This year has been a strange one for the world of books. Covid meant that bookshops were closed for much of the time, which meant that readers were denied the joy of browsing, and the affiliated pleasure of judging books by their covers.
In turn, we authors were denied most of the usual ego-boosts normally associated with a new book: no launch parties, no literary festivals, no search, fruitless or otherwise, for your book on the shelves of Waterstones, no trips to out-of-the-way radio studios for a two-minute interview on BBC Radio Umbrage.
The upside of it all was that more books were read than ever before. It was often said that comfort reading was all the rage – but then again, most books provide some form of comfort.
MEMOIRS
by Barbara Amiel (Constable £25)
‘Losing status, money, reputation and security is a shock when it happens all within a few days,’ writes Barbara Amiel in her fabulously gutsy and revealing memoir.
She takes us from her world of glittering wealth to the darkness of near-penury, when her husband, media tycoon Conrad Black, was jailed for fraud.
Loathe her for her self-pampering high-spending, or pity her for her plummeting descent, you’ll be swept along by the eye-popping details. One day, Ghislaine Maxwell said: ‘I’ll bet I’m in charge of more bathrooms and lavatories than you.’ They started totting them up including those on planes and choppers. Ghislaine won. ‘The Palm Beach version of Monopoly, I suppose.’