This post is slightly belated, but I’m edging in (just) before the end of the year with the final instalment of this year’s Louloureads Awards! This week we have the non-fiction award. I don’t read as much non-fiction as I would like, but I do enjoy most of what I read enormously, so it’s still a hotly contested shortlist. This year’s entrants for the Louloureads Non-fiction Award are:

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

I have yet to read Saunders’ fiction, but I loved this book about Russian short stories. This was one of the first books I finished this year, and it feels like a very long time ago now! This book is effectively an adapted version of a class Saunders teaches at Syracuse, changed for book form. He looks at multiple different short stories, all of which are reproduced in the book and none of which I’d read before, and discusses the various different storytelling tools on display. I did all the writing exercises he suggests in this book, and thoroughly looked forward to spending an hour or two with it whenever I had time. I’ve read a lot about writing this past year, and this is easily the best of the books I picked up on the subject. Click through to read the full review.

One More Croissant for the Road by Felicity Cloake

I bought this book back in November or December 2022 and stored it up for the inevitable post-Christmas gloom, once the lights have to come down and yet the days have not started to get any longer. It was the perfect antidote: cheerful, funny, and a welcome summery escape from the cold and drizzle. It follows author Felicity Cloake’s attempts to cycle around France, eating various famous French dishes and trying to work out what makes them so special. I really enjoy Cloake’s voice and thoroughly enjoyed this vicarious trip to the south of France. Click through to read the full review.

Red Sauce Brown Sauce by Felicity Cloake

I can’t remember if I originally said I would stick to one book per author per year, but if so that is a rule I am breaking gladly. This is Cloake again, on home turf this time, investigating that most vital of questions: what makes the ideal British breakfast? This is obviously a subject of national pride and importance, so I’m glad a woman of Cloake’s great skill and enthusiasm took it on. She tackles it with due comprehensiveness. I even went to the Isle of Man kipper place that she recommended while I was on my summer holiday this year, and enjoyed it enormously – I am definitely a kipper convert now. Click through to read the full review.

The Light Ages by Seb Faulk

It feels like it’s been ages since I read a proper history of science book! I think before this it has to be The Butchering Art, which probably would have been my book of 2021 if I’d been doing this then. Anyway, I greatly enjoyed this look at science in the medieval period, and especially the relationship between science and the medieval church. I especially loved the chapters on medieval clocks and on astronomical calculations – which allowed medieval people, despite subsequent Enlightenment myth-making, to work out that the Earth was round. I really loved the way Falk dealt with the relationship between faith and reason, and just enjoyed the book tremendously overall. Click through to read the full review.

This is a tricky one, with lost of worthy candidates! Ultimately, though, I have to go for:

A SWIM IN A POND IN THE RAIN by GEORGE SAUNDERS

This is a wonderful book, and I’ve thought about it so much since I’ve read it. (Every time I go into a bookshop, I locate this and then look at the books either side to see if they look similar – no joy so far). I have been taking a great deal of pleasure in writing this year, and I think this book is a big part of why. The things Saunders communicates about his own writing process, the development of characters etc – they have really stuck with me and changed the way I think. I’d also say that one thing that differentiates Saunders’ writing on writing from any other work on writing I’ve read so far is that he genuinely seems to enjoy it. So many writers-on-writing take the Hemingway attitude (“just sit at your typewriter and bleed”) – I really don’t go for the “writing is terrible but necessary” approach for writing, and it’s nice to see an established and successful author admitting that he actually likes his job.

Anyway, we’ve now found all the candidates for this year’s Book of the Year! As a reminder, here is the shortlist for the much-coveted gong:

And – drumroll please – I am delighted to announce that the Louloureads Book of the Year 2023 is:

POSSESSION by AS BYATT

I mean. I’m not even going to pretend that was a difficult decision. Of course it’s Possession. Obviously it’s Possession. A book like that doesn’t come round very often at all. Gilead, Lord of the Rings, Gaudy Night – and now Possession. Books that feel like they were written for me. I have already started reading Byatt’s Of Histories and Stories – her essays on British historical novels – and I love them too. Last time I declared an author to be a kindred spirit, it was Barbara Pym and I had spoken much too soon, so I won’t speculate ahead of the data this time – but it’s looking promising.

I hope you all had a great Christmas and are looking forward to a brilliant New Year’s Eve (or, in Australia, you have already had a brilliant New Year’s Eve)!