Season's greetings, everyone! Join Sophie and Alex as they discuss some of their favourite books from the year, including a round-up of what they read for the show in 2019.

Papertrail is going on hiatus for the first half of 2019, but there are plenty of episodes in the back-catalogue so gorge yourself on them and we'll see you in the future for 'season 2'.

Happy holidays!

Sophie's Choices:

• Cassandra At The Wedding - Dorothy Baker
• Voices from Chernobyl - Svetlana Alexievich
• Thus Were Their Faces - Silvina Ocampo

From the show:

• Prater Violet - Christopher Isherwood
• This Is Not A Novel - David Markson
• Constellations - Sinéad Gleeson

Alex's Choices:

• Ombria in Shadow - Patricia A McKillip
• The Fisherman - John Langan
• Doggerland - Ben Smith

From the show:

• Homesick For Another World - Otessa Moshfegh
• Grief Is The Thing With Feathers - Max Porter
• The Snow Leopard - Peter Matthiessen

MUSIC BY: SCOTT GRATTON

Lucia Osborne-Crowley is a writer and journalist. Her news reporting and literary work has appeared in Granta, the Sunday Times, HuffPost UK, the Guardian, and others. ‘I Choose Elena’ is her first book.

Lucia's Book Choices:

• Make It Scream Make It Burn by Leslie Jamison
• Constellations: Reflections from life by Sinéad Gleeson
• The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh

You can follow Lucia on twitter @LuciaOC_

If you haven't already, please consider leaving the podcast a review on iTunes. It makes a massive difference and helps new people discover the show.

Anna Sherman was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. She studied Greek and Latin at Wellesley College and at Lincoln College, Oxford. The Bells of Old Tokyo is her first book.

• Sanshiro by Natsume Sōseki

• Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry

• The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen

You can follow Anna on twitter @anna_charlbury

If you haven't already, please consider leaving the podcast a review on iTunes. It makes a massive difference and helps new people discover the show.

Season is a London and Berlin-based writer, performance artist and teacher, and an associate producer of the I'm With You art collective. She works as a dramaturg, mentor, sensitivity editor and workshop facilitator in Creative Writing, Performance Practice and Theory, and difference-consciousness training for the arts and heritage sector. Cygnet is her first novel.

• Island by Aldous Huxley
• The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

You can follow Season on twitter @season_butler

If you haven't already, please consider leaving the podcast a review on iTunes. It makes a massive difference and helps new people discover the show.

Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou is a Writer, a Comics Letterer, and the Eisner Award-Winning Editor of PanelxPanel. He has written for screen and for comics, and also runs the excellent Strip Panel Naked on YouTube.

Hass's Book Choices:

• Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
• Blankets by Craig Thompson
• Digital Filmmaking by Mike Figgis

You can follow Hass on Twitter @HassanOE

If you haven't already, please consider leaving the podcast a review on iTunes. It makes a massive difference and helps new people discover the show.

Hannah Sullivan is a poet and academic currently working at Oxford University. Her first collection of poetry, Three Poems, was published in 2018 and won the T.S. Eliot Prize.

Hannah's Book Choices:

• Coventry: Essays by Rachel Cusk
• Prater Violet by Christopher Isherwood
• Notebook by Robert Lowell

You can find out more about Hannah on her website.

If you haven't already, please consider leaving the podcast a review on iTunes. It makes a massive difference and helps new people discover the show.

Fiona’s debut novel, Elmet, is set in Yorkshire and explores what happens when a family’s idyllic, self-sufficient life is interrupted by the world outside of them. The novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and Ondaatje Prize and was also longlisted for the Dylan Thomas and Womens prize. Fiona is currently working on her second novel.

Fiona's Book Choices:

• The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. LeGuin
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• Painter To The King by Amy Sackville

You can follow Fiona on twitter @fjmoz

If you haven't already, please consider leaving the podcast a review on iTunes. It makes a massive difference and helps new people discover the show.

You can also support us financially by donating to our Patreon/Steady page, or by buying a book through our affiliate programme. For more information. Click here.

Nicole is a fiction and non-fiction writer, her work has appeared in The Dublin Review, The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, and on BBC 4. She won the 2017 White Review Short Story Prize with her short story ‘Track’. Her short story collection, ‘Show Them A Good Time’ is out now.

Nicole's Book Choices:

• Veronica by Mary Gaitskill
• The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson
• Self-Help by Lorrie Moore

You can follow Nicole on Twitter @nicoleflattery

Please consider leaving the podcast a review on iTunes. It makes a massive difference and helps new people discover the show.

Michael is the author of ‘Hold’, which was just shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize for first novels. He is a graduate of the Royal Holloway writing programme and lives in London, where he works as a teacher.

Michael's Book Choices:

• The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín
• Grief Is The Thing With Feathers by Max Porter

You can follow Michael on twitter @michaeldonkor

If you haven't already, please consider leaving the podcast a review on iTunes. It makes a massive difference and helps new people discover the show.

Marc’s Novel, ‘Three Dreams In The Key Of G’ was published by Dead Ink Books in 2018. He is the author of many other novels, as well as short and flash fiction. He can also be found on YouTube where he reviews and discusses literary and experimental fiction.

Marc's Book Choices:

• The Damned United by David Pearce
• This Is Not a Novel by David Markson
• Cobralingus by Jeff Noon

You can follow Marc on twitter @21stCScribe, on his website, and on YouTube.

If you haven't already, please consider leaving the podcast a review on iTunes. It makes a massive difference and helps new people discover the show.

Tyler Wetherall is a journalist and author living in New York. Her work has appeared in a range of publications, including The Guardian, The Times, Vice, Electric Literature. She teaches Creative Writing and Journalism at Manhattanville College.

Tyler's Book Choices:

• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
• The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas
• Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

You can follow Tyler on twitter @TylerWrites

If you haven't already, please consider leaving the podcast a review on iTunes. It makes a massive difference and helps new people discover the show.