How I read more books (and forgot more, too)

A Year in Books, 2019

A New Decade / The Radio Plays the Sounds we Made

I used to look for patterns in the books I read, as though each book was itself a chapter in another book, one that would tell the story of the year. But honestly, who would make up the story of last year? Not the news, but my own story, where I had my second son and lost my mother to…

I’ve been working — or at the very least, sitting at various desks, typing — for about 18 years. Before I had a career, I thought what I would do was write literature, or at the very least, serviceable novels. Then I spent a few years as a technology journalist, and another few as an editor. By the time I…

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It is fairly common in England to see small plaques set into the front of older houses with chiselled numbers saying when they were built. 1906, 1871, 1832. In Cartmel, a little village at the southern tip of the Lake District, home of…

I’ve had trouble sorting out what I read last year. The books themselves aren’t sorted. We moved in November — so…