The novel captures the longstanding effects of war on the home front, on citizens who are still trying to keep up with everyday life (the terror, the boredom, the fear, the monotony, the sense that everything is moving at a different pace and the sense that nothing will ever be the same again, the lies and the subterfuge, the ‘grassing’ on ones’ neighbours, the rationing, and finally the spirit of community). I read the novel during lockdown and a lot of this reflected that weird and worrying time. That time of being on the cusp… and yet at the same time hanging about and not really doing much of a muchness…

Anyway, the above has all been so much filler… I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my reading year. My ‘actual’ year, not so much… . Here in all its glory is my top twenty for 2020. Drum roll please…

The ‘Andy’ chart 2020

1. The Strangler by William Landay
2. Knife by Jo Nesbo
3. If it Bleeds by Stephen King
4. Reamde by Neal Stephenson
5. Big Sky by Kate Atkinson
6. Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay
7. The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson
8. Growing Things and Other Stories by Paul Tremblay
9. Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley
10. The Kingdom by Jo Nesbo
11. The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
12. The Truants by Kate Weinberg
13. Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell
14. Unbury Carol by Josh Malerman
15. Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan
16. You Let Me In by Camilla Bruce
17. Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith
18. The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters by Balli Kaur Jaswal
19. The Age of Football: The Global Game in the Twenty-First Century by David Goldblatt
20. This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay

Honourable mentions to the other books I read this year:

Before the Poison by Peter Robinson; Mystery by Peter Straub; The Secret Commonwealth: The Book of Dust Volume Two by Philip Pullman; Italian Shoes by Henning Mankell; Garden of Beasts by Jeffery Deaver; Dead Like You by Peter James; The Rooster Bar by John Grisham; The Testaments by Margaret Atwood; A Cosmology of Monsters by Shaun Hamill; Storm of the Century by Stephen King; Transcription by Kate Atkinson; The Twenty-Seventh City by Jonathan Franzen; Godblind by Anna Stephens; Inside Story by Martin Amis; Traffic: Why we Drive the Way we do (and what it says about us) by Tom Vanderbilt; Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix; The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures by Louis Theroux; Rather be the Devil by Ian Rankin; The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr; The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce; Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty; The Cockroach by Ian McEwan; Butter by Erin Lange; The Reckoning by John Grisham; The Psalm Killer by Chris Pet;it; The Other Girl by C.D. Major; The Twisted Playground by Bryan Forbes; No Nonsense: The Autobiography by Joey Barton; Growing up with Subbuteo: My Dad Invented the World’s Greatest Football Game by Mark Adolph; Legacy of Lies by Robert Bailey; Inconceivable by Ben Elton; Thief River Falls by Brian Freeman; The Missing Sister by Elle Marr; The Flowers of Manchester: Remembering the Busby Babes by Ivan Ponting; The Lucifer Club by Mark Gatiss; The Black Phone by Joe Hill; Trust No One by Debra Webb; Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas by Adam Kay; How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie; Good Friday by Lynda La Plante; Suffer the Little Children by Donna Leon; Lockdown by Peter May; Man in the Middle by Karis Dowsell; Eating People is Wrong by Malcolm Bradbury; Ten Words by Jeremy Waite; Last Rites by Neil White; The Bone Jar by S.W. Kane; The Silence by Daisy Pearce; The Names of the Dead by Kevin Wignall; Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships by Eric Berne M.D.; Potty, Fartwell & Knob: Extraordinary but True Names of British People by Russell Ash; The Stone Man by Luke Smitherd; In the Dark by Richard Laymon; The President is Missing by Bill Clinton and James Patterson

*The Shelterbox Book Club – Look it up online and give it a try… You can discover themes, cultures and stories inspired by people and places in the real world – people who have been helped by ShelterBox in an emergency. Join a unique community of over 2,000 book lovers today and help disaster-hit families with every book you read.

Some thoughts on the chart…

This year’s winner, The Strangler, came highly recommended by Stephen King, so I knew I’d love it, but not as much as I actually did. It was an incredibly filmic book: one part The Departed, one part Goodfellas, one part Good Will Hunting (all those Bahston accents). It’s set in 1963, against a backdrop of the Kennedy assassination and – yes – the reign of terror of the Boston Strangler. But it focuses firmly on one family – and more particularly on the three sons of this family – of cops and robbers. Great stuff. Incidentally, last year’s winner, Dennis Lehane is a very similar writer to Landay…

Also in the top three are Jo Nesbo (I know, more crime) and Stephen King: two of the biggest-hitters in fiction right now. Nesbo rocked up in fourth place in last year’s chart with a stand-alone thriller (Macbeth) and came near as dammit to top spot this year with a new offering from his excellent Harry Hole series. King, who’s one of my all-time favourite writers hasn’t charted so highly in my recent charts, but mostly that’s on account of the fact that I think his older work is much better than his recent stuff, some of which has been quite… flabby. Not his short stories though, and his collection If it Bleeds is his best work for quite a while.

Neal Stephenson’s Reamde weighs in in fourth place in the chart. And it damn near breaks the scales. It’s the reason that – despite local lockdowns meaning I should have fair racked up the books-read – I barely read three that month. But it is fantastic. Tolkien-esque in scale but not in style: this is the new fantasy, straddling the real world and an in-game fantasy world, at times the line between both is blurred.

Also worthy of note is Paul Tremblay, who has not one but two entries in the top ten this year (a novel and a short story collection). Tremblay has been the one constant in my Andy charts over the years (just like baseball is the one constant in the movie Field of Dreams). In 2017 he boasted two from my top three and in 2018 he was my number one. In 2019 he only missed out because I didn’t read anything of his. If you haven’t trembled at a Tremblay yet – what are you waiting for, huh?

All in all, though, a fantastic year for reading. Which is a good job because it’s been pretty damned shitty for everything else.

New blog published by Comms Unplugged

The excellent Comms Unplugged has today published my new blog about #Movember. Read it, and weep. And, please, consider donating to my appeal.

Props to my daughter, Peggy, too. This is her first published picture credit.

New comms blog published on comms2point0 site

I’ve had a new comms-y blog post published on the comms2point0 site today. You can read it here. It also features in their new emag, which you can sign up for on the website.

“Staggeringly good story, made up of horrible characters who I loved hating” – new review of Small Man Syndrome

Interested? You can buy the book here.