Thinking Ahead with Books | The End of Year Book Tag

It has just started to feel like autumn for me. The leaves on the trees are turning orange, the weather is getting much colder, and bonfire night was celebrated watching fireworks on top of a hill. This has really got me out of a reading slump, back into reading, and thinking about how I want my year of reading to end.

So I thought I would do the End of the Year Book Tag which was created by Ariel Bissett on YouTube.

Are there any books you started this year that you need to finish?

Yes. Because I was in such a weird reading slump, I started and didn't finish a few books. These include Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, How to Stop Time by Matt Haig and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. I would love to have finished these before the end of the year so that they don't feel like they're dragging along too much.

Do you have an autumnal book to transition into the end of the year?

Not really. I don't really notice those kinds of themes with books and don't really horror or thrillers at all so can't choose that as a genre that feels autumn-y. However, I guess because the school term is well underway and I haven't gotten back into education, I have been craving non-fiction lately. I think this is why I have struggled to finish the books I still haven't finished because they're fiction. 

I think the autumn is going to be full of non-fiction for me. I recently read a mini book of George Orwell's essays called Why I Write which includes the essay The Lion and the Unicorn and is a stunning sociological account of English and Englishness in the 1940s, but I felt was still relevant today. 

I also just read Natives by Akala which was absolutely brilliant from the start and I will be recommending it to everyone I know who reads. And I have a few more non-fiction books on my shelf that are really intriguing to me, including What White People Can Do Next by Emma Dabiri, So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson, Factfulness by the Rosling's.

Is there a new release you're still waiting for?

There isn't a new release that I'm waiting for but there is one that I really need to get my hands on and that is Sally Rooney's latest release, Beautiful World, Where Are You? 

I don't really keep up to date with new releases and only notice when a book has actually been published, especially because I buy all my books secondhand and in paperback which means I sometimes have to wait a while to be able to own a new release.

What are three books you want to read before the end of the year?

Hmm. Now, this is such a hard question. I think I would like to read one of my Hiromi Kawakami books, Strange Weather in Tokyo or The Nakano Thrift Shop because they always feel pretty cosy and simple reads. I am thinking that I'd love to read another romance before the end of the year and I have a couple on my shelves by Mhairi McFarlane. And as a third, I'm going to have to go for a memoir and that would probably be Educated by Tara Westover because I keep seeing this shouted about online which is making me really curious. But I also have Trevor Noah's memoir, Born a Crime, on my shelves and I read the first few pages of it when I bought it and it looks great too.

Is there a book you think could still shock you and become your favourite book of the year?

This is a pretty exciting question because I don't really think about books in this way but I think it would keep up my excitement for reading if I did because then it wouldn't feel so daunting when I finish a book. When I get to the end of a book, whether it's one I loved or felt a bit meh about, I feel so daunted about what to read next because what if the next book is worse than the last or better and I'm not ready for it. 

Also, I am struggling with this question, because I have A LOT of books on my physical shelves and I don't know which ones I am planning to read before the end of the year. 

I think I'll have to say Educated by Tara Westover because everyone who has read this book seems to completely love it but I'm not really sure if I'm so interested in the topic. I also think I should probably read Song of Achilles before the end of the year and that could become a favourite because everyone raves about that one.

Have you already started making reading plans for 2022?

I haven't but at the same time, I think I do have some genres which I would love to focus on and I will have the same goal as this year to read 50 books in 2022. Which I smashed this year and am really proud of myself for that.

Next year, I would love to read some more non-fiction books about the climate crisis because I kept telling myself to pick them up this year but just ended up reading something fiction instead or getting a little bit intimidated or scared. Some of the books I have in mind are This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein, Feral by George Monbiot or Six Degrees by Mark Lynas. 

I would also love to keep plugging away are my goal to read a book from each country in the world (that is the author is from each country). I have quite a few on my shelves and I would love to start properly tackling them next year. Some of the ones I am most excited about are Snow by Orhan Pamuk, The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Reef by Romesh Gunesekera, and By Night the Mountain Burns by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel. 

Photo by Laura Kapfer on Unsplash