Death by Owls: 2020
“Reading this at the age of 13, I understood that fantasy, the place I was looking for, is not to be found in dragons, ghosts, or magic wands. It resides in language. Fantasy is death by owls. It’s mourning through gesture. It’s music, incantation in half-light. An inverted heart.”
— An excerpt from one of my favourite things: this utterly timeless article by Sofia Samatar on the rich language of fantasy and how it crafted her into a writer (with reference to Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast)
Well, despite… *gestures at literally everything*… we made it.
The star feature of this year was of course the virtuosic Poppy War saga, immortalising in the canon one of the most soul-shredding character arcs ever penned.
This most trashfire of years also saw me finally get up to speed on Queen MM, on whom I’ve endlessly and unabashedly wept and raved elsewhere. In short: the woman owns me.
As does Carrie Fisher, whose three memoirs, in a year of similarly eviscerating non-fiction, reached straight into the storm, gathered up every broken bleeding shard of me, and stolidly marched right back to the blazing brink of the hearth.
Honourable mentions too to those god tier gems consumed via ebook and audiobook and thus not represented in the above photo: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab, Loveless by Alice Oseman, and a certain someone’s unpublished yet unforgettable contemporary YA fantasy fusing fiercely original magic with an effervescent found family and the most quirkily irreverent and irresistible humour (the world is not ready!!).
🎶 Song of the year: Criminal, TAEMIN
🎬 TV show of the year: The Haunting of Bly Manor (podium positions also to Hospital Playlist and Feel Good)
RIP 2020 ✨
“Daedalus did not long outlive his son. His limbs turned grey and nerveless, and all his strength was transmuted into smoke. I had no right to claim him, I knew it. But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”
— Circe, Madeline Miller
