It’s the end of January so it’s time to look back on the reading I’ve done this month – this year I’ve decided to pick out a book of the month each time. That’s partly to remind you all of the ongoing reading list I’m keeping, and partly to remind me about the great books I’ve read, since I have a bad habit of not remembering books too well unless I actively think back on them.

So, to sum up quickly, these are the 13 books that I read during January:

1. Spielby David Sornig
2. Legend Of A Suicideby David Vann
3. Prochownik’s Dreamby Alex Miller
4. Millennium Peopleby J. G. Ballard
5. All This Belongs to Meby Petra Hulova
6. The True Story of Butterfishby Nick Earls
7. To Light Attainedby Morris Lurie
8. Siddon Rock by Glenda Guest
9. Secret Assetby Stella Rimington
10. Skylight Confessionsby Alice Hoffman
11. The Vagrantsby Yiyun Li
12. She Played Elvis by Shady Cosgrove
13. Illegal Actionby Stella Rimington

And the winner is … well, Lurie’s To Light Attained impressed me with its extraordinarily poetic writing … Miller’s Prochownik’s Dream had a great topic for me and read well … Li’s The Vagrants and Hulova’s All This Belongs To Me both were interesting because they were set in unusual places (China and Mongolia) which I’m really keen to know more about … but in fact the clear winner for my January book of the month is David Vann’s Legend of a Suicide. It was so shocking, and yet so calmly written; so page-turning and yet it wasn’t even a novel, but a series of interconnected short stories. Its darkness might not be for everyone but I still thoroughly recommend it.