So, 2020 was a year with 68 books and 15’828 pages, 59 books and 9 comics. Is this the expression of something ? More time because of a working-from-home tendency due to a virus ? Not for me. Maybe a reflection of less social encounters, more solitude. So is the number of books I read a sign that my life is void? Would reading fewer books mean happiness ? I will think about this in 2021.
Anyway, which books stand out from the crowd ? Very difficult, quite a lot, but I will pick three.
Le développement (im)personnel. Le succès d’une imposture. Julia de Funès (2019). This book is about this big new trend for coaches, experts in everything and nothing, and this plethora of self-help books. The book can be perfectly summarised by this sentence : “Le coach est à la psychanalyse ce que l’homéopathe est à la médecine. S’il ne vient à l’idée de personne de se faire opérer par un homéopathe, nombreux sont ceux qui laissent pourtant leur esprit entre les mains de coachs peu qualifiés.”
Il nous faudrait des mots nouveaux. Laurent Nunez (2018). It is a selection of handy words that do not exist in French (and apart from one, not sure if they exist in English either). Two examples.
Putivuelta (Spanish). The falsely casual reconnaissance trick you do in a crowded place to see who’s there and who you could flirt with.
Naz (Urdu). It is the pride that fills us with the knowledge that we are loved more than anything else in the world. It is to be convinced that the other will never take his love away from us, no matter what we do.
De l’infidélité. Amanda Sthers (2018). Little posts in alphabetic order mainly on infidelity but also simply on love, desire, bounds. A very touching book. One quote that is in fact the quote from the film “Rosalie et César” from Claude Sautet (1972) : “David, César sera toujours César, et toi tu seras toujours toi, qui m’emmène sans m’emporter, qui me tient sans me prendre et qui m’aime sans me vouloir.”