On the last day of the year I have been looking through the list of books I read during the year. This year I seem to have read 36 books. I used to read books from the library, but the pandemic (when libraries were closed for ages) trained me out of that habit, and now I tend to buy most of my books from charity shops. I have had some lovely gifts of books as well.

I’m a big fan of Elizabeth Strout, and her new book, Tell Me Everything, prompted me to go back and read some of her earlier novels such as Olive Kitteridge (still probably my favourite of the series) and Anything is Possible.

I also relished Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, which I hadn’t encountered before. What a strange and haunting imagination she had!

Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday was a delight. I won’t forget his description of the Vienna of his youth and the passionate dedication of the Viennese to music and theatre. ‘When the old Burgtheater where the premiere of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro had been given was to be demolished’ he writes, ‘Viennese high society gathered there in a mood of solemn emotion, and no sooner had the curtain fallen than everyone raced on stage to take home at least a splinter from the boards that had been trodden by their favourite artists as a relic. Even thirty years later, these plain wooden splinters were kept in precious caskets in many bourgeois households, just as splinters of the Holy Cross are preserved in churches.’

As the year ends I am reading Charlotte Wood’s recently published novel Stone Yard Devotional, about a middle-aged woman’s retreat to a small religious community in the Australian outback. I’m only halfway through, so I can’t tell how it’s going to end, but I’m intrigued by the laying-out of various strands which must be destined to weave together.

Wishing everyone a good start to the New Year when it comes!