The Firebreak Files #10

Books I have loved this year...oh there have been quite a few! Like many others, I have read more under Lock-Down than before - and I was reading plenty before. Novels have always been a huge part of my interior life - I could read before I went to school and reckon school taught me nothing new...

So... Lock-Down books! Early on I started to buy copious books from my favourite online second-hand bookshop. A few were duds, and went back into the box for Oxfam (life is too short...). Quite a few were ho-hum, and some of those have suffered the same fate.

And a few were wonderful and have now been read twice...among those was of course Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet, and 'My Beautiful Friend' is number three in this year's best books list.

Number two in the list is the astonishing 'Station Eleven' by Emily St John Mandel - a post-apocalyptic, post-pandemic novel, achingly beautiful, horrifying and, I promise you, life-affirming!

And number one? Has to be 'Devisadero' by Michael Ondaatje, which I read twice, back to back in the summer ..

Happy reading!