The act of reading ... begins on a flat surface, counter or page, and then gets stirred and chopped and blended until what we make, in the end, is a dish, or story, all our own.
— Adam Gopnik

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Books read in 2020


Biographies, memoirs, letters, literature, history
  • Helen Ashton, I had a sister {May}
  • Erica Bauermeister, House lessons {July}
  • Kate Winkler Dawson, Death in the air:  the true story of a serial killer, the great London smog, and the strangling of a city {May}
  • Anne Glenconner, Lady in waiting {May}
  • Christina Hardyman, Novel houses:  twenty famous fictional dwellings {March}
  • Claire Harman, Murder by the book {August}
    Hilary Jackson, Dress in the age of Jane Austen {January}
  • Sheila Kaye-Smith, Kitchen fugue {August}
  • Sheila Kaye-Smith and G.B. Stern, More talk of Jane Austen {September}
  • Sheila Kaye-Smith and G.B. Stern, Talking of Jane Austen {April}
  • Erik Larson, The splendid and the vile {June}
  • Elizabeth Longford, The pebbled shore {May}
  • Emily Midorikawa and Emily Claire McSweeney, A secret sisterhood:  the literary friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf {May}
  • Claudia Renton, Those wild Wyndhams {June}
  • Kristin Richardson, The season:  a social history of the debutante {February}
  • Margaret Rhodes, The final courtsey {December}
  • Jane Robinson, A force to be reckoned with:  a history of the Women's Institute {April}
  • Omid Scobie and Caroline Durand, Finding freedom {December}
  • Fanny Singer, Always home:  a daughter's recipes and stories {Novrember}
  • Susan Tweedsmuir, The Edwardian Lady {May}
  • Susan Tweedsmuir, The lilac and the rose {June}
  • Bee Wilson, The way we eat now {July}
  • Serena Zabin, The Boston Massacre:  a family history {May}

Fiction
  • Jane Austen, Sanditon {January}
  • Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility {April}
  • Jane Austen and Another Lady, Sanditon {April}
  • Elizabeth Buchan, Daughters {February}
  • Mary Essex, Tea is so intoxicating {November}
  • Gina Fattone, The spinster diaries {May}
  • Maggie Humm, Talland House {October}
  • Henry James, Washington Square {December}
  • Natalie Jenner, The Jane Austen Society {November}
  • Elinor Lipman, The pursuit of Alice Thrift {December}
  • Elinor Lipman, Rachel to the rescue {November}
  • Mameve Medwed, Host family {December}
  • Cathleen Schine, The grammarians {October}
  • Madeleine St. John, The women in black {September}
  • D.E. Stevenson, Vittoria Cottage {September}
  • Emma Tennant, Emma in love {April}
  • Angela Thirkell, Cheerfulness breaks in {August}
  • Angela Thirkell, Northbridge Rectory {August}
  • Anthony Trollope, Christmas at Thompson Hall and other Christmas stories {December}
  • Anthony Trollope, The way we live now {January}
  • Joanna Trollope, Balancing act {May} 
  • Joanna Trollope, Mum & Dad {August}
  • Edith Wharton, The age of innocence {October}

Mysteries
  • Catherine Aird, A late Phoenix {August}
  • Margery Allngham, The White Cottage mystery {August}
  • Ace Atkins, Angel eyes {March}
  • Cara Black, Murder in Bel-Air {July}{for Paris in July}
  • Lynne Brittney, A murder in Chelsea {May}
  • Ann Cleeves, The darkest evening {December}
  • Elly Griffiths, The lantern men {August}
  • Martha Grimes, The black cat {October}
  • Martha Grimes, Dust {February}
  • Sophie Hannah, The killings at Kingfisher Hall {December}
  • Sophie Hannah, The mystery of the three quarters {October}
  • Susan Hill, The benefits of hindsight {July}
  • Donna Leon, Trace elements {May}
  • Alexander McCall Smith, The geometry of holding hands {August}
  • Frederique Molay, The city of blood {July} {for Paris in July}
  • Frederique Molay, Crossing the line {July} {for Paris in July}
  • Frederique Molay, Looking to the woods {December}
  • Frederique Molay, Vital Links  {December}
  • Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club {November}
  • Louise Penny, The long way home {June}
  • Anne Perry, One fatal flaw {August}
  • Deana Raybourn, A murderous relation {June}
  • Peter Robinson, Many rivers to cross {February}
  • Kate Rhodes, Blood symmetry {November}
  • Julia Spencer-Fleming, Hid from our eyes {August}
  • Nicola Upson, The secrets of winter {December}

The books listed in bold type were among my most favorite this year.

12.31.20

No comments:

Thank you for visiting!

Card Catalog

#6barsets #emma200th #maisie #Middlemarchin2019 #PalliserParty #Woolfalong A.A. Milne Agatha Christie Alexander McCall Smith Allison Pearson Amy Lowell Angela Thirkell Ann Bridge Anne Perry Anthony Trollope Anticipation Armchair Travels Art Audiobooks Barbara Pym Biography Bloomsbury Bookish things Boston British Library Crime Classics Cambridge Cathleen Schine Charles Dickens Coffee-table books Cookbooks D.E. Stevenson Deborah Crombie Donna Leon Dorothy L. Sayers Dorothy Whipple E.H. Young E.M. Delafield E.M. Forster Edith Wharton Elinor Lipman Elizabeth Gaskell Elizabeth Jenkins Elizabeth Taylor Elizabeth von Arnim Ellizabeth Taylor Emily Dickinson Ernest Hemingway Essays Eudora Welty Fanny Burney Fiction Films Food from Books Food Writing Found on a Blog George Eliot Georgette Heyer Gertrude Stein Helen Ashton Henry James History Homes and Haunts Ideas Imogen Robertson Isabella Stewart Gardner Jacqueline Winspear Jane Austen Joanna Trollope Julia Child Language Laurie Colwin Letters Library Books Literature Louise Andrews Kent Louise Penny M.F.K. Fisher Madame Bovary Madame de Sévigné Madame de Staël Margaret Kennedy Margery Sharp Martha Grimes Mary Shelley Memoirs Miss Read My Year with Edith Mysteries Nathaniel Hawthorne Nonfiction Nook Only Connect P.D. James Paris in July Persephones Plays Poetry Pride and Prejudice 200 Queen Victoria R.I.P. Reading England 2015 Ruth Rendell Sarah Orne Jewett Short Stories Susan Hill Switzerland Sylvia Beach Team Middlemarch The 1924 Club The Brontës the Carlyles The Classics Club Thomas Hardy Virago Virginia Woolf Washington Irving Willa Cather William Maxwell Winifred Peck Winifred Watson