Hi everyone, I hope you're having a good
week. I realised that whilst I haven't been on booktube for five years, I've
been on here just over four years, I have made a 'Best of Books' video for the past 5
years, so for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 I'll link all those videos in the
description box down below. Now, what I thought I'd do today is get my computer,
which is here; I don't know why I felt the need to pick it up in case you
thought I was lying and didn't have my computer — there it is; I have all of those
videos here and I thought I would go through them, remind myself of which
books were my favourites from each year and tell you a little bit about those
books... how how they have lasted, I suppose, whether I still consider them
favourites or whether they were more 'of the moment.' And then I am going to write
down books as I go that I consider to be my favourite books of the last 5 years
and at the end of the video I'm going to try and order those. I'm gonna pull them
from my shelves, I'm going to try and put them in some sort of order, and we can
have a top 10 — probably more than a top 10 — books of the last 5 years.
Cool? Let's do it. Okay, let's start with 2014, what's going to be interesting
actually is looking at reading years as a whole and seeing if any were more
successful than others. I haven't studied these prior to filming this video
because I wanted to just talk about it as I went, so I've opened the description
box, and there at number 10 for 2014 was Bird Box by Josh Malerman, which I'm
sure most of you are familiar with especially with the new Netflix film.
That book terrified me but I think it's definitely 'of the
moment'; it's not one that I cling to as a favourite now. Then, at number nine,
was The Girl Who Couldn't Read by John Harding. This was a gothic book I
remember finding the ending a little bit confusing and a bit of a letdown,
though it was very very atmospheric. Number 8: Elizabeth is Bissing by Emma Healey, this again was a really fun book; I much prefer it to Emma's second
book which came out in 2018 which I didn't really like. This was good, again,
but it's not one of my all time favourites, so I'm not going to put it on the
list. Next is We Were Liars by E Lockhart. I'm actually surprised
looking at this that it's as high on the list as it is.
Clearly at that time it was one of my favourites... I don't really have
too many memories of that one at all that I can share. Number 6: A Song for
Issy Bradley by Carys Bray. I have very fond memories of this one because it was
the first novel that Carys wrote. I had previously read her short story
collection Sweet Home which is one of my all-time favourites. I preferred her novel
Museum of You but this was still of my favourites of the year, so I love
that one, too, but I don't think it's a favourite of all time. Then we've got All
The Birds Singing by Evie Wyld, which is beautiful, beautiful book... no
I don't think it's gonna make it onto the list either, though. Then The Girl with All
the Gifts by MR Carey. Again I'm surprised that was so high up but it was...
I was going to call it a romp... it's not a romp... unless it's a zombie romp. Is that a thing? A zombie romp? [laughter] This is one like Bird Box in that I associate it with fun times,
being scared etc it's fast paced and yeah it's fun
number three Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami.
This one is complicated for me because I remember absolutely loving this book but
I feel like I've spoken about this in other videos; Murakami used to be one of
my favourite authors but I feel like I overindulged.
