New year's resolution - read a wider variety of genres

On 1/1/2018, I set a fun New Year’s Resolution for once – to read a wider genre of books, books I might usually pick up and put back down again or completely disregard – like non-fiction (I’m really bad at reading it!) and mysteries.

Reading young adult stories is usually on my agenda, but I wanted to find other books that surprised and wowed me.

Here are my best and worst in reading adventures 2018, for your 2019 reading inspiration. Tell me your recommendations, and ones to avoid – I’d love to hear them.

Favourite book by a Kiwi writer

The very first book I read this year, The Wish Child by Catherine Chidgey (2016), was my favourite. Two kids growing up in Berlin provide a unique German-perspective on World War Two. Almost a year on, I still hold vivid mental images from this book. Each setting is described through the children’s eyes – from a bee-keeping farm in the countryside, where Erich lives a simple life, to the middle-class Berlin apartment of Siggy. The war-torn, dangerous streets of Berlin when it falls are where the children finally meet one another. It’s all about perspective and scene-setting in this book, along with the tragedy of childhoods disrupted.

Fishing for Maui (2018) by Isa Pearl Ritchie comes a close second, with its tale of mental illness and Maori mythology cleverly woven together.

Most surprising

A friend leant me On Beauty by Zadie Smith (2005), about a mixed-race family in upper-middle class America; a white college professor, his black wife, and their three young adult children. Smith’s characters’ perceptions of what constitutes beauty, race and class, often had me laughing out loud. Smith is a master of language and uses slang in ways I wish I could, with one of the family’s kids changing the way he speaks to Black American slang, highlighting the differences between him and his posh university-going siblings. Then there’s Howard, the bumbling professor who doesn’t recognise the beauty of his larger wife Kiki, and sleeps with a young, conventionally beautiful black student, Victoria, in some equally bumbling and hilarious (on-purpose) sex scenes.

The book I couldn’t finish

I picked up Mansfield by CK Stead (2004) at the DCM book fair in Wellington, in that tradition of spotting books you’ve always meant to read but never got round to. I couldn’t get a sense of what Stead was trying to do with Katherine Mansfield’s character (this is a work of fiction that traces Mansfield’s life), or how her experiences were shaping her – whether it was losing her brother, her strange marriage with John Middleton Murry, or her quest to be a well-known writer. Maybe I didn’t click with Mansfield’s character or the style of the book? When I reached a scene where DH Lawrence hits his wife in front of Mansfield and Murry, and nobody tries to stop it, I put the book down and stopped reading. Couldn’t deal.

Best young adult series

I read two YA series this year, The Eve of Man (2018), the first book in a dystopian series by Giovanna and Tom Fletcher, and an alien/sci-fi series called the Fifth Wave by Rick Yancey.

Both are full of that good-old young adult angst and heightened emotions.

The Fifth Wave won out. The three books in the series switch viewpoints between five characters, which is a little jarring, but it has a fast-moving plot and some seriously cool ideas about how aliens invade earth in five stages. With a suitably tragic ending (always something that makes a book memorable), I enjoyed how the complex technology contributed to the plot and drove the action forward.

The Eve of Man, with female lead character Eve, was not as strong and defiant as Yancey’s Cassie. But the book has some interesting ideas about the role of women, with Eve being the last girl born on earth. It also ends on a cliffhanger (who does that?! Argh!) so needless to say, because I need closure, I’ll be checking out the next book.

Did I fulfill my New Year’s resolution?

Most read genre

Young Adult with 9 books

Least-read genre

Non-fiction and Self-help: 1 book each. So I’m still not succeeding on the non-fiction front.

25 books across 11 genres

I still read a lot of my favourite genre, but I managed to read about 10 other genres too including historical fiction, New Zealand fiction, classic literature, non-fiction biography, literary fiction, mystery, thriller, young adult – dystopian/sci-fi, war, self-help, satire, and romance.

What were your best, worst, and most surprising reads of 2018?

I finished reading The Fifth Wave series on a beach holiday underneath the stars, the perfect setting for a book about aliens.