“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.”

Jeanette Winterson

Book collecting is “a fate.”

Collecting books is much easier to justify when you put it like that, isn’t it? I couldn’t help it; I was fated to buy that new book, even though I have a to-be-read pile the size of the Pentagon Centre.  

Collecting books is my obsession, disease, addiction and fascination, as well as my fate. I wish I could make it my occupation, but I haven’t managed that yet. Regular readers will know I have next to no willpower when it comes to reading material, and I hoard books like Smaug from The Hobbit hoards treasure. That’s why I can’t move in the spare room of my house. Truth be told, since I wrote that post, the landing cupboard is now a casualty. But hey, that’s fate for you.

Last year, I resolved to read more books. Well, I read 17 books; ten more than I did in 2024.

Now 17 may not sound like a lot. I know people who read over 50 books last year, others who read 100. 100! That’s Olympian levels of reading as far as I’m concerned. Seventeen isn’t a personal best for me, but I read as many books as I could in the time available, and most importantly, I thoroughly enjoyed them.

Today on Medway, She Wrote – a round-up of what I read in 2025, including five books set in Kent!

Winter: A Bennett novella and a seaside murder mystery

Now I don’t know about you, but I find that January is not the time to start valiantly tackling a 900-page unit like Bleak House. Nothing saps energy like back-to-work, what’s-my-password-again brain fog, the brutal revocation of festive lie-ins, and realising that plonking yourself in front of Home Alone with a big bowl of trifle is a thing of the past. Best to start the new year gently with something short and snappy.

I kicked off 2025 with Killing Time, which sees Alan Bennett injecting his typical dark humour and wry observation into grim reality. Set in a remote retirement home in Yorkshire, it’s about a group of residents who manage to use the chaos of the Covid-19 pandemic to liberate themselves from their mundane daily lives. At just 112 pages, it’s short enough to skip through in a day or two.

Cosy crime is another ideal way to start the reading year gently. Whitstable Pearl, Julie Wassmer’s first novel, is a picturesque guide to this Kentish seaside town and its history, as well as an entertaining mystery. Pearl Nolan runs a popular seafood restaurant in the town, but she’s also trying to get her side-hustle detective agency off the ground. When a local oyster fisherman is found dead on his ship, Pearl helps newly-arrived DCI Mike McGuire work out whether this is a case of murder, suicide or accidental death. Many famous local landmarks feature, including The Old Neptune pub and the Red Sands Fort, and it’s recently been made into a TV series starring Kerry Godliman as Pearl.

Spring: Sensation, vintage detective fiction, and a prize-winning book set in East Berlin

Accidental Darlings by Crystal Jeans was my first read of Spring. Part of the inspiration for the book was Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Medway’s most famous resident, so naturally I had to read it. The story starts with orphaned Anastasia being sent to live with her fearsome aunt – a reclusive author – in a crumbling mansion in the wilds of Yorkshire. Although set in the 1920s, it has all the elements of a classic Victorian sensation novel – a mysterious locked room, hidden family secrets, and cliffhangers at the end of every chapter – combined with queer romance and plenty of humour. I rattled through 100 pages of this on a train journey from London to Newcastle, and about the same on the journey back. A proper page-turner. I loved it.

I’m a sucker for vintage detective fiction so I was delighted to discover Christianna Brand’s stories featuring Inspector Cockerill of the Kent County Police. Known to his friends as ‘Cockie’, Inspector Cockerill is like a Kentish Vera – no-nonsense, irascible, and slightly dishevelled, but also compassionate, fair, and occasionally playful.

The British Library has republished several of Brand’s books, but not Heads You Lose, the first of the Cockie stories. I’m not persuaded the ending of that mystery stands up nowadays, but it was an intriguing introduction to Cockie nonetheless. The second Cockie mystery, Green for Danger – set in a Kent military hospital during the Second World War – was much more enjoyable, being not just a whodunnit, but also a howdunnit.

Now for a Spring read unrelated to Kent: Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, a birthday present from my German friend, who has superb taste in books. I started this over Easter and took it on holiday, where it kept me occupied while I rested up after spraining my ankle in Sicily. Centered on a doomed love affair between young, naïve Katharina and middle-aged, has-been writer Hans during the collapse of East Germany, it scoops decades of history into the story of their tormented relationship. It’s bleak, charming, fascinating and impressive. I was delighted to see a mention of one of my favourite railways in the whole word on page 39 – the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn.  

Summer: A Kentish thriller, Japanese bestsellers, and a bit of Beryl Bainbridge

My favourite read of the summer was Kit Conway’s debut novel, Cat Fight, a thriller set in the leafy, middle-class suburbia of Sevenoaks (in Kent!) where an apparent sighting of a big cat tears apart neighbours on an exclusive estate. A gripping plot, ghastly characters, taut plotting and great writing – I thoroughly enjoyed it. Though if you work in local government, you may find the parts relating to posh people battling it out over planning applications triggering in its realism…

Outside of books set in this fine county, I went on a Japanese fiction binge last summer featuring three bestsellers and one manga.

