Given the number of these that are not really novels, this list should probably be retitled ‘books I read that are not for work reasons…’ Not as many as the first half of the year, but that’s probably a product of being at home and having many other non-work distractions as well as being generally busier.

• Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carrière, This Is Not The End Of The Book (not a novel)
• Chris Sidwells, A Race for Madmen: The Extraordinary History of the Tour de France (okay, this isn’t a novel either, but often reads like one)
• W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz
• Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories
• Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
• Ismael Beah, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (a very harrowing true story)
• Matt Rendel, A Significant Other: Riding the Centenary Tour de France with Lance Armstrong (another true story)
• Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare (semi-fictionalised biography)
• James Shapiro, Contested Will: Who wrote Shakespeare? (conclusion: Shakespeare)
• Thaisa Frank, Heidegger’s Glasses (good idea and good start; powerful ending; unconvincing in the middle)
• Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
• Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra (biography but written with a clear sense of much of what we know being a best guess)
• Frank Kermode, Shakespeare’s Language (might end up using a couple of things in this for work reasons)
• David Crystal, Think on my Words: Exploring Shakespeare’s Language
• Michael E. Crutcher, Jr, Tremé: Race and Place in a New Orleans Neighborhood (not a novel, but I wanted to know a bit more background before I watched any more of the TV series)
• Bernard Schlink, The Gordian Knot
• Daniel Mason, The Piano Tuner (soon to be a film directed by Werner Herzog)
• Sebastian Faulks, Engleby