2020 year in reading
Jan. 3rd, 2021 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeFirst of all, writing up a few books that I read as research for my Yuletide fics:
Cambridge County Geographies: Forfarshire by Easton S. Valentine (1912). Read for some local early twentieth century Angus colour (Forfarshire is an alternative name for the same county). Ranges over various aspects of geography and was pretty interesting—I got some nice inspiration for scenery and bird life out of it, in any case. :)
Q-Ships and Their Story by E. Keble Chatterton (1922). Q-ships were armed ships disguised as merchant vessels, fishing boats and so on, used in the First World War to lure enemy submarines to their doom. I stumbled across the topic while trying to work out what Angus fishermen might have done in the war, and this account, written by an RNVR commander, was a fascinating read. There's a lot of drama, daring and bravery in the stories of Q-ship warfare, and the author's style is both accessible and detailed—good stuff.
Linnaeus: Nature and Nation by Lisbet Koerner (1999). I didn't need to read an entire biography of Linnaeus to write two lines about him in a Flight of the Heron fic, but I'm very glad I read this anyway, because it's fascinating. Koerner sets out how Linnaeus's approach to botany and species classification fit into a very specific 'cameralist' economic and political context, and where some of his stranger ambitions (like growing tea and tropical spices in northern Sweden) came from. Also, it pleased me to learn that the two major political factions in eighteenth-century Sweden were called the Caps and the Hats (Linnaeus was on the Hats' side) (about as sensible as 'Whig' and 'Tory', really...). Also, there's a reference to a book—Sketch of a Description of Laholm's Parsonage by Pehr Osbeck—which the author describes as the Swedish The Natural History of Selborne, and I'm distraught that I can't find it anywhere because that sounds extremely relevant to my interests. :(
Anyway, onto the reading year... I read something between 89 and 92 books, depending on how you count reading the same book twice (I re-read Flight of the Heron and Sir Isumbras at the Ford for Broster fandom reasons, and Piranesi because I just liked it that much). That's nearly half as many again as in 2019—for obvious reasons I had more free time and less to do with it, and reading has been a great comfort amidst the trials and difficulties of the year.
Highlights include:
It's been a pretty good year for reading, on the whole! Lots of progress made on both the E. W. Hornung and D. K. Broster read-throughs, some old favourites revisited and new favourites discovered.
I've already got the new year off to a good start by reading another Sutcliff, on which more thoughts shortly. :D
Cambridge County Geographies: Forfarshire by Easton S. Valentine (1912). Read for some local early twentieth century Angus colour (Forfarshire is an alternative name for the same county). Ranges over various aspects of geography and was pretty interesting—I got some nice inspiration for scenery and bird life out of it, in any case. :)
Q-Ships and Their Story by E. Keble Chatterton (1922). Q-ships were armed ships disguised as merchant vessels, fishing boats and so on, used in the First World War to lure enemy submarines to their doom. I stumbled across the topic while trying to work out what Angus fishermen might have done in the war, and this account, written by an RNVR commander, was a fascinating read. There's a lot of drama, daring and bravery in the stories of Q-ship warfare, and the author's style is both accessible and detailed—good stuff.
Linnaeus: Nature and Nation by Lisbet Koerner (1999). I didn't need to read an entire biography of Linnaeus to write two lines about him in a Flight of the Heron fic, but I'm very glad I read this anyway, because it's fascinating. Koerner sets out how Linnaeus's approach to botany and species classification fit into a very specific 'cameralist' economic and political context, and where some of his stranger ambitions (like growing tea and tropical spices in northern Sweden) came from. Also, it pleased me to learn that the two major political factions in eighteenth-century Sweden were called the Caps and the Hats (Linnaeus was on the Hats' side) (about as sensible as 'Whig' and 'Tory', really...). Also, there's a reference to a book—Sketch of a Description of Laholm's Parsonage by Pehr Osbeck—which the author describes as the Swedish The Natural History of Selborne, and I'm distraught that I can't find it anywhere because that sounds extremely relevant to my interests. :(
Anyway, onto the reading year... I read something between 89 and 92 books, depending on how you count reading the same book twice (I re-read Flight of the Heron and Sir Isumbras at the Ford for Broster fandom reasons, and Piranesi because I just liked it that much). That's nearly half as many again as in 2019—for obvious reasons I had more free time and less to do with it, and reading has been a great comfort amidst the trials and difficulties of the year.
Highlights include:
- Frontier Wolf and Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff
- Gösta Berling's Saga and various others by Selma Lagerlöf
- Re-reading the Malory Towers books by Enid Blyton for the first time in many years
- Quatrevingt-treize by Victor Hugo
- Various Jacobite history books, of which my faves were The '45 by Christopher Duffy and The Lyon in Mourning by Robert Forbes
- Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison
- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
- Nine books by D. K. Broster, of which my faves (besides FotH!) were Sir Isumbras at the Ford and "Mr Rowl"
- And six books by E. W. Hornung, of which I especially enjoyed Stingaree and No Hero
It's been a pretty good year for reading, on the whole! Lots of progress made on both the E. W. Hornung and D. K. Broster read-throughs, some old favourites revisited and new favourites discovered.
I've already got the new year off to a good start by reading another Sutcliff, on which more thoughts shortly. :D
no subject
Date: Jan. 3rd, 2021 09:15 pm (UTC)Here is the Pehr Osbeck book you wanted, though it's in Swedish, and good luck running 18th century Swedish through Google translate! Runeberg.org is like gutenberg.org, except for old Swedish books.
no subject
Date: Jan. 4th, 2021 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 4th, 2021 09:25 pm (UTC)I would love to know what your favourite Sutcliff is? I read and loved many of her books a very long time ago, but when I recently decided I'd like to reread some, I realised I could not remember anything about which ones I preferred or even which ones I had read!
no subject
Date: Jan. 5th, 2021 05:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 4th, 2021 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 5th, 2021 05:22 pm (UTC)