year in books 2018

[peiyen]

I've read 20 books this year, just enough to scratch the finishing line of my goodreads challenge. I know there's another 2 weeks of the year to go lol.. but I'm on The Holy Vible right now and I want to savour it!

Quite a few books on the list were picked out in an attempt to make sense of depressive moods; So Sad Today is a collection of essays from the person behind the @sosadtoday Twitter account -- her writing came across as so personal, at times it felt like the book was transcribing my inner thoughts into artful prose. It's a rare occasion that I actually felt the need to smear the pages with a highlighter.



What A Time To Be Alone was.. an antidote. I was on the way to one of Sofie Hagen's podcast recordings in Edinburgh when I made to detour into a bookstore opposite The Counting House. This book leapt out at me from the mental health shelf -- I remembered that its author, The Slumflower (ie. Chidera Eggerue) had been a guest on Sofie's Made Of Human podcast. It was an odd bit of happenstance so I ended up buying the book. It's a gorgeously designed volume that emphasises on the importance of learning to love yourself and appreciating time spent alone. It was what I needed to hear at the time.

Robin Ince's I'm A Joke And So Are You explores mental health and psychology from a comedian's perspective, which honestly is a niche that might be aimed very specifically at me. It also manages to be a really breezy, amusing read despite tackling some ~heavy subjects.

I also appreciated Irvine Welsh's writing a lot this year! I hope to read more of his stuff in future.

I think I covered a good portion of my POPSUGAR reading challenge:



I REALLY want to try reading more next year, if only to cut down my pile of unread books a bit quicker -- there's about 100 of them there right now... *despair*