The Best Books of 14

These are my top ten books I read in the last year (including poetry collections and graphic novels etc), in the order of reading (starting with the latest read).

The Waves, Virginia Woolf
The very best discovery by Woolf this semester--the long prose poetry books, with so many beutiful quotes, and a rhythm like a dream. I loved Rhoda and Bernard.

(Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf)
I re-read Mrs Dalloway this autumn and this time I adored it. It was very much like reading it for the first time, again. Furthermore, I wrote my BA essay on this book and got to spend a lot of time with it. Clarissa, always.

Kunskapens frukt, Liv Strömquist
Fantastic, funny, depressing, illuminating, as always. Everyone should read it.

We are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler
Gorgeous book that was mostly sad and sometimes funny. It was incredible to read without knowing what it was about--that surprise, when it was revealed. Staggering ideas and new thoughts on anthropomorphism's good and bad sides. I want to give this book to all my friends and family.

Villette, Charlotte Brontë
I thought it was extraordinary, especially how it was about solitude and loneliness and pride. Perhpas better than Jane Eyre.

"The Glass Essay," Glass, Irony and God, Anne Carson
I have yet to write a post on this one! It was partly the reason I started this blog--I wanted to write about "The Glass Essay." And I will. But for now, I can say it is my best essay ever, and my favourite longer poem. And I fell in love with Emily Brontë because of it.

Girl Reading, Katie Ward
Lovely book, on this list mainly because of one story. Which I want to re-read now.

The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
It was the last book I finished in Leeds, I think. I read it on my Kindle and was floored. I remember finishing it sitting in Caffé Nero in Chapel Allerton (god I miss it) and trying to hide my tears. Beautiful and sad and perhaps the greatest OTP of this year.

Division Street, Helen Mort
Wonderful poetry collection, with sharp lines and grey skies. Her wonderful voice echoing in my head. Words that feel near.

Belinda, Maria Edgeworth
This was my favourite book I read in my spring term. What I loved was the female friendships, the complex utterings of feminism, and Belinda being ridiculous and wonderful. And I loved that I discussed it afterward in my favourite room in Univerity of Leeds, with my favourite teacher.

Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein
This was a mid-term reading break, of sorts. It went quickly, because it was impossible to stop. Gorgeous writing, awful story, an admiration of language, and more than anything else, the love between Maddy and Julie. Such a fantastic love story between them. I think it is a book anyone of any age, gender or interest can read.



It was a good reading year. This autumn, especially, I have read such good books. Most by Woolf, of course, but a few other good ones.


I have read or re-read 61 books this year, including poetry collections, non-fiction and short story collections.

53 books were written by women, 6 by men, and 2 were novels or collections with writing by both men and women.

Clearly, I have read almost entirely books by women this year. It started out unconsciously, but then I more or less decided to keep doing it--excepting school reading, naturally. I did read mainly women authors in school as well. I have loved it and I plan on keeping it up. Not rigorously, but with that vague aim.

I have read a few books in Swedish, more than usual, I think: 11. I am glad of that. I want to keep adding Swedish books to my reading. Similarly with poetry. I have read 7 poetry collection, and many more online.


This has been a great reading year, supported by a fantastic year in school in terms of the modules and courses I have taken. I have learned so much. I need words, books, writing to breathe.

The Waves

I read The Waves for class a few weeks ago.

It is the fourth novel by Woolf I have read this semester. In addition, I have re-read "A Room of One's Own" and read two short stories. We have two texts left to read. It seems actually ridiculous that I, at the start of the semester, was reluctant to start with Woolf and give up 18th and 19th century literature, and that I did not then know Woolf as I do now. Well, that I did not know her is not too strange. I had not then spent around three months reading nothing but texts by Woolf or texts about Woolf. But to think, at that time, I did not realise how extraordinary her writing is. I did not even particularly like Mrs Dalloway then.

So ridiculous.


But I read The Waves and it filled me with awe from the first page. I was amazed, genuinely, to think of a novel written in that way. I had no idea before I started so it was a surprise. Then I had to read it pretty quickly because I had started late and it is quite long. My amazement abated, until I sat down in the class room for the seminar.

Somewhere in the space of three hours I realised that this book was maybe my favoruite of Woolf. Most people in class did not like it, so naturally I had to defend it. But what I loved the most was the things I couldn't voice, which was a theme during the seminar--everything I could and did not say--and I want to, need to, write it down. I wish I could have said it in class and defended the book properly.

It is a long prose poem, I guess. Or it is a novel written in very poetic prose. It is a conversation between six persons, but they never talk with each other, they just talk at each other, or at the reader. It is a novel consisting of six different voices--thoughts--running, repeating, complaining, groping, trying to explain, failing to explain, and reaching. It works, definitely, to think of as a prose poem. The sort of poem where different people speak but where the refrains and the theme and the words hold it together. It works to think of as a novel, too, albeit one without a particular plot (but To The Lighthouse does not really have a plot either, or Jacob's Room for that matter). It could also be thought of as a play, where six characters have monologues, or soliloquies, in Woolf's own word. Or, you can think of it as a radio broadcast where voices are heard and they speak without knowing if anyone listen so you have to listen.

It has fantastic language. So my favourite way of thinking about The Waves is as a long prose poem, because of the refrains and the repetitions. Oh, I loved the repetitions. I love how they defined the characters and made them recognisable. Bernard and his phrases. Neville and his perfection and classic studies. Jinny and her flames and fire and red and orange. Susan and her body working, doing stuff, and the nature and green. Louis and his self-consciousness (but the most difficult, I think, to define). And my favourite, Rhoda, immaterial, unhappy, unable to do what everyone else did, faceless and connected to water. (The women, in particular, stood out for me in terms of colours and elements: Jinny and fire and warm colours, Susan and earth and green and Rhoda and water and insubstantial grey-blue colours.)

