Twelve books that stayed with me this year

I read about forty books this year, which sounds more impressive than it is. A good number were abandoned at page sixty, several were read in a hammock-like state of half-sleep on the balcony, and at least three were thrillers I’ve already forgotten the endings of.

These twelve are the ones that didn’t leave. Some I found on the stairwell swap shelf, some were pressed on me by my sister Rosie, and one I carried around Lisbon for four months like a slightly heavy talisman.

The list, in no sensible order

1. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. I read it on a rainy Sunday in one sitting and then had to go for a walk. A whole life of things left unsaid, in the politest voice imaginable.
2. The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. The one I carried around for months. You don’t read it so much as dip into it on the 28 tram, and find a sentence that describes the exact afternoon you’re having.
3. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. Barely a hundred pages, and I thought about it for weeks. Proof that a short book can hold an enormous decency.
4. Blindness by José Saramago. Long sentences, no quotation marks, and a story that grips like a hand on your wrist. I also attempted it in Portuguese, with mixed results — more on that in reading in two languages.
5. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. A travelling theatre company performing Shakespeare after the end of the world. It made me unexpectedly sentimental about electricity and airports.
6. Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. A young woman who sleeps beside the fridge because the hum comforts her. I understood this more than I’d like to admit.
7. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. A story about friendship disguised as a story about video games. I cried on a train somewhere outside Coimbra.
8. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald. Grief and a goshawk. The descriptions of the bird are so precise you can almost feel the weight of it on your glove.
9. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. Four generations of a Korean family in Japan. Long, generous and full of people I missed when it ended.
10. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. Not an easy read, but a clear one. I underlined almost every page in pencil and then felt guilty, because it was from the swap shelf.
11. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. A count under house arrest in a grand hotel. The perfect book for a week when I was ill and couldn’t leave the flat either.
12. Middlemarch by George Eliot. My big project for the summer. I was dreading it, and it turned out to be funny, wise and full of people making very ordinary, very human mistakes. Dorothea, I’m sorry I put you off for so long.

What they have in common

Looking at the list now, I notice almost every one of them is about people making a life inside some kind of limit: a hotel, a house, a grief, a language, a small town at Christmas. Perhaps that’s just what I’m drawn to from a flat with one balcony chair.

I also notice that more than half of them came to me secondhand. The swap shelf on our landing has done more for my reading than any bestseller table, and it costs nothing but the promise to put something back.

Tell me yours

I’m already building next year’s pile, which currently leans dangerously against the bedroom wall. If a book stayed with you this year, reply to The Sunday Letter and tell me about it. The best suggestions go on the landing shelf, with a note saying who recommended them.