Good morning everyone,

It's the last Friday before Christmas! Here at Fem Fri, that means one thing, which is that it's time for my books of the year. If there is someone in your life who is hard to buy gifts for, try one of these books. If you're not sure what you want for Christmas, try asking for one of these books.

I'm leaning really heavily on non-fiction this year, so if you have particularly enjoyed any novels this year, let me know. I love fiction and made up stories.

Onto 2019 recommendations, though! Let's start with Hannah Ewen's Fangirls. I've already written about this pretty much perfect Fem Friday book – it's funny, detailed, charming and all from the perspectives of women and girls. And it's about music and what it is to love music! Hannah Ewens takes as each chapter a different artist or genre and writes about the women who love that artist and that music, so she covers emo and Courtney Love and Lady Gaga and Harry Styles and so many more artists. It's sympathetic and spiky and fun and you'll love it:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fangirls-Scenes-Modern-Music-Culture/dp/1787132412/

Another book that I've given a whole Fem Fri to already is Sheilah Graham's Beloved Infidel. Remember that although this potentially got published because she was F. Scott Fitzgerald's mistress, it's a true delight to read for reasons completely unrelated to Scott Fitzgerald, who comes off quite poorly in the about half of the book he shows up in. Instead, are you interested in life in an East End orphanage at the turn of the 20th century? Are you interested in social climbing amongst the Mitfords and the Coopers and, no word of a lie, Edward VIII as the Prince of Wales? Or maybe classic Hollywood is more your thing. In any case, you get all of this and more in Sheilah Graham's terrific book. It's only available second hand so buy it for someone you will see after Christmas:

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-home-_-Results&an=sheilah+graham&tn=beloved+infidel

I've read more than usual about linguistics this year, it's been really great. Gretchen McCulloch's Because Internet is a particular highlight. She writes about how language, the grammar and conventions that underpin how we talk on the internet work and how they have evolved, including pre-internet informal communications as well. There's an amazing chapter on emojis as gesture, which I think about pretty much every time I use an emoji. It is a pretty good measure of a book, I think, to still be thinking about it almost every day four months after you read it:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Because-Internet-Understanding-language-changing/dp/1787302318/

My sole fiction recommendation is Ann Quinn's Three, one of the several novellas I read this year. You might not have heard of Ann Quinn, she was a British experimental writer in the 1960s and 1970s and her work is strange and compelling and full of emotional truth. Also not many jokes, but the ones there are are good. Everything I have just said there applies to her novella Three, a multi-voiced book about a couple unpicking what happened with their recent lodger. It's pretty dark, but if you are up for that I think you will really like it:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Three-Ann-Quin/dp/0714500658/

Finally, it's the most wonderful time of the year for men here at Fem Friday. This year's recipient of the "Fem Fri Best Book I Read By a Man Award" is Alex Ross, for The Rest is Noise. I've always loved music and, having no particular talent for playing it, had always thought that understanding music properly was a door that was locked to me forever. The Rest is Noise is the book that showed me that this did not have to be the case. It's a history of the 20th century through its classical music, and it really opened out music theory for me. It's an joyful read and it inspired me to do an Open University introductory course in music theory, which I also recommend. This was a really huge book for me this year and if you've thought of reading it and not done that yet, put it off no longer! I'd love to chat about it with you:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rest-Noise-Listening-Twentieth-Century/dp/1841154768/

Do let me know if you buy and enjoy any of the above! It's always nice to share a book.

Have a lovely Christmas,

A xx.