Here’s a list of the books I read for pleasure (and occasionally for review) this year.
I say “for pleasure” because I read quite a lot more as part of my research for a couple of forthcoming project, though often not in their entirety. I thumbed through another 30 or 40 books to glean the information I needed. So that was work and this is pleasure.
The Tobacconist by Robert Seethaler
The Largesse Of The Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson
Vernon Subutex One by Virginie Despentes
Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
Leonard And Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession
Happening by Annie Ernaux
The Finishing School by Muriel Spark
The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen
Paradise by Edna O’Brien
Return of the Solider by Rebecca West
The Disappeared World by HE Bates
You Know You Want This by Kristen Roupenian
The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem ed. Jeremy Noel-Todd
Daisy Jones And The Six by Taylor Reid Jenkins
Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders
White by Bret Easton Ellis
Black Car Burning by Helen Mort
A Fortunate Man by John Berger and Jean Mohr
Ash Before Oak by Jeremy Cooper
Some Country Houses And Their Owner by James Lees-Milne
Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson
St Cuthbert, His Cult and his Community to AD 1200 ed. Bonner, Stancliffe and Rollason
Outlaw Bible Of American Essays ed. Alan Kaufman
Light Years by James Salter
Lunch With The Wild Frontiers by Phill Savidge
The Silence Of The Girls by Pat Barker
Another World by Pat Barker
This Is Yesterday by Rose Ruane
Savage Gods by Paul Kingsnorth
The Inheritors by William Golding
Afternoons With The Blinds Drawn by Brett Anderson
To The Island Of Tides by Alistair Moffat
Sudden Traveller by Sarah Hall
Work Suspended And Other Stories with Charles Ryder’s Schooldays by Evelyn Waugh
Night Boat To Tangier by Kevin Barry
Diaries 1942-1954 by James Lees-Milne
Heartburn by Nora Ephron
Crop Circles by Michael Glickman
Ness by Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood
Trout, Belly Up by Rodrigo Fuentes
Six by Zaffar Kunial
Bowie’s Books by John O’Connell
Threshold by Rob Doyle
Copsford by Walter JC Murray
In A Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu
The Alarming Palsy of James Orr by Tom Lee
Ghostland by Edward Parnell
Peter Schlemihl by Adelbert von Chamisso
Notes Made While Falling by Jenn Ashworth
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
Ring The Hill by Tom Cox
Love From The Planet Gong: The Virgin Years 1973-1975 by Gong
Bad Behaviour by Mary Gaitskill
Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones