top books

I’m delighted to unveil my top reads of the year – as ever, considering how much I enjoyed them and how good I think they are, wrapped up into one. Apparently I usually do 12, but this year it wasn’t hard to draw the line after 10 – these are definitely my top books, and there was a bit of a gap before the books I’d consider for numbers 11 or 12. I don’t include re-reads or more than one book by an author – and, of course, they are in strict order. It’s a surprisingly modern list for me, with only one book from before 1950.

Click on the title to get my full thoughts. Here we go!

10. A Flat Place (2023) by Noreen Masud

It’s always good to read a book by a friend, and even better when the book is brilliant. Noreen Masud expertly weaves together her experiences of cPTSD with explorations of flat landscapes in Pakistan and the UK. It’s an involving, moving, excellent book.

9. A Bird in the House (1970) by Margaret Laurence

Laurence took the top spot on my 2022 list, and though I was disappointed by The Fire-Dwellers, I loved these linked short stories that piece together a coming-of-age for young Vanessa. The stories sometimes cover seismic moments but more often look at everyday relationships – particularly those that are cut short or peter out. It’s also the first of three books in my top 10 that have ‘house’ in the title.

8. Temples of Delight (1990) by Barbara Trapido

Trapido’s chunky novel is particularly strong in the opening chapters and the friendship between two schoolgirls: shy, nervous Alice and whirlwind Jem. The strength of Jem’s exuberant, confusing personality is sustained throughout the novel, which is comfortably the best of the three Trapido books I’ve read.

7. The Bird in the Tree (1940) by Elizabeth Goudge

Not to be confused with A Bird in the House! This is the first in the Eliot trilogy, given to me in 2008 and finally read now – a beautiful, comforting read about several generations of a family in a delightful big house. What set it apart from me is Goudge’s unashamed championing of self-sacrifice.

6. The Self-Portrait of a Literary Biographer (1993) by Joan Givner

A total gamble that really paid off. Givner is a biographer of Katherine Anne Porter – and this book is about that, but also about her youth and her family and everything in between, all told in index-card-style vignettes. Such an unusual, inventive, strangely compelling book that I’m so happy I stumbled across in a Hay-on-Wye bookshop and took a chance on.

5. Day (2023) by Michael Cunningham

No link yet because my review will be appearing at Shiny New Books when it’s published in the UK – but Cunningham’s first novel in an age is already out in the US. It follows the same day in 2019, 2020, and 2021 – morning, afternoon, and evening respectively – and is very much a pandemic novel. But it’s also a novel with Cunningham’s trademark groups of family and friends-as-family, and his incisive brilliance at deeply showing every conceivable relationship within these groups. Worth the long wait we’ve had for it.

4. Road Ends (2013) by Mary Lawson

For me, 2023 will always be remembered as the year that I got to speak to Mary Lawson on my podcast – and, in preparation, I read the only novel of hers that I had waiting. Road Ends is as brilliant as always, about a man in Ontario dealing with a friend’s suicide, his father trying to come to terms with his past, and his sister’s bid for freedom in London. I don’t know how Mary Lawson does it, but she always does.

3. In The Dream House (2019) by Carmen Maria Machado

Following a similar pattern to Givner’s book, Machado tells this memoir of queer domestic violence through vignettes – each one linked to a particular literary device or framework. Visceral, clever, and beautifully written – it thoroughly deserves all the accolades it got in 2019.

2. The House by the Sea (1977) by May Sarton

I’d read some fiction by Sarton but her journals are on another level – and my favourite, so far, is the first one I read. She has moved to a house by the sea, and I appreciated descriptions of the area – but it’s really about her identity as a writer, her fears and anxieties, and her constant re-determining who she is.

1. No Leading Lady (1968) by R.C. Sherriff

All my top three are non-fiction, and my top place goes to the extraordinarily enjoyable memoir by R.C. Sherriff. The first half goes in granular detail through the conception, production, popularity, and afterlife of Journey’s End – a play I haven’t even read or seen, but I absolutely loved the detail he went into. Some books are ignored altogether, and this certainly isn’t a warts-and-all autobiography, but it’s a sheer delight. Sherriff is one of the great storytellers, and his own life and career are treated as exceptional material.

