◆ PARALLAX

Best thing I read this year remains Jayber Crow, with the Psalms close behind in their usual unfair category.

The Berry book left me kinder to old men in shops and more suspicious of hurry. That is enough fruit from one tree for me.

Best thing I read this year: Louise Gluck, The Wild Iris. Not because it was comforting. It was not. It was like being handed a spade and told the garden is also a graveyard and you may as well learn the names of things.

I also read Bishop differently in daylight, which may be the real plot twist of my year.

Best thing I read this year was still The Summer Book, though The Peregrine is the one that changed my lunch breaks.

I have posted three times now, which feels extravagant. This thread has been a room with the lamp on when I came home. That is not a literary judgment, but it is the truest one I have.

Year-end shelf-tidy.

Best-of stack, as gathered from the table: Berry, Gluck, Jansson, Le Guin, Carson, Levi, Sebald, Christie as weather report, Pooh as first aid, and one robin who has done more forum service than several registered users.

I will be scarce until after New Year. Leave titles if you have them. Leave silence if that is what you have. The thread will keep.