The ‘Andy’ Awards 2019

Merry Christmas, and a happy new year, all. Here goes… It says a lot about my writing year that my previous post on my writerly blog was almost exactly a year ago, and wasn’t about writing at all but reading. I haven’t written anything like as much as I’ve wanted to over the past few years. Life’s got in the way. And I know that ain’t an excuse. Stephen King doesn’t allow it to be an excuse – if you want to be a writer you write because it’s what you do, and you do it every day come rain, shine, hangover, kids or crucial derby match. But I’m going to cut myself some slack here. And if I’m not going to write, I can at least keep my eye in by reading, as often as is humanly possible, as voraciously as possible, and with as much variety as possible.

Hence this list, which allows me to track just how much I’m reading. For those of you who don’t know, the ‘Andy’s’ are my attempt to ‘chart’ my reading habits over a year. They’re supposed to help me read more and also make it easy for me to recommend good books to others. 2017’s chart expanded the qualifying criteria from short stories to novels, and 2018 went even bigger – I included all books I’d read. Fiction, non-fiction, short story collections, sports books. Yeah, the whole shebang. I’ve done the same again in 2019.

In 2017 I read a whopping 75 novels. Wowzers. Last year, my total fell some way short of that but I was still very pleased with my grand total of 61 books. This year, my grand totalizer is again down on the previous year, but still works out at over a book a week across the whole year. I’ve read 57 books.

The below graphic charts my most committed reading months. As you can see this year there’s been a pretty steep drop-off over the past couple of months. Strangely this has come in winter, when the nights draw in… You’d have expected I’d read more at this time of year. All I can say in response to that is that I’ve been reading some pretty epic tomes recently… And make of this what you will: one of the months in which I read by far the most books coincided with Love Island, which my partner watched religiously. There are probably other similar ‘coincidences’ for the other book-heavy months…

Anyway, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my reading year. I’ve read some absolutely fantastic stuff, and some stuff which was maybe less so, so you don’t have to. Here in all its glory is my top twenty for 2019. Drum roll please…

1. World Gone By by Dennis Lehane
2. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
3. All that Man is by David Szalay
4. Macbeth by Jo Nesbo
5. The Chestnut Man by Soren Sveistrup
6. Lennox by Craig Russell
7. The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
8. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
9. Lullaby by Leila Slimani
10. In a House of Lies by Ian Rankin
11. The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
12. Mr. Toppit by Charles Elton
13. The Power by Naomi Alderman
14. Child Star by Matt Thorne
15. Normal People by Sally Rooney
16. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
17. Kill the Angel by Sandrone Dazieri
18. Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that tell you Everything you need to know about Global Politics by Tim Marshall
19. Manchester, England: The Story of the Pop-Cult City by Dave Haslam
20. The Institute by Stephen King

Honourable mentions to the other books I read this year: Slick by Daniel Price; The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris; The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen; The Fix: Soccer and Organised Crime by Declan Hill; The Whisper Man by Alex North; Melmoth by Sarah Perry; Devoured by Anna Mackmin; To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris; Ghost Story by Toby Litt; Hot Milk by Deborah Levy; The Sellout by Paul Beatty; Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly; Gray Mountain by John Grisham; The Talisman by Stephen King & Peter Straub; Salem Falls by Jodi Picoult; The Last by Hanna Jameson; The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson; The Devil Crept In by Ania Ahlborn; Class of 92: Out of our League by Rob Draper (with Nicky Butt, Phil Neville, Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs, and Paul Scholes); Everything Under by Daisy Johnson; Stone Cold by C.J. Box; What we’re Teaching our Sons by Owen Booth; Scrublands by Chris Hammer; The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley; My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante; Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Book Store by Robin Sloan; My Dad Wrote a Porno by Jamie Morton, James Cooper, Alice Levine & Rocky Flintstone; The Gestalt Switch by Alan Devey; Milkman by Anna Burns; The Boy in the Suit Case by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis; Heap House by Edward Carey; New Fears Ed. Mark Morris; The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks; I See You by Clare Mackintosh; Water Shall Refuse Them by Lucie McKnight Hardy; Cari Mora by Thomas Harris; Cottingley by Alison Littlewood.

Some observations: So, the Paul Tremblay show is over. After boasting two out of my top three in 2017, and winning the damned thing last year, this thoroughly modern horror writer misses out in 2019. Mainly this is on account of he hasn’t published anything. Therefore we have a new winner: one Dennis Lehane, whose World Gone By stood out like a sawn-off (sore) thumb in terms of quality, story, and readability. I’m a sucker for a good crime fiction, just as I am a horror yarn, and this is damned good crime fiction.

The only book which pushed Lehane’s remotely close was Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, which is a new perspective on the Trojan War. Trust me: you’ll never see Achilles in the same light again. In any other year, Barker would probably have carried off my top honour, but this year, for one reason or another, I craved crime.

This leaning towards crime bears out over the list in general. The top of the list is much more weighted towards crime fiction than last year, with heavyweights such as Jo Nesbo, Ian Rankin and Dennis Lehane charting highly, allied with new (to me) writers such as Scandi-noir’s Soren Sveistrup, Nigeria’s Oyinkan Braithwaite (who turns the traditional crime narrative on its head) and Scotland’s Lehane-a-like Craig Russell also doing very well.

Speaking of crime, notable repeat offenders on the Andy list were the aforementioned Lehane (who last year charted well with Before the War, a previous title in his crime series) and Sandrone Dazieri, who made the list back in 2017 (with a previous title from his own series). Look out for work by both of these writers. Other authors across all genres who’ve appeared in multiple ‘Andy’ lists include Michael Connolly, Jodi Picoult, John Grisham, Alan Devey, and of course Stephen King.

You’ll notice there wasn’t much non-fiction: just three titles made my top twenty-five (Tim Marshall’s excellent Prisoners of Geography, Dave Haslam’s Manchester, England: The Story of the Pop-Cult City, and Declan Hill’s The Fix: Soccer and Organised Crime) but that speaks more to my particular tastes more than anything, and it’s no coincidence that two of that three are about topics close to my heart: Manchester and football…

And amazingly, for a former critic of short story collections (I worked for the Short Review) there’s only one short story collection in the whole list. Again, there’s no rhyme nor reason for this. It’s just the way things have fallen this year. My reading list is very random.

The reason for the randomness of my reading list: It must be said that the diversity of my reading has been much improved by the ‘little library’ at the end of our road. My neighbours read some very weird and very wonderful shit! My neighbours probably say the same about me. The little library down our road always contains hidden treasure and this year it’s really broadened my reading horizons. They’re a fantastic concept. The other reason I mention them – other than their all round brilliance – is this year Carry Franklin (above), the founder of Leeds Little Free Libraries, died. Her obituary was in The Guardian. And in the Yorkshire Evening Post. 

And I’d like to encourage all of you to carry on her legacy if you’re in Leeds or anywhere! Go on, take a chance on a new book… I’m told there are now free little libraries as far afield as Lormes, in Burgundy, France, and in New Mills, Derbyshire (God only knows what the neighbours’ll be reading in those places!)

Find a little library near you in Leeds here.