As ever, a list of the books I read as a break from normal academic reading, though the line gets blurred with some of the biographies. I enjoyed the biographies more than the novels, and even abandoned a novel – which I do very rarely. Some of the more recent bios appear on the list of academic books I liked this year.

For lists from previous years see here, and for some responses to questions asked about my novel reading see here.

1. A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window
2. Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Rest (non-fiction)
3. M.L. Stedman, The Light Between Oceans
4. Sebastian Faulks, Paris Echo
5. C.J. Tudor, The Chalk Man 
6. Paula Hawkins, Into the Water
7. Magnus Florin, The Garden
8. Louise Candlish, Our House
9. Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
10. Terry Pinkard, Hegel: A Biography
11. Jo Nesbo, Macbeth
12. Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow
13. Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train
14. Rachel Hewitt, Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey
15. John le Carré, The Looking Glass War
16. Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell 1921-1970: The Ghost of Madness (biography)
17. Lucy Foley, The Hunting Party
18. Dominic Smith, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos
19. Ayse Kulin, Last Train to Istanbul
20. Alain Boureau, Kantorowicz: Stories of a Historian, translated by Stephen G. Nichols and Gabrielle M. Spiegel (biography)
21. Mark Ford, Raymond Roussel and the Republic of Dreams (biography)
22. Anna Seghers, The Seventh Cross
23. Carole Fink, Marc Bloch: A Life in History (biography)
24. David Mikics, Who Was Jacques Derrida? (biography)
25. Robert E. Norton, Secret Germany: Stefan George and his Circle (biography)
26. Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres
27. Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire
28. E.H. Gombrich, A Lifelong Interest: Conversations on Art and Science with Didier Eribon
29. John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soidier, Spy
30. Susan Orlean, The Library Book
31. Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six
32. David Nicholls, Us
33. Peter Brook, The Empty Space (non-fiction)
34. Ian Carr, Miles Davis: The Definitive Biography
35. Tracy Chevalier, Remarkable Creatures
36. Richard Matheson, I am Legend
37. Mathilda Jacob, Rosa Luxemburg (biography)
38. Louis-Jean Calvet, Roland Barthes: A Biography
39. Geraint Thomas, The Tour According to G: My Journey to the Yellow Jersey (autobiography)
40. Anna Burns, Milkman
41. Kaitlin Heller and Suzanne Conklin Akbari (Eds.), How We Read
42. Stuart Hall, Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands (autobiography)
43. Chris Boardman, Triumphs and Turbulence: My Autobiography
44. Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings (abandoned)
45. Antony Beevor, The Second World War
46. Haruki Murakami, Killing Commandatore
47. Caroline Steedman, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (non-fiction)
48. Alain Robbe-Grillet, Ghosts in the Mirror (autobiography)
49. Alain Robbe-Grillet, In the Labyrinth
50. Hernan Diaz, In the Distance
51. George Bataille, Blue of Noon
52. Jane Harper, The Lost Man
53. Ben Macintyre, A Spy among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal
54. Raymond Roussel, How I Wrote Certain of my Books
55. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (again)
56. Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times
57. Kate Kirkpatrick, Becoming Beauvoir: A Life
58. Sue Prideaux, I am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche
59. Clare Carlisle, Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard
60. Diane Setterfield, Once Upon a River
61. Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman
62. Robert Harris, Munich
63. Amy Sackville, Orkney
64. Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House
65. Anne Holt, Blind Goddess
66. David Foster Wallace, The Pale King
67. George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
68. Dominique Eddé, Edward Said: His Thought as a Novel