Murakami can feel a little... a little bit samey: lots of spaghetti, jazz, girls
with no personalities, poor queer representation and talking cats. So this
one is different to many of his other books, I think this is one of his earlier
books, it's weird and parts of it reminded me of Philip Pullman a little
bit but because my overall feeling about Murakami has changed I hesitate to
include this on my favorite books of all time simply because I feel like it's
tainted. I'm not saying the book itself is in any way bad but I find it
difficult to love it as much as I did. That's just how I feel. And now we've got
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki in at number two, and which is
fantastic... it is wonderful... but I forgave it at the time... at the time I I spoke about this, I remember in a review, saying that the ending, I didn't like
the direction that the ending took. I find it unbelievable and it sucked me out
of the book. I forgave it because I loved the beginning of it but looking
back I don't think I can include it on an all-time favourites list because of
that... what I consider to be a flaw. But at number one is The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber which is going to go on my favourite books of all
time because I mean if you've been around here longer than a week you've
probably heard me mention it. I'll speak in more detail about the books I'm
adding to this all-time favourite list at the end of the video. Okay, so only one
from 2014, let's move on to 2015 where I picked 15 books for my top favourite
books of 2015 — I see what I did there. In a number 15 I put Sum by
David Eagelman; this is a short story collection and I have very fond memories
of it and I'm actually surprised looking at this list that it is the last
favourite on this list. I've put in brackets Einsteins Dreams by Alan
Lightman next to it because clearly I didn't want to have 16 because I wanted
to have 15, because I thought that was a good number [rollseyes] but I remember linking those
two and I still do link those two very firmly in my head. Isn't it funny how you
can do that with books that you read side-by-side? So, I would say both of
these are short story collections even though the publishers claim that
Einsteins Dreams is a novel. They're both fragmented, anyway. So, Sum is a little
bit like Black Mirror; it's called forty tales of the afterlife, so forty different
versions of what heaven or hell or purgatory might be like, and then
Einstein's Dreams is Einstein dreaming about different worlds where time and
space interact or present themselves in different ways. I don't think they're
all-time favourites but I highly recommend both of them. Now we've got the
Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
which I adore and it may be silly but I think I want to include one book per
author in this list unless I feel very very strongly otherwise, so I'm not going
to include this one here but again I would highly recommend it. Next we have
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente. I'm not sure about that one. I'm going to come back to it.
Then we've got A Portable Shelter by Kirsty Logan. I really did love that
short story collection and I don't think is going to make the favourites list but
after that we have Grief is The Thing with Feathers by Max Porter. This is
number [counts] one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven on my list and I'm
really surprised by that because I am going to include that in my favourite
book, so I'll talk more about that later on in the video but I'm just gonna make
a note for myself. And then we got Beyond the Pale by Emily Urquhart which is a
nonfiction book where Emily talks about albinism around the world and how
folklore and albinism interact with each other, it's really really interesting,
don't think is going to make my all-time favorites. Then we've got the Stone Gods
by Jeanette Winterson, which is a fabulous sci-fi dystopian about how... a
little bit like what I wanted to Cloud Atlas to be and which it wasn't (for me) which
is how the same kind of people exist in different time periods. I think if you
liked the TV show Maniac you would really enjoy this as well. Don't it's going to make
my favourites list because it's not my favourite by Jeanette Winterson, not
necessarily out of the five years, I just mean out of any of her books I've read
it it's not my absolute favourite, I don't think — Oranges are not the Only Fruit is
because I'm predictable, ha, and then we've got Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire
Fuller, which was really enjoyable but it's not going to make my all-time
favourites list. The House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods by Matt
Bell, so much fun, so dark and twisted and I think the writer in me loved it for
the experiments that it did... but looking back on it, it was quite flawed and I
excused a lot of things I think because I read it right at the end of the year
and that's the trouble with doing favourites videos, because the closer you
are to something the more difficult it is to see it objectively... now we've got
The Giant Beard that was Evil, which is a wonderful graphic novel but not one I'm
going to include it in my favourites; The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer, again one I
would recommend wholeheartedly but I'm not going to put it in my favourites ...okay so
then we get to the tricky ones, so we've got Peter and Alice by John Logan, A
Guide to Being Born by Ramona Ausubel, The Dumb House by John Burnside and The Exhibit by Lauren Eggert Crown. Of course like with, The Book of Strange New Things,
if you've been here for five minutes you know I love The Dumb House, so that is
definitely going on my all time list. Then A Guide to Being Born is one
of my favorite short story collections because it has some of my favorite short
stories in it but the collection as a whole... I seem to remember that there were stories
I didn't love quite as much so I think I'm going to leave that one even though
it is one of my all-time favourite short stories... I'm gonna leave that one. Peter
and Alice by John Logan. I bawled my eyes out when I read this play; it is about
Peter Llewelyn Davies and Alice Liddell the real-life versions Peter Pan and
Alice in Wonderland and their imagined meeting. I think I am going to include this
one because... why I just told you what it was about and I was going to speak about
it at the end ...that's fine you can hear about it twice, ha - Peter and Alice. I think I
am because it really did destroy me when I read it. And then we have The Exhibit by Lauren Eggert Crowe, this was my favourite book of the year I read it late
in the year but because it's so short — it is a chapbook — it hasn't had that
lasting... it has it lasted with me, and so I think I may leave it from my all-time
favourites but I'll link it down below, well, no, I will link the video where I
talk about it and then that's linked in the description. It's like... it's like a
box that has lots of little boxes inside it. I'm going to leave it from my list today.
