BOOKS READ

Books Read 2024

28/2/2025

“Tear” — Erica McKeen (January)
“Twelfth Night” — William Shakespeare (January)
“A Box of Matches” — Nicholson Baker (January)
“Gone So Long” — Andre Dubus III (January)
“The Age of Guilt” — Mark Edmundson (January)
“The Cobra and The Key” — Sam Shelstad (January)
“The First Part of King Henry IV” — William Shakespeare (January)
“Not A Life Coach” — James Smith (February)
“Nightmare on Main Street” — Mark Edmundson (February)
“Drug Story” — u. v. ray (February)
“Chaos” — Edmund White (February)
“City Boy” — Edmund White (March)
“Milk Teeth” — Jessica Andrews (March)
“Push Process” — Jonathan Walker (March)
“The World Beyond Your Head” — Matthew Crawford (April)
“Misery” — Stephen King (April)
“A Man Called Ove” — Fredrik Backman (April)
“Idler # 35” — Tom Hodgkinson, Ed. (May)
“Amusing Ourselves To Death” — Neil Postman (May)
“The Reluctant Beatle: George Harrison” — Philip Norman (May)
“Urban Dharma” — Kusala Bhikshu & Rebecca Wilson (May)
“Zen in the Art of Archery” — Eugen Herrigel (May)
“The Dude & The Zen Master” — Jeff Bridges & Bernie Glassman (May)
“Walden” — Henry David Thoreau (May)
“Concord Rebel” — August Derleth (May)
“Martin Eden” — Jack London (May)
“Voluntary Simplicity” — Duane Elgin (June)
“The Rinzai Zen Way” — Meido Moore (June)
“Lightfoot” — Nicholas Jennings (July)
“Zenith Hotel” — Oscar Coop-Phane (July)
“Small Things Like These” — Claire Keegan (July)
“The Spinning Heart” — Donal Ryan (July)
“Such Kindness” — Andre Dubus III (July)
“Some Rain Must Fall” — Karl Ove Knausgaard (August)
“Free Love” — Tessa Hadley (August)
“Snookered” — Ishy Din (August)
“The Man” — James Graham (August)
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” — Edward Albee (August)
“Art” — Yasmina Reza (August)
“The God of Carnage” — Yasmina Reza (August)
“Freak” — Anna Jordan (August)
“Red” — John Logan (August)
“The Man with Night Sweats” — Thom Gunn (August)
“When Blue Light Falls” — Carol Watts (August)
“Through” — David Herd (August)
“The Writer” — Ella Hickson (August)
“Playboy” — Constance Debré (September)
“Locker Room Talk” — Gary McNair (September)
“Attempts on Her Life” — Martin Crimp (September)
“How To Wash A Heart” — Bhanu Kapil (September)
“Why Teach?” — Mark Edmundson (September) (again)
“Run-Out Groove” — Joseph Coward (September)
“Landscape with Light” — Jon Thompson (September)
“Bedouin of the London Evening” — Rosemary Tonks (September)
“Faulty Mothering” — Elaine Randall (September)
“The Poet” — Louisa Reid (September) (again)
“Bluets” — Maggie Nelson (September)
“Lurex” — Denise Riley (September)
“Lunch Poems” — Frank O’Hara (October)
“Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes” — Billy Collins (October)
“Excellent Sheep” — William Deresiewicz (October)
“Someday There Will Be Machine Shops Full of Roses” — Fred Voss (October)
“Four Quartets” — T. S. Eliot (October)
“Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” — John Ashbery (October)
“Rabbit” — Sophie Robinson (October)
“Frank O’Hara: Selected Poems” — Frank O’Hara w. Ed. Mark Ford (October)
“Word for the Wind” — Theodore Roethke (October)
“The Waste Land & Other Poems” — T. S. Eliot (October)
“What Is This Thing Called Love” — Kim Addonizio (October)
“Dante In China” — John Barr (October)
“The Strange Hours Travelers Keep” — August Kleinzahler (October)
“Getting Into Poetry” — Paul Hyland (November)
“Goodstone” — Fred Voss (November)
“Mindfield” — Gregory Corso (November)
“Musical Tables” — Billy Collins (November)
“The Mersey Sound” — Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, Brian Patten (November)
“Storm Damage” — Brian Patten (November)
“Zen and The Beat Way” — Alan Watts (December)
“Consent” — Jill Cement (December)
“The Uses of Photography” — Annie Ernaux & Marc Marie (December)

Books in bold were particularly good.