It’s my favourite time of the book blogging year – seeing everyone’s Best Of lists, and compiling my own. As usual, I have stuck to one book per author, and haven’t included re-reads. I’ve read more than 200 books this year (including 60+ audiobooks), so I had lots to choose from. As it turned out, there were really one or two absolutely all-time brilliant reads, and then lots of very good ones.

Something I didn’t realise until I finished the list was that the top three books had all been on my shelves for about 10 or 15 years before I read them. A lesson never to cull, because every book’s moment could come!

Here we are, in reverse order…

12. Because of the Lockwoods (1949) by Dorothy Whipple

Because I’d read a few of Whipples not-quite-as-brilliant books, I’d forgotten quite how wonderful she can be. I read two Whipples this year, and They Were Sisters could equally have taken this slot – both are long, moving, compellingly enjoyable and poignant tales of family life.

11. Delicacy (2021) by Katy Wix

A brilliant memoir by this comedian – about cake and death. She considers significant moments in her life through cakes that remind her of them, and along the way covers deaths of close family and friends. I listened to the audiobook, which is a curiously sombre reading, so that even the undeniably funny sections come across with a certain sadness.

10. Four Gardens (1935) by Margery Sharp

Claire from the Captive Reader recommended this Sharp novel forever ago, so it was a delight to have her on episode 102 of Tea or Books? to compare it with D.E. Stevenson’s Five Windows, both reprinted by Furrowed Middlebrow / Dean Street Press. Sharp is always brilliant, and this story of a life through four gardens has stayed with me.

9. Remainders of the Day (2022) by Shaun Bythell

All of Bythell’s Diary of a Bookseller series are a delight – and this volume is no different. I raced through his latest diaries of running a secondhand bookshop in Scotland, with his sardonic comments on customers always a joy to read. I missed Nicky this time, who had moved on from the shop, but there are new people to get to know.

8. War Among Ladies (1928) by Eleanor Scott

This is the first British Library Women Writers title in some time that wasn’t my recommendation, but it was a wonderful choice – I read it a couple times this year. It’s about the teaching staff of a failing girls’ school, and is quite sad – but Scott’s dry tone, and some brighter moments, prevent it from being a miserable read.

7. Gentle and Lowly (2020) by Dane Ortlund

Subtitled ‘The heart of Christ for sinners and sufferers’, this is the best Christian book I’ve read for years – well, excepting the Bible. Chapter by chapter, he illuminates the character of Jesus in the gospels, and I found the book inspiring and comforting without disregarding the reality of a fallen world.

6. The Home (1971) by Penelope Mortimer

The picture in the collage above is a little spoiler – this will be coming out from the British Library Women Writers series soon. When they asked me to come up with something from the 1970s, I was a bit worried – I don’t know much about that decade. But I wanted to explore more Mortimer, and this semi-autobiographical book about separation after a marriage is darkly comic, ironic and just brilliant. It’s been described as a spiritual sequel to The Pumpkin Eater, and I can see why.

5. On Color (2018) by David Scott Kastan and Stephen Farthing

An unusual read for me, but a brilliant one – Kastan and Farthing go through the seven colours of the rainbow, as well as grey, black, and white, and look at the significance of the colour in history, culture, science. Usually they associate one colour with one theme, and cover a wide range here – from art to race to politics. An ambitious and brilliantly realised book – free on audiobook if you have an Audible subscription.

4. A Town Called Solace (2021) by Mary Lawson

She wrote my number one book last year, and her latest novel is brilliant too – a bit more packed with incident, though still feels quite calm and reflective. It’s the 1970s, and Clara’s sister has gone missing – and a strange man has moved into the house next door, with his own history to the small town in Canada. I suppose A Town Called Solace is a mystery of sorts, but it feels more like another of Lawson’s gentle musings on what it means to be a human in relationship with other humans.

3. Paying Guests (1929) by E.F. Benson

Benson is on top form with this boarding house of squabbling, pretending, brittle and brilliant people. One of the best Bensons I’ve read, it’s all about the big stakes of insignificant lives – how point-scoring and face-saving can dominate everything in their little worlds. Deliciously funny.

2. Suddenly, a Knock on the Door (2012) by Etgar Keret

A collection of very odd stories, mostly set in Israel and translated from Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger, Sondra Silverston and Nathan Englander. Some of the stories have supernatural elements – e.g. somebody unzips themselves to reveal somebody else beneath – whereas others are simply surreal, like the title story about a gunman turning up and demanding a story. Keret is overflowing with ideas, and knows exactly how to translate those ideas into moments of perfection.

1. A Jest of God (1966) by Margaret Laurence

For the second year in a row, a Canadian novelist comes out top. In A Jest of God, Laurence narrows her focus to Rachel – a woman living in the same house where she grew up, teaching at the school where she was a pupil. Her claustrophobic life is dominated by an uneasy relationship with her mother and a complete lack of hope about the future – until Nick, an old schoolmate, returns to the small town. I read another of Laurence’s Manawaka series this year (unrelated books in the same region of Canada) – The Diviners, much more sprawling in terms of time and place and page count. I thought that was brilliant too, but found Laurence was superlative in miniature. An extraordinary success.

I always wait until New Year’s Eve to compile my best reads of the year, because you never know when something brilliant will sneak in, do you? As it happens, this year has had lots of Very Good Reads, and even some Very, Very Good Reads, but nothing that is likely to enter my all-time favourites pantheon. So I love all twelve of the books on the list, and a good many that didn’t quite make it, but I didn’t have a life-changing book this year.

But, as I say, these 12 books are all wonderful! As usual, I have excluded re-reads and can only include an author once. The links take you back to the original reviews…

12. The Familiar Faces by David Garnett (1962)

I haven’t read the first two volumes of Garnett’s autobiography – I went straight for the one where he becomes an author, because that is the stage of his life I am most interested in. As it happens, and as the title perhaps implies, this is more about portraits of people he knew, often very gossipy, including Dorothy Edwards, T.E. Lawrence, and George Moore.

11. The Painful Truth by Monty Lyman (2021)

When my friends publish books, I try to read them – or at least buy them. But it’s no hardship when they are as brilliant as my friend Monty’s. His previous book was about the skin; this one, on pain, is even better. Which four-letter word ending in ‘in’ will be next?? Vein? Shin?? Anyway, Monty writes about a wide range of issues to do with pain that are fascinating and, above all, compassionate. I don’t read much popular science, but if more of it was like this then I would.

10. Brook Evans by Susan Glaspell (1928)

Rachel and I read a couple of Persephones for an episode of Tea or Books?, and it helped me get Brook Evans off the shelf where it’s been for many years. I love Glaspell’s spare, insightful prose, and the way she shows us a moral dilemma that works it’s way through three generations of a passionate, unhappy family.

9. Ignorance by Milan Kundera (2002)

The first of several Top Books that I read during A Novella A Day in November – I wrote ‘Like most of Kundera’s novels, the plot is a simple thread through the centre of the book – but what makes the book so wonderful are the tangents, the reflections, the aleatory connections between fictional characters and moments in time.’ Translated by Linda Asher, this is another Kundera success for me.

8. Murder Included by Joanna Cannan (1950)

It was great fun to race through a murder mystery in a single day. This is on here partly because it was fun and pacy, with an enjoyable irritating detective, but also because it has a beautifully simple and clever twist in its solution.

7. Three To See The King by Magnus Mills (2001)

You never quite know where you are with Mills, and never more so than with this parable(?) about a man living in a tin house in a desert, miles from his nearest neighbour. His life starts to change when a friend of a friend turns up and moves in – and then rumours come of a charismatic man changing lives in the distance. Mills is so brilliant at making something eerie without being at all evident why it feels that way.

6. Love in the Sun by Leo Walmsley (1939)

This autobiographical novel tells of a man and his partner who have left Yorkshire for Cornwall, escaping some sort of ignominy. They have almost no money and craft a makeshift life in a rickety house in a cove. Walmsley writes about this corner of Cornwall with such tender love and clarity, and the novel is a slow-paced, winding joy.

5. The Invisible Host by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning (1930)

A reprint from Dean Street Press that is getting a lot of love, The Invisible Host is curiously close to the premise of Agatha Christie’s later And Then There Were None. A group of strangers have been beckoned to a penthouse, each believing that a party is being thrown in their honour – whereas, in fact, they are going to be killed off, one-by-one, while a gramophone gives them instructions and warnings. The mechanics can be a little graceless, especially compared to Christie’s book, but it is still a brilliant read.

