​Well-written children’s fiction can have wonderfully soothing powers to it. There’s a lot of comfort to be found in the simplicity of the storytelling, the fun and quirky characters and the wholesome messages they support which a lot of us still need reminding of as we get older. When we turn to a children’s book, we want to feel like we’re being read to and we want to feel like everything will be alright in the end. In this regard, Kelly Barnhill’s magical novel The Girl Who Drank The Moon provides us with that gentle, smiling escapism that we crave. 

​Moshin Hamid takes the pressing issue of the refugee crisis head-on, with a highly readable and engaging script. The novel explores the lives of a couple who flee their war-torn state in search of a new life. The narrative evolves around Nadia and Saeed, who are besotted with each other. They have a deep entwining relationship and share ideas and resources with each other. Both coming from a cultured background, they have shared interests in art and literature. Their comfortable existence in a metropolitan suburb is shattered by a brutal civil conflict. The tragedy of family loss is also discussed. 

David Lynch has said that of all the films he has directed during his career, his 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune was the only one he truly didn’t like. By the end, he says, he had lost creative control, and did not get the say on the final cut. The film itself is, well, fine. It’s a competent adaptation. It falls far short of what it could have been. During the 1970s, many tried to get their own vision for a Dune adaptation off the ground-- most famously Alejandro Jodoroswky’s version scored by Pink Floyd. So far, no definitive film adaptation exists, but Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming “industrial” version, as Jodorowsky called it, looks set to be the film version of Dune. My reading in 2020 was dominated by Dune; I was a long-time fan of the original but had never explored the sequels. Reflecting on the enduring popularity of Dune, the true greatness of the original novel became clearer than ever. 

​The world of graphic novels nowadays is more expansive and innovative than ever. Outside the big hitters from the likes of Marvel and Doctor Who, there is a whole myriad of quirky and fascinating work that seems to be getting more and more niche by the minute, so much so that it can be difficult for someone new to the genre to know what’s worth reading. However, with the new American and Canadian ice hockey season just getting underway, one series that deserves spotlighting is Ngozi Ukazu’s Check, Please!, a nostalgic and heartwarming story about a university hockey team, pies, growing up, and above all, friendship. 

​Ferenc Karinthy was a novelist, playwright, journalist and apparently water polo champion from Hungary. He died in 1992, leaving over a dozen novels behind, but it wasn’t until 2008 that his work was first translated into English. And so it was that Metropole began its march across Europe, a dystopian novel fittingly about the rapid acceleration of globalisation, the blurring of nationalities and the loss of identity. With its stark and bludgeoning writing style, it’s a reading experience as confusing and bewildering as the megacity dystopia it depicts. 

It’s a curious thing to be told by an author, who has written a book on a subject, that the truth of said subject is only ‘concealed by explaining it’. That a major branch of the world’s fourth largest religion has ‘nothing to say, nothing to teach’. Philosophies and schools of thought in the west have been much more characterised by grand abstraction and complex conceptual frameworks, authors whose ability to think is much greater than their ability to commit their thoughts to paper. Alan Watts' The Way of Zen provides a detailed historical view of the origins of Zen Buddhism and an almost artistic summary of the Zen approach to reality. Though old and many such books have come in its place since, it remains one of the best introductions to Zen in English. ​

I’ve tried to write about this book several times since I first read it back in June; every attempt I make seems to fizzle a few sentences in. I read Charlie Jane Anders’ first novel, All the Birds in the Sky, during a particularly depressing summer, and it sparked something hopeful in me that I thought I’d lost. It’s a book about talking to animals and building supercomputers, and it is beautiful and charming and kind, in as much as a book can be kind. I loved Anders’ vision, her aesthetics, her narrative voice.
 
So I had been eagerly anticipating her follow-up release, The City in the Middle of the Night, for quite some time, and after I’d read it I loved it too. I’m writing this because I want to explain why. Maybe this time I’ll even manage it. 

It’s been a year to really get you thinking, and think I did. For almost half of the year I was on furlough, leaving me with more free time on my hands than I had had in years. Time that I spent thinking and reading, and reading and thinking, and thinking about what I’d been reading – which led me to reading philosophy. I’m going to share with you a couple of the books that really stuck with me in the hopes that you can read them too and start to see philosophy, like I have, as an anchor in a choppy sea and a safe place to call home.