Strange Pictures by Uketsu is a chilling horror mystery based on nine eerie drawings. If you can decipher the pictures, you can solve the mystery.  I haven’t been this unsettled by a book in a long time, but it’s a real page-turner and I’d highly recommend it. Equally unsettling, though for different reasons, was Saou Ichikawa’s Hunchback. Ichikawa’s writing is razor sharp and she powerfully skewers themes such ableism, sex, desire, class, money in just 88 pages. Hunchback was awarded the 169th Aktagawa Prize, making Ichikawa the first disabled author to win the award.

After those two, I needed a cuddle in book form. What You Are Looking For Is In the Library by Michiko Ayoama is just that; a gentle, charming, uplifting story in which five readers at a crossroads receive life-changing book suggestions from an eccentric and inscrutable librarian. Ayoama’s novel hit the bestseller lists and it’s easy to understand why. Plus the cover – featuring a sweet black cat sitting next to a pile of books – has real shelf appeal.

Sakamoto Days by Yuto Suzuki was recommended to me by my nephews and niece, connoisseurs of manga. Taro Sakamoto is a former assassin hiding his true identity by running a convenience store in a quiet Japanese town. When enemies from his past turn up, Sakamoto has to use his hitman skills to save himself and others, while trying to keep his past a secret from his family. Lighthearted and action-packed, I enjoyed this enormously.

I picked up Beryl Bainbridge’s The Bottle Factory Outing for a bargain price on Oxfam’s website, New Year’s Day 2025. Inspired by Bainbridge’s own experiences of working in a London bottle factory, it’s a darkly poignant tale about the relationships between tempestuous Freda, mousy Beryl and their factory co-workers, and a works outing that goes horribly wrong.

Autumn – The Thursday Murder Club, a return to Lyra’s Oxford, and breaking the news

Did you know The Thursday Murder Club is set in Kent? I’m late to this particular reading party, so I only discovered that last year when I took it on the train with me to Antwerp. Set in Coopers Chase retirement village in the Kentish hills, it’s about Joyce, Ibrahim, Elizabeth and Ron (a.k.a. The Thursday Murder Club) whose penchant for poring over cold cases soon leads to them investigating a real-life homicide. You can tell Richard Osman thoroughly enjoyed writing this book, and it’s one of very few books that actually made me laugh out loud. A proper cosy crime novel and tremendous fun, it features lots of familiar Kentish locations. My home town of Gillingham even gets a mention on page 266!

Now, while January may not be the time to start a weighty tome, Autumn’s dark evenings and changing seasons are most conducive to settling down with a cup of tea and chunky read. Having just pre-ordered the indie bookshop edition of The Rose Field from the Sevenoaks Bookshop, I needed to get a shuffle on with reading the second book in Philip Pullman’s Book of Dust trilogy: The Secret Commonwealth. I enjoyed returning to Lyra’s Oxford, but couldn’t help feeling this was 600+ pages of pacey, but deeply gloomy, set up for book three. I’m hoping The Rose Field will have a little more – well, hope! – in it.

To round off Autumn, some non-fiction. I saw a cartoon about the news by David Sipress once (I think it was in Covid times) the caption of which said, “My desire to stay well informed is currently at odds with my desire to stay sane.” Hard relate to that right now. Limiting my news intake feels like abdicating my responsibility as a citizen of the world, but reading the news these days feels like staring into an abyss of despair and helplessness. Rolf Dobelli’s book, Stop Reading The News, isn’t saying you should never read the news. Instead it’s a provocative and thought-provoking take on how to curate and manage what news we read in an age of 24/7 news cycles and overwhelming digital content. It certainly made me feel better about putting myself on a news diet.

Christmas: Short stories and a murderous pantomime

Like many people, I both love Christmas and find it exhausting. Festive admin combined with work deadlines and party season = feeling more than a wee bit knackered. Like January, December is not the season for long, difficult books. Instead, you need books you can dip into like a box of After Eight mints.

Stories for Christmas and the Festive Season does exactly what it says on the cover; seventeen short stories by writers including Muriel Spark, Alice Munro, Maeve Binchy, Elizabeth von Arnim, Stella Gibbons and more. As the blurb says, the stories are about “the joys and disappointments, pressures and preparations of this time of year from a female perspective.” It’s perfect for those busy times in the run-up to Christmas when you want something to read but you’re too festively frazzled to start anything heavy.

Janice Hallett’s The Christmas Appeal is another ideal seasonal read. Featuring a Christmas panto, a dead Santa Claus and a theatre troupe full of suspects, it’s a clever, cosy crime story that goes perfectly with a cup of tea and a mince pie.

The TBR pile for 2026

I have written before about my wonderful family and friends who embrace and enable my book-collecting habit. I was very lucky to get a lovely pile of books for my birthday and Christmas last year. The Man of Kent bought me a gorgeous sprayed-edges edition of Collected Poems by Wendy Cope (not pictured) which is also on the reading list.

Fate may have led me to buy one or two new books myself too…

My aim for 2026: keep reading and see if I can get past 17 books this year. It is the national year of reading after all.

What’s on your reading list for this year? As you may have gathered, I love a recommendation so please do add yours in the comments. Recommendations for books set in Kent are particularly welcomed.

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