4. The Wreckage of My Presence by Casey Wilson (2021)

I didn’t get around to blogging about this one, which I listened to as an audiobook, but I do encourage people to seek it out. Casey Wilson is one of the funniest people alive, and stars in my favourite ever sitcom, Happy Endings. I’ve followed her work ever since, and was so delighted when she came out with a collection of essays – they are enormously funny, about bizarre moments in her life to date, but also very poignant: the loss of her mother, and Wilson’s grief, are front and centre.

3. Things That Fall From the Sky by Selja Ahava (2015)

Ahava’s novel won the EUPL prize a few years ago, and I read a translation by Emily and Fleur Jeremiah. It’s about people who experience extraordinary events – whether an ice berg falling from the sky, winning the lottery multiple times, or being struck repeatedly by lightning. I wrote, in my review: ‘the prose and characters that Ahava has created seem both dreamlike and vividly real – I don’t really understand how that combination is achieved, but it is done with astonishing consistency and assurance. I loved spending time in this world, and the way Ahava balances genuine pathos with a fairytalesque surreality is truly wonderful.’

2. Miss Linsey and Pa by Stella Gibbons (1936)

The beginning of my year had a lot of books but not all that many brilliant ones, which is perhaps one of the reasons I was so blown away by Gibbons’ novel, which I read for the 1936 Club. Miss Linsey and her father move to be nearer relations – rather reluctant relations – but the short novel encompasses enormous amounts more, with my favourite bit being a satire on Bloomsbury parents. There’s also a lot of heart, particularly in one character’s memories of a wartime romance.

1. The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson (2006)

Finally, here is an ode to keeping books on the shelf for years – and then discovering how wonderful they are. I bought this well over a decade ago, and its moment came in 2021. This novel of a farming community in Ontario in the 1930s and 1950s is beautifully immersive, and deserves comparison to Marilynne Robinson’s work. Lucky me, there are still a couple of her books I haven’t read – and I predict at least one of them will be a contender for next year’s best books list.

It’s been a terrible year, but it’s been a great reading year. I always wait until December 31st before I let myself compile this list – and going through the year’s reading, picking out the best books for a shortlist, is one of my favourite book-related moments of the year.

Often I already have a vague idea of which books will make the cut, but sometimes things leap out as reminders of wonderful times. This year, I couldn’t keep it just 10 – and there were another half dozen I’d have been happy to see on a Best Of list.

As always, I have firmly ranked – every year I hope for fewer ‘in no particular order’ lists on blogs! – and have excluded re-reads. That meant missing off Tension by E.M. Delafield, which I loved but apparently read in 2005. Each author can only appear once, otherwise Michael Cunningham would have taken up two places.

Each link goes to the original review. Without further ado…

12. Strange Journey (1935) by Maud Cairns

A body-swap comedy from the 1930s, where a lower-middle-class woman and an upper-class woman swap places. Cairns keeps it from getting stale by having them go back and forth a number of times – and, eventually, meet.

11. Told in Winter (1961) by Jon Godden

A beautifully written, dark, and atmospheric novel about a playwright, his male servant, a devoted dog, and the young actress who arrives to change things forever. So psychologically interesting. Rumer Godden is better remembered, but her sister deserves to be known too.

10. Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) by George Orwell

A novel about poverty, pride, stubbornness, books, and class – all done with Orwell’s wonderful prose, totally unshowy and yet totally beautiful.

9. The Stone of Chastity (1940) by Margery Sharp

The first of two Furrowed Middlebrow titles that will appear on this list – Sharp’s comic novel is about a professor investigating the legend of a stepping stone on which unchaste women will stumble. A brilliant premise for a completely delightful novel. Even more to my liking than The Nutmeg Tree, which I also loved this year.

8. The Snow Queen (2014) by Michael Cunningham 

I wasn’t sure whether to include this or Flesh and Blood, but ultimately went with the more compact novel. Cunningham has such a gift for creating a real group of real people, and sprinkling it with magic. Here, a group of New Yorkers live, love, and lie to each other in the early 20th century.

