My Year of Reading Welshly

Alex Johnson is a writer, journalist, half-decent snooker player, and amateurish letterpress printer. After 15 years as part of The Independent newspaper’s online team he is now the Online Editor of Fine Books & Collections magazine, and contributes a regular column to the Idler magazine. Alex is the author of various books about books including Book Towns, Improbable Libraries, A Book of Book Lists, Rooms of Their Own, The Book Lover's Joke Book, The Book Lover's Almanac, Shelf Life,  Edward Lear and the Pussycat: Famous Writers and their Pets, and How To Give Your Child A Lifelong Love of Reading. He lives in St Albans.

• Introduction: Trying to solve some kind of problemBook 1 Angels in anguish: The Battle to the Weak by Hilda Vaughan (1925)Book 2 A question of marketing: In Parenthesis by David Jones (1937)Book 3 O, there is lovely to feel a book: How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn (1939)Book 4 As alien as Tibet: I Bought A Mountain by Thomas Firbank (1940)Book 5 A Richard Burton favourite: Raiders’ Dawn by Alun Lewis (1942)Book 6 A village of lace and stone: Poems by Lynette Roberts (1944)Book 7 To begin at the beginning: Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas (1954)Book 8 Clint Eastwood of the spirit: Song at the Year’s Turning by R. S. Thomas (1955)Book 9 Not lost in translation: Kate Roberts: Y Byw Sy’n Cysgu (The Awakening, previously The Living Sleep) 1956Book 10 In short: A Toy Epic by Emyr Humphreys (1958)Book 11 Coming home: Border Country by Raymond Williams (1960)Book 12 Up on the Orme last night: Jampot Smith by Jeremy Brooks (1960)Book 13 A world of high adventure!: The Shop in the Mountain by Showell Styles (1968)Book 14 Perhaps the greatest Welsh novel: One Moonlit Night / Un Nos Ola Leuad by Caradog Prichard (1961)Book 15 How we mourn: The Small Mine by Menna Gallie (1962)Book 16 Creators and creations: The Twelve Dancers by William Mayne (1962)Book 17 The thoughts of an islander: Tide-race by Brenda Chamberlain (1962)Book 19 Flowers not birds: The Owl Service by Alan Garner (1967)Book 20 A woman’s novel, a man’s novel: Travels with a Duchess by Menna Gallie (1968)Book 21 Muck and Glory: So Long, Hector Bebb by Ron Berry (1970)Book 22 A clandestinely-borrowed sausage van: Place of Stones by Ruth Janette Ruck (1961)Book 23 A children’s book for adults: Carrie’s War by Nina Bawden (1973)Book 24 The top left-hand corner: Ivor The Engine – Snowdrifts by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin (1977)Book 25 Immanent structural contradictions: The Volunteers by Raymond Williams (1978)Book 26 The wrong baby: The Sundial by Gillian Clarke (1978)Book 27 Should I stay or should I go: On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin (1982)Book 28 Only Connect: Brothers by Bernice Rubens (1983)Intermission: Time for an ice creamBook 29 Grumpy old men: The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis (1986)Book 30 A kind of loving: Work, Sex and Rugby by Lewis Davies (1993)Book 31 Off to a great start: Eucalyptus - Detholiad o Gerddi / Selected Poems 1978-1994 by Menna Elfyn (1995)Book 32 Books in the running brooks: Tree of Crows by Lewis Davies (1996)Book 33 Wheat is the head of the train? - Travels in an Old Tongue: Touring the World Speaking Welsh by Pamela Petro (1998)Book 34 Cardiff Calling: Five Pubs, Two Bars and a Nightclub by John Williams (1999)Book 35 Things Fall Apart: Grits by Niall Griffiths (2000)Book 36 A small fire: The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi (2000)Book 37 When druids go bad: Aberystwyth Mon Amour by Malcolm Pryce (2001)Book 39 Another murder of crows: Martha, Jack and Shanco / Martha Jac a Sianco by Caryl Lewis (2007)Book 40 Small is good: Fresh Apples by Rachel Trezise (2005)Book 41 A search for a story: Running for the Hills by Horatio Clare (2006)Book 42 Pushy parents: Gifted by Nikita Lalwani (2007)Book 43 What if?: Resistance by Owen Shears (2007)Book 44 Let’s hear it for Aunty Lol: The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan (2009)Book 45 Nano-synaptic dream tablets: The Meat Tree by Gwyneth Lewis (2010)Book 46 A blow to the head: The Dig by Cynan Jones (2014)Book 47 English is sludgy: Pigeon by Alys Conran (2016)Book 48 Brave New Wales: Twenty Thousand Saints by Fflur Dafydd (2008)Book 49 Carnal lust: Water Shall Refuse Them by Laurie McKnight Hardy (2019)Book 50 O! What a Lovely War: The Gododdin: Lament for the Fallen by Gillian Clarke (2021)Book 51 It’s the end of the world as we know it: The Blue Book of Nebo by Manon Steffan Ros (2022)Book 52 Under the moon of love: My Family and Other Rock Stars by Tiffany Murray (2024)Your Reading Welshly ChallengeConclusion: They think it’s all overBook club discussion questionsWelshly bibliographyAcknowledgements