In order not to make this too long, I will cut it short here. And only say that I loved loved loved Rhoda and Bernard. Rhoda's description of the world is fairly similar to mine (I re-read parts of her speech in a waiting room and had to put the book away because I was so nauseous and her words made me almost agitated).

The best things is the quotes. So many beautiful quotes. The second best thing is how strange it is. I can hardly believe the same writer wrote "A Room," or Orlando, or Jacob's Room. Anyway, here are some of the best quotes (put together in a way they were not put together in the book):

There was a star riding through clouds one night, and I said to the star, "Consume me."
I catch your eye. I, who had been thinking myself so vast, a temple, a church, a whole universe, confined and capable of being everywhere on the verge of things and here too, am now nothing but what you see.
I — so imperfect, so weak, so unspeakably lonely.
... the weight of the earth is pressed to my ribs.

And the poem, I think, is only your voice speaking.

It seems as if I can get to the centre of something if only I read everything Woolf wrote. Somehow, with all her exact descriptions and innovative narratives and clear-sightedness, I can understand why it is so beautiful and also so ugly, this, this, life.

School & Virginia Woolf

I have started school again. It's with mixed feelings to be sure. Mostly negative ones, but I do look forward to the structured reading again. But it won't be like in Leeds. It won't be as in-depth and interesting and enlightening. The classes are just not on the same level - they're too slow, too basic (how horrible of me). I can't stand how much time is lost on explaining things like group works and assignments. All I want it melodious voices telling me everything they have discovered about a text and be so interesting and interested that students share their own thoughts.

I will study Virginia Woolf thoroughly this semester. I didn't want that to happen, either, but it did. I'm taking a One Author course on Virginia Woolf which will be so great (if we can ever get a conversation started). The other course is Literary Theory and Method and the only fiction in that course will be To the Ligthouse. And then, finally, I will write my BA essay on Virginia Woolf.

This means saying goodbye to Barbauld, Austen and Edgeworth (for now, at least). Give up the last of my Leeds studies. I wanted to do my essay on the 18th century and women's spaces and their interiority. But they did apparently not have a supervisor for it so I was given the Virginia Woolf one (it was my second choice). It's fine, I guess, only I had looked forward to immerse myself in the late 18th century again. And it will be so much Virginia Woolf.
(Mostly I can't bear to leave Leeds behind.)

But I will have other opportunities to write essays. And I love Virginia Woolf. I really like my supervisor too; she's wonderful and has studied at Leeds and knew about one of my teachers there.
I have come to terms with the Woolf essay. But not quite with returning to a school full of people and my inability to inhabit it. I find the social aspect of school absolutely horrible. I want to attend small seminars and meet with teachers and never see another human being. It would be fine, just pushing through it, but it's tainting the whole reading-learning-doing school thing as well. And it's so much worse at Stockholm with the crowded halls and large buildings and big class rooms and classes and none of the intimacy and privacy of the teacher's own studies.

To end with something else, another emotion, here is a part from To the Lighthouse:

'And it was then too, in that chill and windy way, as she began to paint, that there forced themselves upon her other things, her own inadequacy, her insignificance, keeping house for her father off the Brompton Road, and had much ado to control her impulse to fling herself (thank Heaven she had always resisted so far) at Mrs Ramsay's knee and say to her - but what could one say to her? "I'm in love with you?" No that was not true. "I'm in love with this all," waving her hand at the hedge, at the house, at the children. It was absurd, it was impossible.'

And with this, it is not at all bad to be reading nothing but Virginia Woolf this autumn.

Goodreads list

I'm currently in the middle of long-and-slow move into a student flat, as well as working full time, which means I don't have a whole lot of time. I think I'll have more time this weekend; until then, I have a Goodreads book list I wanted to finish.

What was the last book you marked as "read"?
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones (my yearly, this-time-fifth re-read)

What are you "currently reading"?
Girl Reading by Katie Ward, which I just started, and Helen Mort's poetry collection Pint For the Ghost

What was the last book you marked as "to read"?
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon - suggested by one of the friends I visited Scotland (and Culloden) with.

What book do you plan on reading next?
I only have a few of my unread books not stored beneath my bed, so the next one will probably be a collection of Jane Austen's early and unfinished writing. I have a few poetry books as well, which I'm hoping to trick myself into reading by leaving them out.

Are you doing a 2014 Reading Challenge?
I am! Not a very trying one because I'll have school reading (which is usually fiction, though). I did 52 books, one per week, but I think I will surpass it. But I do want to re-read some books as well.

Do you have a wish-list?
YES. I'm looking forward so much to buying Anne Carson's Glass, Irony and God. I read one of the poems slash essays in it, the one about Emily Dickison, and it was the best thing I have read this year. I can't with words explain how glorious it was. So I need to have it my hand and touch the words and also read the rest of the collection.

What book do you plan on buying next?
Probably the previously mentioned one. I don't want to buy anymore books since I bought so many (too many) in England when I lived there. And by the end of summer I'll have to buy a ton of books for school (which is not too difficult when you're studying English).

Do you have favourite quotes on Goodreads?
I do, but far from all of them or even my favourites. I'm annoyed with the fact that they very rarely have my favourite quotes from the books there.

Who are your favourite authors?
Currently (and always?) Donna Tartt, Virginia Woolf, Diana Wynne Jones, the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath and Melina Marchetta to a name a few.

Have you joined any groups?
Yes, but I'm not active in any of them.


My Goodreads is here.