7. Sally on the Rocks (1915) by Winifred Boggs

A total gamble on an unknown author that paid off – Sally is drawn back to her home village at the prospect of financial security in marrying the curate. The novel is a feminist crie de coeur about the moral standards applied to women, while also being witty and like a 1910s Cranford.

6. Doctor Thorne (1858) by Anthony Trollope

I only wrote a paragraph about this novel, which took me nearly a year to finish: “The plot is about secret inheritances and couples who might not be able to marry because of poverty, but the plot is dragged out and (especially in the second half) very predictable. What makes this wonderful is Trollope’s delightful turn of sentence, and the leisurely and assured way he takes us through each conversation, reflection, and narrative flourish. A protracted joy.”

5. Tea at Four O’Clock (1956) by Janet McNeill

A 1956 Club choice that I’ve owned for more than 15 years, hitherto unread. As it opens, Laura is returning from her sister’s funeral – free for the first time. Until her ne’er-do-well brother turns up, that is. A beautiful novel, in which even the suspect characters end up being (by the reader) understood and thus forgiven.

4. Inferno (2020) by Catherine Cho

An extraordinary memoir of post-partum psychosis. Cho writes brilliantly – about this, but also about domestic violence, fear, and love.

3. A House in the Country (1957) by Ruth Adam

How fictionalised is this memoir? Unclear, but this Furrowed Middlebrow about moving into an enormous mansion with seven friends is charming and funny, even when we learn in the opening sentences that the whole thing goes terribly wrong.

2. Business as Usual (1933) by Jane Oliver and Anne Stafford

The novel we’ve all loved this year, right? If you’re among the few yet to get hold of it – like me, you might be sold simply by its being a novel in letters about running the book department of a thinly-disguised Selfridge’s. It’s every bit as delightful as it sounds.

1. Jack (2020) by Marilynne Robinson

I was toying up between this and Business As Usual, but while Business As Usual is a charming wonder, Jack is an extraordinary masterpiece. The fourth in Robinson’s Gilead series, though can be read as a standalone, Jack is a prequel to Home, seeing Jack falling in love with Della. She is African-American, and their relationship is illegal in their state. Nobody writes like Robinson, every sentence a tiny marvel – and even more marvellous that she doesn’t edit or re-draft. What a gift to writing, and the character portraits in this novel will stay with me forever. Even more incredible, Jack went from being someone I hated in Gilead to someone I love here – while recognisably exactly the same person.

I love the end of the year because I get to read everyone’s Best Books list – and I get to make my own. I’ve usually got a good idea what will be at the top of the list, but it’s only when going back through my reading that I decide which will make the full top ten.

This year, I think the top four could have been in any order. They were all a delight. But you know me – I don’t like the ‘in no particular order’ sort of list. Be brave and rank things, people! So here is my top ten, with the usual rules I give myself – no re-reads and no author can appear twice.

10. Miss Carter and the Ifrit (1945) by Susan Alice Kerby

The Furrowed Middlebrow series from Dean Street Press is my favourite thing from the past few years in publishing – and this book was more or less made for me. A spinster is surprised when an enthusiastic and slightly chaotic ifrit – a sort of genie – turns up to do her bidding. A very funny clash of worlds.

9. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955) by Brian Moore

This had been on my shelves for seven years, and I’m so glad I finally read it. In a claustrophobic boarding house, Judith Hearne arrives with a picture of Jesus to hang above the bed, and a world of loneliness and frustrated hope. It’s a melancholy, perfectly observed novel with a subdued humour below the surface.

8. Turn Back The Leaves (1930) by E.M. Delafield

I read this for the 1930 Club and found it one of EMD’s most enjoyable novels. It has none of the humour that laces most of her work, but is rather about the clashes of a Catholic family when various members fall in love outside The Church.

7. Molly Fox’s Birthday (2008) by Deirdre Madden

A beautifully written novel about a single day in the life of a director house-sitting for her famous actress friend – though largely made up of flashbacks and recollections.

6. The Wells of St Mary’s (1962) by R.C. Sherriff

I can’t get enough of R.C. Sherriff – having read all the ones Persephone have republished, I got this one about a small village where a neglected well proves to have miraculous healing properties – and how this leads to murder…

5. Notes Made While Falling (2019) by Jenn Ashworth

This memoir-in-essays starts with a traumatic birth and the psychological damage it caused, and ranges over topics as various as Mormonism, Agatha Christie, Freud, and Virginia Woolf. The whole thing is united by brilliant, insightful writing.

