What do I want to happen here? It to give me the organic results which show the story I'm trying to remember, or make up its own...Google seems to be confused.

I also tested it with two others, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson and Borges' The Library of Babel. The 'short story' prefix of the search is triggering the AI to write something itself, and pull directly from various fiction as a source.

Take Kafka's The Metamorphosis, maybe one of the most famous and original examples. By searching 'short story about waking up as an insect'. Google makes its own story up, linking out to university papers, Goodreads, and even an unrelated short story on VICE.

Bonus was an exhibition on surrealism which meant got to see a Magritte

A classic! Sad to see some of my best voice acting only partially survives thanks to the Internet Archive: web.archive.org/web/20160926...

Also was in a second hand book shop here I inexplicably found a signed copy of an autobiography, making the game officially international.

Special nod to Heaven by Mieko Kawakami, Standing Heavy by Gauz, and Let it Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs by Jim DeRogatis. I reckon if I read them later in the year they'd pip a few others.

I’m currently reading Watership Down, having never seen the film. Writing commitments have slowed my reading down the last few months of the year, so I’m taking it slowly, a chapter a night. But I couldn’t have chosen a better book to savour. Already makes the top five and I'm halfway through.

A Month in the Country. Probably a perfect novel. Structured around the reconstruction of a church mural, centering the story around this craft works so well. Also created a new self publishing hero of mine in J.L. Carr. Lead me to read two more of his books and his biography as a result.

I spent a lot of time researching a tennis biography this year, and Kings of the Court was an invaluable resource. Full of great sentences and descriptors about tennis players. It’s such an exquisite history of the sport up to the mid 20th century but completely out of print.

Headshot was on a lot of best ofs this year (including the Booker Prize longlist). The ability to write the action of consecutive boxing matches without it getting repetitive is so unbelievably hard. Incredible example of writing that I took a lot away from.

I’d read On Heroes & Tombs before, but The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato was like a stick of dynamite. Read it in one sitting in the sun over summer. Stayed with me for a while afterwards and I’m looking forward to re-reading it again this year.

Thank you!