Books Read 2023

7/1/2024

“Vladimir” — Julia May Jonas (January)
“Heatwave” — Victor Jestin (January)
“Yardie” — Victor Headley (January)
“White Butterfly” — Walter Mosley (January)
“Food, Sex & God” — Michèle Roberts (January)
“How New York Breaks Your Heart” — Bill Hayes (January)
“Kitchen” — Banana Yoshimoto (January)
“The Glue Ponys” — Chris Wilson (February)
“Three-Fifths” — John Vercher (February)
“Tolstoy’s Short Fiction” — Leo Tolstoy (February)
“Hell’s Angels” — Hunter S. Thompson (February)
“The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break” — Steven Sherrill (March)
“Lives Like Mine” — Eva Verde (March)
“The Never-Ending Present” — Michael Barclay (March)
“Still Alice” — Lisa Genova (March)
“The Men’s Club” — Leonard Michaels (March)
“Tuesday Nights and Wednesday Mornings” — Gwendoline Riley (March)
“Everyone Is Watching” — Megan Bradbury (April)
“Lucy By The Sea” — Elizabeth Strout (April)
“Stolen Focus” — Johann Hari (April)
“Self and Soul” — Mark Edmundson (April)
“Songs of Innocence and Experience” — William Blake (April)
“The Passenger” — Maryam Sachs (April)
“Instructions For The Drowning” — Steven Heighton (May)
“Good Girl” — Anna Fitzpatrick (May)
“This Is Pleasure” — Mary Gaitskill (May)
“Saltwater” — Jessica Andrews (May)
“The Home Child” — Liz Berry (May)
“This Way For The Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” — Tadeusz Borowski (May)
“Elizabeth Finch” — Julian Barnes (May)
“Manifesto” Bernardine Evarisro (May)
“The Professor of Desire” — Philip Roth (June)
“How To Be A Straight A Student” — Cal Newport (June)
“The Night Always Comes” — Willy Vlautin (June)
“Into The Wild” — Jon Krakauer (June)
“Mona” — Pola Oloixarao (June)
“Roman Tales” — Alberto Moravia (June)
“The Voyeur” — Alberto Moravia (June)
“The Poet” — Louisa Reid (June)
“Interpreter of Maladies” — Jhumpa Lahiri (June)
“Wait Until Spring, Bandini” — John Fante (July)
“Legends of the Fall” — Jim Harrison (July)
“Offshore” — Penelope Fitzgerald (July)
“Without Warning & Only Sometimes” — Kit De Waal (July)
“The Restraint of Beasts” — Magnus Mills (July)
“Home To Harlem” — Claude McKay (July)
“Monkeys With Typewriters” — Scarlett Thomas (July)
“The Death of Sigmund Freud” — Mark Edmundson (July)
“The War of Art” — Steven Pressfield (July) (again)
“The Stranger In The Woods” — Michael Finkel (July)
“Why Teach?” — Mark Edmundson (July)
“Flights” — Olga Tokarczuk (July)
“Digital Minimalism” — Cal Newport (August)
“The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break” — Steven Sherrill (August) (again)
“In Defense of a Liberal Education” — Fareed Zakaria (August)
“Why Football Matters” — Mark Edmundson (August)
“Allegory” — John MacQueen (August)
“Civilisation And Its Discontents” — Sigmund Freud (August)
“Broke” — Tom Clark (Ed.) (August)
“The Restraint of Beasts” — Magnus Mills (August) (again)
“Pornocracy” — Catherine Breillat (August)
“Things Seen” — Annie Ernaux (August)
“Aspiration” — Agnes Callard (August)
“The Maintenance of Headway” — Magnus Mills (August)
“The Death of Francis Bacon” — Max Porter (September)
“History of Violence” — Edouard Louis (September)
“The Dig” — Cynan Jones (September)
“20 Fragments of A Ravenous Youth” — Xiaolu Guo (September)
“The Joke” — Milan Kundera (September)
“Fear and Trembling” — Amélie Nothomb (September)
“Pastoralia” — George Saunders (October)
“The Sense of An Ending” — Julian Barnes (October) (again)
“After The Lights Go Out” — John Vercher (October)
“Sympathy” — Olivia Sudjic (October) (again)
“The Stalker” — Sarah Alderson (October)
“Trouble Is What I Do” — Walter Mosley (October)
“And Then There Were None” — Agatha Christie (October)
“The Rock Blaster” — Henning Mankell (October)
“Pet Sematary” — Stephen King (November)
“On Writing” — George V. Higgins (November)
“The God Of Small Things” — Arundhati Roy (November)
“Urban Tumbleweed” — Harryette Mullen (November)
“Jack Carter’s Law” — Ted Lewis (November)
“The Talented Mr Ripley” — Patricia Highsmith (November)
“The Chain” — Adrian McKinty (November)
“If I Let You Go” — Charlotte Levin (December)
“Why Football Matters” — Mark Edmundson (December) (again)
“McGlue” — Ottessa Moshfegh (December)
“Nonfiction” — Julie Myerson (December)
“Crossroads” — Jonathan Franzen (December)
“Story of The Eye” — Georges Bataille (December) (again)
“The Pleasure of the Text” — Roland Barthes (December)
“Other Men’s Daughters” — Richard Stern (December)

Books in bold were particularly good.