4. The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie (1982) by Charles Osborne

What fun I had reading this one! Osborne goes through each of Christie’s works in turn, giving the context from her life and the initial reception, as well as his critical opinion of the book. Even better, there are no spoilers.

3. All The Lives We Ever Lived (2019) by Katharine Smyth

This books explores Smyth’s grief at her father’s death through the lens of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse. She writes about Woolf extremely well, and about her own family with honesty. I think you probably have to love Woolf to love this – but I do and I did.

2. O, The Brave Music (1943) by Dorothy Evelyn Smith

I read this novel twice this year, and I’m sure I’ll read it many times more. It’s a coming-of-age story that feels like it comes from the same world as I Capture the Castle, with the same freedom and uncertainty and love.

1. The Book of William (2009) by Paul Collins

I wasn’t expecting to love this book so much when I picked it up – prompted by Project Names. And yet, once I started, I fell completely in love. Collins traces the history of Shakespeare’s First Folio from its first printing to its rising and falling popularity over the centuries. Fascinating and often funny, I’d heartily recommend this to anyone with even a passing interest in the Bard of bibliophilia.

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So, there we go! Seven different decades represented and, more surprisingly for me, two books that were published this year. Another year where non-fiction comes out on top, which seems to have become a habit for my end of the year lists – though six novels in the top ten.

Full stats for my year’s reading will be coming soon – I’m still hoping to finish at least one more before the year is over!

One of my favourite bookish activities each year is going back through my list of books read and choosing my top 10. This sometimes spills over into 12 (…or 15) but I’ve been strict with myself this year – even if it means leaving out quite a few brilliant books. This year, I ended up putting my list together around 1.30am, when I couldn’t sleep. Not ideal, but the list still reflected my thoughts in the morning!

My usual rules apply – no re-reads, only one book by any one author, and they are numbered because I love a numbered list! These rankings might shift on another day, but not too much. The title links through to the review in each case. Ok, from #10 to #1…

10.) The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979) by Milan Kundera

Nobody but Kundera could have written this novel – a patchwork of seemingly disparate events in Czech people’s lives, from fantasy narratives about angels to being stalked by government agents. Its held together by his astonishing ability to draw parallels, and that wonderful writing (translated by Aaron Asher).

9.) Buttercups and Daisies (1931) by Compton Mackenzie

I’ve only read two novels by Mackenzie, and both have ended up on my Best Books of the Year lists for their respective years, so I’m definitely going to have to read more. In this one, idealistic Mr Waterall drags his long-suffering family off on an ill-fated attempt to get back to nature.

8.) Two Lives (2007) by Janet Malcolm

I read this hoping to find out more about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas – the ‘two lives’ of the title. I did that, but more importantly it introduced me to the odd, innovative, and bold world of Malcolm’s writing. I read two other books by her this year, after Two Lives, but the one that introduced me to her remains my favourite.

7.) A Lost Lady (1923) by Willa Cather

My 25 Books in 25 Days project was great fun, and introduced me to this spectacular novella – a portrait of Mrs Forrester from the vantage of a younger man, whose idolisation of her falters when he realises she has feet of clay. Beautifully written.

6.) Pigs in Heaven (1993) by Barbara Kingsolver

I might never have taken this off my shelf if A Century of Books hadn’t come along, and 1993 hadn’t proved so difficult to fill. Thank goodness I did – this sequel to The Bean Trees looks at the effects of an adoption of a Native American child – as a Native American lawyer seeks to return that child to her community.

5.) The Gipsy in the Parlour (1954) by Margery Sharp

I’ve read a few Sharp novels this year, but this was the most immersive and wonderful. Not at all comic, as some of her books are, it looks at how the arrival of a new bride to a close-knit family can totally and insidiously transform it – all from the perspective of a young relative who is an occasional visitor. Melancholic and extraordinary.

4.) This Little Art (2017) by Kate Briggs

Who’d have thought a non-fiction book about translation could sustain such momentum, have so much intrigue, and be so endlessly fascinating? Quirkily structured, it feels both stream of consciousness and meticulously planned – you won’t read anything else quite like it.