Okay then we get into my favourite books of 2016... so so far we've got [counts[ one, two,
three, oh no, I said I was going to come back to The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland... I still don't know I'm going to come back to it at the end, please remind
me, okay, so 2016 how many did I pick that year? I picked [counts] one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen... if I remember correctly 2016
was a very good reading year for me all right so we've got Museum of You by Carys Bray this was the this is number ... I can't remember how many... how many I just
counted but it was the last of my favourites, the bottom of my favourites, Museum of you by Carys Bray is a wonderful exploration
of family and it has a beautiful child narrator in it, so if that is your jam do
check that out. Then we've got The Butcher's Hook by Janet Ellis.
I recorded a podcast with Janet which I'll also link down below, the book is so
creepy and delightful and took unexpected twists and turns Ruby by
Cynthia Bond I felt scarred by it; is a traumatic read,
it is wonderful though I'll link my review of it in the description box down
below. I don't think any of these are going to make my favourites but then we
have The Morning they Came for Us Dispatches from Syria, a hard-hitting book
about Syria. Measures of Expatriation by Vahni Capildeo, which was a wonderful poetry
collection looking at language and how you can find home in language. The
Vegetarian by Han Kang, which is my favourite by her but I don't think I'm
going to include it in my favourites of the last five years... and then Under the Skin
by Michel Faber... again, oh, I am more tempted by this, though. I'm going to come
back to Under the Skin; I know I said I wasn't going to include more
than one book by the same author unless I felt really compelled to and I feel
like I may feel compelled to with Under the Skin, it really has been a grower for
me... the the longer it goes on the more I think about it; it's very strange. And
after that we've got Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge and I am
going to include this on my favourites list and so I'll talk about that at the
end. Okay after that we've got Blue Beyond Blue by Lauren Slater which is a
fantastic short story collection it has fairytales in it, I don't think I'm going
include it in my all-time favourites but again obviously I recommend it. Why God is a Woman by Nin Andrews, which I am going to include in my all-time favourites,
Autumn by Ali Smith which I am going to include in my all-time favourites, and The
Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss which I am going to include in my all-time
favourites. So, 2016 really was a very good reading year. I'm making a note of Under
the Skin and I'm going to decide later because I'm not sure... so now we're on to
2017. I didn't pick many books in 2017 I picked [counts] one, two, three, four, five, six, seven...
seven, okay so I had The Invention of Angela Carter, which is a fantastic
biography of an Angela Carter and it was one of our winners for the Somerset
Maugham Award that year, and it really was absolutely wonderful but I'm not
going to include it though in my all-time favourites. I'm being very very very
picky here. Creating Freedom by Raoul
Martinez was a wonderful political book but I'm not going to include it in my
all-time favourites, Stranger Baby by Emily Berry is a wonderful poetry
collection about grief, Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton is a literary
feast it's...it really is delightful to read about Margaret Cavendish. I'm not
going to include it in my all-time favourites. Don't Call Us Dead by Danez
Smith. I am going to include that in my all-time favourites. Then we've got Winter
by Ali Smith... I think what I might do because Autumn and Winter are parts of a
series, really, I might just present them both on my all-time favourites list...
I think I'm not actually sure which of the two I did prefer, so we'll leave it
there. And then also The Heart by Malyis De Kerangal was my favourite book
of 2017... it's a French novel that's been translated into English by Sam Taylor
it's known as Mend the Living in the UK I have a US Edition called The Heart.
