Over the past few years I’ve been keeping lists of novels read. There are a few short story collections here, and a couple of histories, but it’s mainly novels.

1. David Lodge, Therapy
2. Mark Hadden, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
3. Pascal Mercier, Night train to Lisbon
4. Claire Keegan, Antarctica (short stories)
5. Norman Mailer, The Castle
6. Julian Barnes, Levels of Life (part memoir; part essay)
7. J.M. Coetzee, The Childhood of Jesus
8. Gustav Flaubert, Three Short Works/Three Tales: The Dance of Death, The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul, Herodias
9. John Buchan, Prester John
10. Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch
11. Daniela Sacerdotti, Watch Over Me
12. Jody Shields, The Fig Eater
13. Nikki Gemmill, Shiver
14. John Updike, The Witches of Eastwick
15. Peter Høeg, Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow
16. A.J. Hartley & David Hewson, Macbeth: A Novel
17. Rob Kitchin, The Songs of the Sea – a book of drabbles, free to download here
18. David Downing, Zoo Station
19. Lesley McDowell, Unfashioned Creatures
20. Romain Slocombe, Monsieur le Commandant
21. Kate Morton, The Shifting Fog (also known as The House at Riverton)
22. S.G. Redling, Flowertown
23. Andrej Gelasimov, Thirst
24. Duncan Whitehead, The Gordonstown Ladies Dog Walking Club
25. Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty
26. Anne Enright, The Gathering
27. Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife
28. Mohsin Hamid, Moth Smoke
29. Ian Rankin, Knots and Crosses
30. Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
31. Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child
32. DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little
33. Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr Y
34. Patrick McGuinness, The Last Hundred Days – a very interesting novel on the last days of the Ceaușescu regime in Romania
35. J.M. Coetzee, Diary of a Bad Year
36. Daniel Pembrey, The Harbour Master
37. Joseph Mailander, The Plasma of Terror
38. Keith Raffel, A Fine and Dangerous Season – fiction on the Cuban missile crisis
39. David Stafford, Spies Beneath Berlin (non-fiction)
40. John Schad, Someone Called Derrida: An Oxford Mystery – not quite sure how to describe this. It’s part memoir, part history, part fiction, part criticism – interesting.
41. Ian Rankin, Hide and Seek
42. Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation
43. Ian Kershaw, The End: Germany 1944-45 (non-fiction)
44. Giles Foden, Turbulence

A bit more experimentation than recent years – some through necessity or accident, when I ran out of things to read in Australia and had the choice of a limited collection at the accommodation I was in; and some through trying different things, usually on the kindle app on the iPad – a few crime novels, some thrillers, even a couple that are probably classified as romantic fiction. Not all equally successful. The book I enjoyed most was unquestionably Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation was also excellent.