Books Read 2022

31/5/2023

“Collected Poems: 1987 - 2003” — Paul Birtill (January)
“Out of the Woods” — Luke Turner (January)
“Assembly” — Natasha Brown (January)
“A Blood Condition” — Kayo Chingoyi (January)
“Monastery” — Eduardo Halfon (January)
“Petite Fleur” — Iosi Havilio (January)
“77 Love Sonnets” — Garrison Keillor (January)
“What Belongs To You” — Garth Greenwell (January)
“Inside The Wave” — Helen Dunmore (January)
“Box Hill” — Adam Mars-Jones (January)
“Nonsense” — Christopher Reid (January)
“Small Town Girl” — Donna McLean (February)
“Cherry” — Nico Walker (February)
“art sex music” — Cosey Fanni Tutti (February)
“The Motel Life” — Willy Vlautin (March)
“The Painted Word” — Tom Wolfe (March)
“Weird Fucks” — Lynne Tillman (March)
“The Fighter” — Craig Davidson (March)
“Repair” — C. K. Williams (March)
“Bourdain in Stories” — Laurie Woolever (March)
“The Free” — Willy Vlautin (March)
“The Question” — Austin Clarke (March)
“Keeping The House” — Tice Cin (March)
“Cockfighter” — Charles Willeford (April)
“56 Days” — Catherine Howard Ryan (April)
“The Undercurrents: A Story of Berlin” — Kirsty Bell (May)
“Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” — Robert Pirsig (May)
“The Art of Rivalry” — Sebastian Smee (May)
“Baise-Moi” — Virginie Despentes (May)
“The Demon” — Hubert Selby Jr. (May)
“Yoga” — Emmanuel Carrère (June)
“I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen” — Sylvie Simmons (June)
“The Narrow Road to the Deep North” — Richard Flanagan (July)
“The Young Accomplice” — Benjamin Wood (July)
“Three Zen Masters: Ikkyū; Hakuin; Ryōkan” — John Stevens (July)
“The Mermaid of Black Conch” — Monique Roffey (July)
“Actress” — Anne Enright (August)
“Consolations of the Forest” — Sylvain Tesson (August)
“Olive, Again” — Elizabeth Strout (August)
“My Phantoms” — Gwendoline Riley (August)
“A Mind Spread Out on the Ground” — Alicia Elliott (August)
“Do The Work” — Steven Pressfield (August)
“Trilobites & Other Stories” — Breece D’J Pancake (September)
“Town Smokes” — Pinckney Benedict (September)
“The Abide Guide” — Oliver Benjamin & Dwayne Eutsey (September)
“The Pear Field” — Nana Ekvtimishvili (September)
“A Book of Silence” — Sara Maitland (September)
“Tao: A New Way of Thinking” — Chung-yuan Chang (September)
“How To Fail” — Elizabeth Day (September)
“Open City” — Teju Cole (September)
“Lapvona” — Ottessa Moshfegh (September)
“Death and The Seaside” — Alison Moore (October)
“IT” — Stephen King (October)
“Morning: How To Make Time” — Allan Jenkins (October) (Again)
“The Rest of the Way” — J. D. McClatchy (November)
“Berlin” — Bea Setton (November)
“Dubliners” — James Joyce (November) (Again)
“New Collected Poems” — Tomas Tranströmer (November)
“By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept” — Elizabeth Smart (November)
“The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck” — Mark Mason (November)
“The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” — Muriel Spark (November)
“Teacher: The One Who Made A Difference” — Mark Edmundson (November)
“Cleaning Up at the Hamtramck Burger Chef: Selected Poems 1999-2006” — Don Winter (November)
“So Good They Can’t Ignore You” — Cal Newport (November)
“Why Write?” — Mark Edmundson (November)
“Why Read?” — Mark Edmundson (November)
“Symposium” — Plato (December)
“Getting Lost” — Annie Ernaux (December)
“Billy Rags” — Ted Lewis (December)
“The Palm-Wine Drinkard” — Amos Tutuola (December)
“Oh William!” — Elizabeth Strout (December)
“Hawk Mountain” — Conner Habib (December)
“Cutting Timber: An Irritation” — Thomas Bernhard (December)

Books in bold were particularly good.