3.) Cassandra at the Wedding (1962) by Dorothy Baker

I’d read one Baker novel previously (and another that turned out to be by a different Dorothy Baker), but I wasn’t prepared for how brilliant this is. Beautifully written, Baker gradually unfolds the lives of Cassandra and Judith – twins alienated and now reunited for the latter’s wedding. It is now top of my list of authors writing about twins, which she does with astonishing understanding for an only child.

2.) The Devil’s Candy (1992) by Julie Salamon

Proof that reading outside your comfort zone is a good idea sometimes – I couldn’t have imagined I’d love a book about the making of The Bonfire of the Vanities movie so much, particularly since I’ve never seen the film. Salamon’s book is so brilliant because of the even pacing and total immersion in the world she reports.

1.) The Sweet and Twenties (1958) by Beverley Nichols

For the second year in a row, my favourite book of the year was by Beverley Nichols! This time, it’s his retrospective of the 1920s that Karen and I discussed when she was a guest on ‘Tea or Books?’. From the Thompson/Bywaters case to the fashions of the period, it’s historically rich and fascinating, as well as being soaked in Nichols’ inimitable style. A total delight!

It’s that time of year – where bloggers look back over the books they’ve read during the past twelve months to pick their favourites. I always look forward to – reading the lists that other people compile, and choosing my favourites.

This year, I’ve managed to keep it ten – even though that meant leaving off some books I really liked by notables like Elizabeth von Arnim, Vita Sackville-West, Muriel Spark, Ivy Compton-Burnett, E.H. Young, Elizabeth Bowen… basically, the list could have been much longer. And the top book – well, it’s not the one I’ve been telling everyone it would be, because I hadn’t remembered my favourite book of the year had slipped into the first few days of 2016, rather than the last few of 2015.

My usual self-imposed rules apply – no re-reads and only one book per author. Click on the title to take you to the review!

10. Daisy’s Aunt (1910) by E.F. Benson

A frivolous, funny, and entirely delightful novel that reminds me that there’s so much more to E.F. Benson than the (wonderful) Mapp and Lucia books.

9. Poor Relations (1919) by Compton Mackenzie

This was a lovely surprise – one of the books I took with me to Edinburgh, and an extremely funny and sharp book. Another author to explore more…

8. Over the Footlights and Other Fancies (1923) by Stephen Leacock

A return to one of my favourite authors was a definite success – and makes me glad that I kept off making my list until the end of the year.

7. Greengates (1936) by R.C. Sherriff

I only just finished this one, and haven’t reviewed yet – but the next episode of ‘Tea or Books?’ podcast will cover it. For now, I’ve linked to Rachel’s review of this observant, gentle, rather beautiful tale of a couple entering retirement.

6. Americanah (2013) by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I wasn’t sure which Adichie book to choose – I’ve read three of hers in 2016 – but it’s this one which has stayed with me the most. Her novel of Nigerian ex-pats in the UK and US is thoughtful, poignant, and brilliantly told.

5. Terms and Conditions (2016) by Ysenda Maxtone Graham

I’m far from the only person who’s fallen in love with this Slightly Foxed offering – an anecdotal history of girls’ boarding schools 1939-1979.

4. The Museum of Cheats (1947) by Sylvia Townsend Warner

I’ve not read any of Warner’s short stories before, but absolutely loved her touch with these when I read the collection during the #1947Club. (#1951Club to come in the spring!)

3. Cider With Rosie (1959) by Laurie Lee

This was the first book I read especially for ‘Tea or Books?’, and I’m so glad I did! This charming memoir is rightly beloved by many.

2. The Lost Europeans (1958) by Emanuel Litvinoff

The novel I thought would be the top one on my list – a brilliantly written portrait of two men trying to come to terms with Germany and their pasts after the Second World War.

1.The Lark (1922) by E. Nesbit

Once I’d remembered that this was one of my first reads in 2016, how could anything else come top of my list? It’s rare to read a novel this funny, joyful, and charming – about two young women setting up a flower shop, and their witty adventures. Even better – it’s coming back into print from Scott and the Furrowed Middlebrow imprint at Dean Street Press!