A strange year of reading. For long periods I found it very hard to concentrate on reading that wasn’t immediately useful for a writing project or other work task (and even then…). Novels were a particular struggle. I found reading diaries, memoirs and autobiographies a bit easier, and so there are quite a few of those in here. Perhaps this was in part to see how creative work had been done in the past in difficult circumstances.

• John le Carré, A Legacy of Spies
• Natalie Haynes, The Children of Jocasta
• Gillian Rose, Love’s Work (memoir)
• Michael Joyce, Foucault in Winter, in the Linnaeus Garden
• Stephen Fry, Mythos
• Susan Cain, Quiet (non-fiction)
• Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
• Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of all Things
• Sven-Erik Liedman, A World to Win: The Life and Works of Karl Marx
• Rüdiger Safranski, Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography
• Christine Leunens, Caging Skies
• Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil
• Alice Jardine, At the Risk of Thinking: An Intellectual Biography of Julia Kristeva
• Amy Sackville, Painter to the King
• Michael Scammell, Arthur Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual
• Italo Calvino, The Castle of Crossed Destinies
• Mircea Eliade, Journal I: 1945-1955
• Mircea Eliade, No Souvenirs: Journal 1957-69
• Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology
• Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda (again)
• Sally Rooney, Normal People
• Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
• Honoré de Balzac, Eugénie Grandet 
• Mircea Eliade, The Portugal Journal
• Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings, Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life
• Hilary Mantel, Fludd
• Philip K Dick, The Man in the High Castle
• Sue Prideaux, Strindberg – A Life
• Alastair Davidson, Antonio Gramsci: Towards an Intellectual Biography
• Mircea Eliade, Ordeal by Labyrinth: Conversations with Claude-Henri Rocquet
• Maya Jasanoff, The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World
• Sid Smith, In the Court of King Crimson: An Observation over 50 Years
• Julia Kristeva, Hannah Arendt (biography)
• Jeff Love, The Black Circle: A Life of Alexandre Kojève
• David Lagercrantz, The Girl who Takes an Eye for an Eye
• Ahmed Othmani, Beyond Prison (memoir/non-fiction)
• Peter Salmon, An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida
• Philip Roth, The Plot Against America
• Claude Lévi-Strauss, Conversations with Didier Eribon
• Edna O’Brien, The Little Red Chairs
• Patrick Wilcken, Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory (biography)
• Michael Palin, North Korea Journal
• John Schad, The Late Walter Benjamin

When I’ve posted these lists before, I often get questions. Here’s what I’ve said in reply before.