2020 reading

Sketches from January

I finished approximately 79 books, not including manuscripts for illustration (or at least, the ones I couldn’t talk about yet). You’ll see I got through a lot of 2020 on midcentury murder and Regency and adjacent romance. 15 books were rereads, and many of those were Heyers. It doesn’t include a lot of art books, although I do want to sit down and read them more traditionally more often.

I wrote about some of the patterns in what I was reading — particularly the “romance (and tragedy) of the navigable world” over on Meanjin: What I’m Reading — Kathleen Jennings.

I was trying to do sketches or fanart for each book, but that thinned to a single broadly thematic image over the year. I still like the idea of doing it, but we shall see.

Here’s the list, including links to the individual “Read and Seen” posts, some of which include fanart and occasionally some thoughts on the books (they also show up in Observation Journal posts from time to time).

The *asterisks are for books which did something (style or trope or idea) I’m still thinking about.

• Read and Seen — January 2020
  • The Nightjar — Deborah Hewitt
  • *Silver in the Wood — Emily Tesh
  • *I See, I See — R. Henderson
  • *Domestic Life in England — Norah Lofts
  • *Show Your Work — Austin Kleon
  • *Through the Woods — Emily Carroll
• Read and Seen — February 2020
  • Keep Going — Austin Kleon
  • False Colours — Georgette Heyer
  • Hilda and the Troll — Luke Pearson 
  • *Hilda and the Midnight Giant — Luke Pearson
  • *The Creeps — Fran Krause 
  • British Prints from the Machine Age — Stephanie Lussier
  • His Countess for a Week — Sarah Mallory
• Read and Seen — March 2020
  • Spellcoats — Diana Wynne Jones
  • His at Night — Sherry Thomas
  • *“The Seventeen Executions of Signore Don Vashta” — Peter M Ball
  • The Ocean at the End of the Lane — Neil Gaiman
  • Permafrost — Alistair Reynolds
• Read and Seen — April 2020
  • The Time Traveler’s Wife — Audrey Niffenegger
  • Upright Women Wanted — Sarah Gailey
  • *Red, White & Royal Blue — Casey McQuiston
  • N or M — Agatha Christie
  • A Civil Contract — Georgette Heyer
  • Ceremonials — Katharine Coldiron
  • Mistletoe Wishes: A Regency Christmas Collection (The Winter Wife, Her Christmas Earl, A Pirate for Christmas, Mistletoe and the Major, A Match Made in Mistletoe, The Christmas Stranger) — Anna Campbell.
• Read (not seen) — May 2020
  • Sisters of the Vast Black — Lina Rather.
  • Lord Ashwood Missed Out — Tessa Dare
  • A Lady by Midnight — Tessa Dare
  • Delicious — Sherry Thomas
  • The Monster of Elendhaven — Jennifer Giesbrecht
  • *The Tallow-Wife — Angela Slatter
  • You Let Me In — Camilla Bruce
  • *Chalk — Paul Cornell
  • *Thus Was Adonis Murdered — Sarah Caudwell
  • Black Sheep — Georgette Heyer
• Read (not seen) — June 2020
  • Act Like It — Lucy Parker.
  • The Flowering Thorn — Margery Sharp
  • Marry in Scarlet — Anne Gracie
  • *An Afternoon to Kill — Shelley Smith
  • Cartographies of Danger: Mapping Hazards in America — Mark Monmonier
• Read and Seen — July 2020
  • *Slightly Foxed #66
  • Envious Casca — Georgette Heyer
  • The Blue Castle — LM Montgomery
  • *Taboo — Kim Scott
• Read and Seen — August to November 2020
  • The Girl in the Mirror — Rose Carlyle
  • Making Up — Lucy Parker
  • *The Austen Playbook — Lucy Parker
  • The Quiet Gentleman — Georgette Heyer
  • Headliners — Lucy Parker
  • A Surfeit of Lampreys — Ngaio Marsh
  • Winking at the Brim — Gladys Mitchell
  • All the Ways to Ruin a Rogue — Sophie Jordan
  • A Good Debutante’s Guide to Ruin — Sophie Jordan
  • Greenglass House — Kate Milford
  • White Cat — Holly Black
  • Red Glove — Holly Black
  • Black Heart — Holly Black
  • Arsenic for Tea — Robin Stevens
  • Tools of Titans — Tim Ferris
  • The Organised Writer — Antony Johnston
  • The 4-Hour Work Week — Tim Ferris
  • Charity Girl — Georgette Heyer
  • London’s Last True Scoundrel — Christina Brooke
  • The Magic of Thinking Big — David J Schwartz
  • The Paradox of Choice — Barry Schwartz
  • *Angel of the Crows — Katherine Addison
  • *The Eye of Love — Margery Sharpe
• Read and seen — December 2020
  • Borrowed Dreams — May McGoldrick
  • A Skinful of Shadows — Frances Hardinge
  • *Powder and Patch — Georgette Heyer
  • Reading Like a Writer — Francine Prose
  • Every Tool’s a Hammer — Adam Savage
  • Drawing is Magic — John Hendrix
  • *The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern — Lilian Jackson Braun
  • Wild Robert — Diana Wynne Jones
  • *Hamlet, Revenge! — Michael Innes
  • *The Duke Who Didn’t — Courtney Milan
  • Design for Dying — Renee Albert
  • Hex — Thomas Olde Heuvelt