It's about a boy who dies and then his family are told that he was a organ
donor, so it's about whether or not they're going to let the doctor take his
heart and give it to another woman and we follow the family and the woman who's
going to receive the heart. It is beautiful but it has faded over time for
me, so I think I'm actually not going to include it in my favourite books of the
last five years. And then we get onto 2018 which of course I just did and as I
mentioned in this video it is difficult to get distance from things that you
have read very recently but the two I would like to include from 2018 are my
top two books of 2018 which are A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza and
English Animals by Laura Kaye... so I'm going to scribble those down, okay, so
going back to the ones that I was going to go back to I'm not going to include
Under the Skin by Michel Faber in my all time favourite books because I did prefer
The Book of Strange New Things... I'm going to be strict with myself and I don't think
I'm going to include The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland because I
loved the first book, I did, but the series... it did deteriorate over time and
I actually never finished the fourth [I meant fifth] book, so I still love it, I still think
it's great to go back to for comfort reading but I do agree that the plot
somewhat meanders and it isn't... it could be tighter,
it could be more compact, but I loved it for everything that it is, so I'm gonna
leave it I'm going to leave it on the shelf for now. Ok, so that leaves us with
eleven books, so I'm going to pull them from my shelves, put them in some order and
come back to you. Ok, so I've pulled them off my shelves and I've put them
into some sort of order. The top end of this list was really hard to do but I've
done it. Ok so in a number eleven we have that play I mentioned called Peter and
Alice by John Logan it's an imagined meeting between Peter
Llewelyn Davies and Alice Liddell who did actually meet but that meeting and what
they said to each other was never recorded,
so it's an imagined conversation where they're talking about what it's like to
have their childhood written about and read by so many people... and it's ..it's
really, as I said, heartbreaking. Next we have the only non-fiction book on this
list which is Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge. Gary is a
British journalist who lives in the States and he decided to write about gun
violence, so he picked a random day in modern US history, I can't remember if he
rolled a dice, I don't remember what he did...
he picked a random day and decided to write about all the children who had
died that day due to gun violence. It was a day in 2013, 10 children had died, some
of that was due to arguments, some of it down to family feuds that got way out
of hand some of it was down to accidents, some of
it was down to lack of safety... it is a very traumatising read but a very
import, important book ...I know that that that word is used a lot but it is a very
very important book and I've pressed in sides and many people over the years.
Then we have a poetry collection it's a prose poetry collection called Why God is a Woman by Nin Andrews. It's a social satire and all the poems link together.
I think if you're new to poetry this is a really good one to go for; it's about
an island where men sprout... sprout birds ... no where men sprout wings when they
become teenagers and then they become sexually objectified, so it's a switch of
gender but it's not binary, either it's absolutely fantastic.
Then we've got The tidal Zone by Sarah Moss, this is my first Sarah Moss and I've since read most of her backlist. I've also recorded a podcast with her which I'll
link down below. This is about a young girl called Miriam who collapses at
school, she stops breathing she's rushed the hospital. They do revive her but then
her and her family are worried that it's going to happen again and that because they
don't know why it happened the first time, they can't prevent happening again. We
have a second poetry collection this is Don't Call us Dead by Danez Smith. This
was our winner for best collection when I judge the Forward Prizes last year. I have
recorded a podcast with Danez which I'll link down below, but this is about
what it's like being queer, black and HIV+ growing up in America today.
