*14 January 2024* I like the tradition of a good American friend, of including in her Christmas letter a summary of some of the best books she has read that year. It prompted me again to do a brief round up of my reading in 2023. The stand out book for me last year was Nick Cave in conversation with Irish journalist Seán O'Hagan, ***Hope, Faith and Carnage***. I've never listened much to Cave's music, but my son is an avid fan. This Australian musician who lives mostly in Britain has been through the depths of grief, losing two of his sons. This book explores rich spiritual themes of suffering, love, the nature of God and much more. A must-read. The stand out novel I read was ***Shuggie Bain*** by Douglas Stuart. A 2021 Booker Prize winner, this harrowing and heartening story of a young boy and his alcoholic mother is set in the poorest parts of Glasgow. It draws you in with a mixture of horror (at the suffering and squalor) and hope (in the human spirit). Other novels I read: ***The Night Man*** by Jørn Lier Horst, ***Now We Shall be Entirely Free*** by Andrew Miller, and ***Act of Oblivion*** by one of my all time favourite novelists Robert Harris. The year was bookended by the two big publications relating to the British Royal Family. I found Prince Harry's ***Spare*** deeply engaging and honest. Omod Scobie's ***Endgame*** was a disappointment, adding little to what we already know. I feel for all the principal characters in the drama that is British royalty, but seem to be in a small minority (among my friends as well as the general public) in having particular sympathy for Harry and Megan. While visiting Sicily and Sardinia in September, I had the privilege of meeting Colin Thubron, a doyen of travel writers. So it was a no brainer to read some of his books, starting with ***The Amur River***. It is an extraordinary chronicle of his courageous journey aged nearly 80 along the entire length of this 5,000 km long river. From its source in the Mongolian mountains, the Amur for great stretches of its journey defines the border between Russia and China, before releasing its waters into the sea in the Siberian far north-east. Thubron's writing is as breathtaking as his subject. John Julius Norwich's sprawling and highly-readable ***Sicily*** unlocked for me an overview of the story of this island caught over millennia in the crossfire of large-empire conflicts. DH Lawrence's memoir of his visit to Sardinia in the 1920s, ***Sea and Sardinia***, reveals a somewhat pompous and chauvinistic character, but he writes well and gives an insight into life on that island a hundred years ago. I managed only one book in Swedish: ***Bränn alla mina brev*** ('Burn all my letters') by Alex Schulman. He explores the dark secrets that he believes infected his wider family story since his grandfather Sven Stolpe, one of Sweden's greatest poets and writers, discovered and shut down his grandmother's love affair with another writer. It is an interesting exploration of the way that relationships, anger and guilt in one generation can damage relationships in a later generation. Although I am not a literary buff, I read Katherine Rundell's biography of the English poet John Donne, ***Super-Infinite***, mainly because her father was best man at my wedding. Katherine is a vivid writer who invites further exploration. I greatly enjoyed good friend Graham Turner's memoir, ***As Time Went By***. Among the overtly-spiritual books I read were ***Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time*** by Marcus Borg, ***Ikigai*** (subtitled 'the Japanese secret to a Long and Happy Life') by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles, and ***The Inner Voice of Love*** by one of my absolute favourite religious writers, Henri Nouwen. Of particular value for me was Joan Chittester's ***The Gift of Years*** which unveils a positive vision of how important and valuable one's late-in-life years can be. I read two autobiographies. The first was Matt Perry's ***Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing***, which I read before his sad death. It's a staggeringly-honest account of a highly talented and likeable man whose life is made into a living hell by his uncontrollable addictions. The fact that he seemed to have got free of them made his death all the more tragic. The second was ***One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up*** by UK Labour politician Wes Streeting who comes across as the very best kind of political leader - motivated to uplift the conditions of those most in need. His description of his own origins in the acute poverty of London's East End is telling. All in all, a varied year. I start 2024 with a long list of books on my reading list, and can't wait to read them!