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