These are the books I read as a break from standard academic reading, though the line gets blurred with some of the biographies. I read more of those this year than previous years, including the three volumes of Isaac Deutscher’s epic study of Trotsky.
For lists from previous years see here, and for some responses to questions asked about my novel reading see here.
- Maja Lunde, A History of Bees
- Alex Danchev, Georges Braque: A Life (biography)
- Ian McEwan, Nutshell
- Frida Beckman, Gilles Deleuze (biography)
- Thomas Flynn, Sartre: A Philosophical Biography
- Zadie Smith, White Teeth
- Mark Mason, Walking the Lines: The London Underground, Overground
- Graham Greene, The Quiet American
- Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep(non fiction)
- Jon McGregor, Reservoir 13
- Jean-Paul Sartre,War Diaries: Notebooks from a Phoney War 1939-1940
- Damion Searls, The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test and the Power of Seeing
- John Banville, The Blue Guitar
- Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan: An Outline of a Life and History of a System of Thought (biography)
- Sarah Painter, Beneath the Water
- Pat Young, Til the Dust Settles
- Anthony McCarten, Darkest Hour: How Churchill Brought us Back from the Brink (biography)
- Naomi Klein, No is Not Enough (non fiction)
- Robert MacFarlane, Landmarks (non fiction)
- Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding
- Alma Katsu, The Hunger
- Cara Hunter, Close to Home
- Matthew Richardson, My Name is Nothing
- Paul Trynka, Starman: David Bowie (biography)
- Lisa Appignanesi, Simone de Beauvoir (biography)
- Jane Harper, The Dry
- Robert Harris, Conclave
- Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing
- Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879-1921(biography)
- Margaret Atwood, Hag-Seed: The Tempest Retold
- Heather Morris, The Tattooist of Auschwitz
- Graeme MacRae Burnet, The Accident on the A35
- Madeline Miller, Circe
- Elizabeth Day, The Party
- Val McDermid, Beneath the Bleeding
- Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent
- Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921-1929 (biography)
- Belinda Bauer, Snap
- Jason Powell, Jacques Derrida: A Biography
- John le Carré, The Constant Gardener
- Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop
- Elizabeth Strout,Anything is Possible
- Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun (non-fiction)
- Val McDermid, Forensics (non-fiction)
- Clare Mackintosh, Let Me Lie
- Laura Marshall, Three Little Lies
- Andy Weir, Artemis
- Yann Moulier Boutang, Louis Althusser, une biographie: La formation du mythe 1918-1945: La matrice
- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
- Yann Moulier Boutang, Louis Althusser, une biographie: La formation du mythe 1945-1956: Ruptures et plis
- Mohsin Hamed, Exit West
- Michel Surya, Georges Bataille: An Intellectual Biography
- Victoria Helen Stone, Jane Doe
- Stuart Kendall, Georges Bataille (biography)
- Simeon Wade, Foucault in California (memoir)
- Naomi Alderman,The Lessons
- Scott Hamilton, The Crisis of Theory: EP Thompson, The New Left and Postwar British Politics (biography)
- Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects
- Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky, 1929-1940 (biography)
- Shirley Jackson, We have Always Lived in the Castle
- Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude 1872-1921 (biography)
- Sarah Vaughan, Anatomy of a Scandal
- Jane Harper, Force of Nature
- John le Carré, A Small Town in Germany
- A.S. Byatt, The Children’s Book
- Ben Okri, The Famished Road
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