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I am not very good at these best books posts. My tastes in reading are quite broad and as such it makes it difficult for me to compare what I have read and to suggest one is better than another. To be honest, I sometimes wonder whether it would be easier as a blogger to concentrate on a specific genre, to give my site a stronger identity for potential readers to relate to. The problem is that this blog represents me, it’s very specific to what I am interested in, and I can’t sacrifice what I am passionate about for what might make it more accessible and, dare I say it, popular than it is.

I would love there to be more visitors to this site. It is human nature to want something that you put so much time and energy into to have a measurable value. When you publish a new review or an essay you can’t help but keep an eye on the stats page to see if anyone has noticed and it’s always nice if that bar starts rising, better still if someone bothers to press “Like” or even shares what you’ve written to their own networks. That cannot be the goal though, because no matter how hard you strive to put something of value our there you have no right to demand an audience.

So, you either keep going or you do not and I suppose that as one year dies and another comes to life you reflect. When I think about the years I have spent working on Live Many Lives it would be easy for me to look at the statistics and feel it really hasn’t been worth it, but that would be a huge mistake. The reward for what I have tried to do here is in the many books and authors that I have discovered solely because I started blogging, the connections I have made with authors, publishers and readers, the things I have learned from experts in their fields and the many lives I have lived through the words of others.

Books open up worlds, both real and imaginary, and they help us to find our place in the confusing, messy space that we live in. During the course of 2020 I have been taken on many journeys of discovery and I have explored through my reading what it means to be human and what matters to a life well lived. At a very personal level one the most powerful reads of the year and perhaps the review that gave me greatest satisfaction, was No Fixed Abode: Life and Death Among the UK’s Forgotten Homeless by Maeve McClenaghan. Having volunteered for a homeless charity, both in its services and on its board, this was a deeply moving read about rough sleeping and the shocking street death statistics in the UK.

It feels like during 2020 we have faced so many devastating threats to our way of life and I read a number of books that deal with climate change and our relationship with nature. Highlights amongst these included A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough, which reveals the reality of the climate emergency in a way that can be understood and responded to by ordinary, non-scientific people like myself, and Dara McAnulty’s beautiful debut Diary of a Young Naturalist, which is a poetic journal of one boy’s deep relationship with nature that should inspire both wonder and hope in us all.

The political environment at the moment causes me a great deal of concern as we seem to have lurched into a far right populism that encourages us to put up walls and despise anyone that appears different to ourselves. In this space perhaps the most immediately relevant book I read this year was Britain Alone by Philip Stephens which charts our course from the Suez crisis to Brexit and the issues of identity that have haunted us since the break-up of Empire after the Second World War. More optimistically perhaps, Stuart Maconie gave us The Nanny State and Me, which celebrates the role of the state in creating opportunity for us all to thrive through the NHS, schools, libraries, parks and other public assets that have been degraded in the individualistic society of the last four decades.

On a more reflective note, I have enjoyed a few books that have dug deeper into what life on this tiny planet spinning through space is all about. Wintering by Katherine May resonated with me strongly in its exploration of the darker times in our lives and working through depression, while Karen Whyatt’s 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying is a remarkable study of death through the experience of leading a hospice and the stories of transformation that occurred there. No year is complete without a good collection of essays and Helen Macdonald’s Vesper Flights is an inspirational collection across a range of topics. I also really enjoyed her Hay Festival interview alongside James Rebanks who this year gave us a fantastic insight into the development of farming and food production, alongside his vision for a sustainable food and agriculture future, in English Pastoral.

Finally, I come to fiction. As ever this section is dominated by Orenda Books because I trust Karen Sullivan’s judgment so much. Every single author in the Orenda stable delivers high quality writing whatever the genre and wherever the setting. This year I have particularly enjoyed new releases by some of my favourite authors; Louise Beech’s I Am Dust is a beautiful and haunting novel, David Ross’s There’s Only One Danny Garvey took a brilliant writer’s work to a new level in a devastating mix of comedy and tragedy, Simone Buchholz continued the brilliant Chastity Riley series with Mexico Street and Matt Wesolwski delivered the best yet in his Six Stories series with Deity.

I also went big in discovering Will Carver’s unique writing, having read Nothing Important Happened Today at the end of last year I caught up with Good Samaritans and then this year’s addition Hinton Hollow Death Trip. In other new writers for me, Helen Fitzgerald gave us a novel with enormous emotional impact in Ash Mountain and Eve Smith’s The Waiting Rooms, which details a near future dystopia in which antibiotic resistance puts life at risk from the slightest infection.

What amazes me about Orenda is that there are a host of other titles that I didn’t even get round to reading this year and I have a pile stacked up on my shelves and my Kindle to catch up with, including some much treasured authors such as Michael Malone, alongside some highly anticipated new releases.

It wasn’t all about Orenda though, in 2020 I also became a C J Tudor fan having read both The Chalk Man and The Taking of Annie Thorne early in the year, wonderfully dark stories that crossover into the supernatural and have given Tudor the title of Britain’s Stephen King. I will be enjoying The Other People and the latest release The Burning Girls, which is published in January, this coming New Year. I also discovered some new baseball writing during the pandemic lockdown, including Emily Nemens’ novel The Cactus League, about a team in Spring Training and the various troubles of players, staff, partners and fans.

I said at the start that I wasn’t very good at these “Best of…” posts. You may have been coming here for a top 5 or a top 10 and I’ve given you a rambling list across a whole host of subjects and forms. I hope there is something there for everyone to enjoy, there are certainly some that everyone should read, and I look forward to more reading, reviewing and hopefully conversation in the coming year.

Merry Christmas to you all and here’s hoping for a happy, healthy and peaceful New Year for us all. God bless us one and all.