Now we have Grief is the Thing with Feathers; this is part novel, part
poetry, part literary criticism, it is about a family whose mother passes away,
or wife in the case of the father, she leaves behind her husband and two young
sons and then this crow turns up at the door who is Ted Hughes's crow from his
collection Crow. He's an embodiment of grief and he yells at them, he's
horrible to them, he's really unfair because grief is unfair. It is written
like poetry... it is like nothing really that I have ever read before. Again I've
recorded a podcast with Max which I'll link down below. Then we have two that
I'm counting as one we have Autumn by Ali Smith and Winter by Ali Smith these
are the first two of her seasonal quartet, she's currently writing about
the political situation in the world but specifically the UK. and it's just a
coincidence that when she started writing it was the lead-up to Brexit. It
had just been announced that there was going to be a referendum, she hadn't
planned it that way, so these are really immediate books, where the characters and
the plot of those characters kind of serve as a political commentary, but I
don't mind that at all I find it absolutely fascinating. There's so much
to discuss in these books and I've made a video for each of these books talking
about them in lots of detail which I'll link in the description box down below.
Then this is where we get to the tricky bits; we have the top four and I find it
very difficult to pick between these top four, also two of the books are books
that I read last year and as I mentioned you tend to love things more that you
have read and loved recently but I don't think that's why they're so high up on
this list, I've tried to be objective about it ...as objective as I can be and I
truly think they belong in the top four. I've put these four in some vague order
but these are my top four . and probably another day of the week I'd put them in a
different order. So in at number four, "four," we have English Animals by Laura
Kaye this is about a Slovakian woman called Mirka who moves to the UK and goes to
work in an English manor owned by a married couple called
Sophie and Richard who manipulate her and she in turn learns how to manipulate
them. It is just absolutely delightful and so vivid, then we have The Dumb House
by John Burnside which is also vivid and if you don't like reading about dead
things, don't read this... I don't know what it says about me that this also includes
taxidermy which ...reading it did make me squeamish but it it's...
it so fit in with the plot and this has a lot of death in it, a lot of
violence, so this is not for the faint-hearted at all; this is about a man
called Luke who believes that maybe if he kills things and witnesses death he
will be able to see someone's soul exiting their body, so as you might
imagine not very nice things happen to the people who surround
him. If that sounds like your cup of tea then you're dark like me! Then we have this
which is A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza.
I recorded a podcast with Fatima which I'll link down below, I'll also link a
long written review that I did of this book. This is about an Indian American
Muslim family, five members of that family looking back on 20 years of their
lives, their relationships with each other and why one member of the family
is estranged from the rest. It is about all of the little moments that come
together to make up one catastrophic thing or something that isn't that
catastrophic but it just becomes something huge that you can no longer
fix. And then in the number one, rightly or wrongly, I don't know, as I said these
last four in a very very vague order... we have The Book of Strange New Things
by Michel Faber, now one of the reasons I've put this is number one is because
Michel has become one of my favourite authors; I have read all of his books, yes, all
of his books. I have recorded, a not a podcast because
I didn't have the podcast at the time, but I recorded a video with him where I
spoke about his books, so I'll link that in the description box down below, that
was back in 2015 and so we both look quite youthful, and this was the book
that first introduced me to his work. There were others like the Crimson Petal
and the White and Under the Skin that could easily have made this list, so for
that reason I'm putting this one at number one, even though I was pretty sure
it should be a number one. that is also why it's there - apart from my love for this one thing it is a representation of my love for all of his
books. So this is about a man called Peter who was sent to the other side of
the universe to preach the Word of God to an alien life-form and I can't
remember how much is revealed at the beginning so I don't want to say why he
is sent but it is a dystopian book, it is about what makes us human, it is about
how damaging we humans can be both to ourselves and to other species, and I was
completely lost in it; I picked it up the day that it came out and I did not put
it down. So, those are all the books that I think
are my favourites since joining booktube five years ago. 11 books. I have
read lots of other amazing books in that time of course so as I said if you'd
like to see my full list of favourites from each year, I'll link those videos in the
description box. What are your favourite books from the last five years? What do
you think? What's top of your list? Also I want to know if you had guessed
what was going to be on my list because I think if you've been here a
while this list probably wasn't that surprising to you, but it was fun to go
through everything and just to remember the books that I had loved and
potentially reread some of these in the future, that's definitely something that
I would like to do. I'm going to leave it there, I hope you guys have a great week,
please subscribe if you're new and I'll speak to you very soon. Lots of bookish love. xx