Books Read 2021

8/1/2022

“The Lying Life of Adults” — Elena Ferrante (January)
“Moscow Circles” — Benedict Erofeev (January)
“The End of Eddy” — Édourad Louis (January)
“I Love Dick” — Chris Kraus (January)
“Persepolis” — Marjane Satrapi (January)
“Motherhood” — Shelia Heti (January)
“An Event in Autumn” — Henning Mankell (February)
“Crush” — Frédéric Dard (February)
“Crime and Punishment” — Fyodor Dostoyevsky (February)
“The Executioner Weeps” — Frédéric Dard (February)
“Zen and The Art of Murder” — Oliver Bottini (February)
“In The Cut” — Susanna Moore (February)
“One Way Out” — A. A. Dhand (February)
“A Drinking Life — Pete Hamill (March)
“Don’t You Leave Me Here” — Wilko Johnson (March)
“Heartburn” — Nora Ephron (March)
“Requiem For A Dream” — Hubert Selby Jr. (March)
“A Boy’s Own Story” — Edmund White (April)
“The Brotherhood of The Grape” — John Fante (April)
“MainStream” — Various (April)
“Who Killed My Father?” — Édourad Louis (April)
“In The Dream House” — Carmen Maria Machado (April)
“Waiting Period” — Hubert Selby Jr. (April)
“Atomic Habits” — James Clear (April)
“Jews Don’t Count” — David Baddiel (April)
“Shuggie Bain” — Douglas Stuart (April)
“Odes” — Sharon Olds (May)
“The Giro Playboy” — Michael Smith (May)
“The Descent of Man” — Grayson Perry (May)
“An Apartment on Uranus” — Paul B. Preciado (May)
“The Narrow Road to The Deep North” — Basho (May)
“The Way Home” — Mark Boyle (May)
“Move!” — Caroline Williams (May)
“Politically Homeless” — Matt Forde (June)
“The Tunnel” — Ernesto Sabato (June)
“Exposure” — Aga Lesiewicz (June)
“Discipline Equals Freedom” — Jocko Willink (June)
“Existentialism and Excess: The Life…” — Gary Cox (June)
“You Were Never Really Here” — Jonathan Ames (June)
“The Abbey” — Chris Culver (July)
“Morning: How To Make Time” — Allan Jenkins (July)
“The Hustler” — Walter Tevis (July)
“The Shadow Collector” — Kate Ellis (July)
“Crossroad Blues” — Ace Atkins (July)
“Luster” — Raven Leilani (July)
“A Spring Betrayal” — Tom Callaghan (July)
“Divorcing” — Susan Taubes (July)
“The Less Dead” — Denise Mina (July)
“Daisy Jones & The Six” — Taylor Jenkins Reid (August)
“The Colour of Money” — Walter Tevis (August)
“The Answer Is…” — Alex Trebek (August)
“Room at the Top” — John Braine (August)
“Ankomst” — Gøhril Gabrielsen (August)
“Hunger” — Knut Hamsun (August)
“The Lone Woman” — Bernardo Atxaga (August)
“Everybody” — Olivia Laing (August)
“Real Estate” — Deborah Levy (September)
“The King of Fools” — Frédéric Dard (September)
“Dancing in the Dark” — Karl Ove Knausgaard (September)
“Kitchen Confidential” — Anthony Bourdain (September)
“Home in the Vinyl Cafe” — Stuart McLean (October)
“The Warriors” — Sol Yurick (October)
“The Listeners” — Jordan Tannahill (October)
“Invisible Cities” — Italo Calvino (October)
“The Good Father” — Wayne Grady (October)
“The Vinyl Cafe Celebrates” — Stuart McLean (November)
“Sonny Liston Was A Friend of Mine” — Thom Jones (November)
“Why Marianne Faithfull Matters?” — Tanya Pearson (November)
“Olive Kitteridge” — Elizabeth Strout (November)
“Exteriors” — Annie Ernaux (November)
“Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It” — Oliver Burkeman (November)
“Life at the Top” — John Braine (November)
“American Salvage” — Bonnie Jo Campbell (November)
“A Walk in the Woods” — Bill Bryson (November)
“Indelicacy” — Amina Cain (November)
“Second Place” — Rachel Cusk (November)
“Micromastery” — Robert Twigger (November)
“Rewilding” — Micah Mortali (December)
“The War of Art” — Steven Pressfield (December)
“Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times” — Katherine May (December)
“Essential: Essays by The Minimalists” — Ryan Nicodemus & Joshua Fields Millburn (December)
“Dhammapada” — Sangharakshita (Trans.) (December)
“Everything That Remains” — Ryan Nicodemus & Joshua Fields Millburn (December)

Books in bold were particularly good.

Books Read 2020

1/1/2021

“Adèle” — Leïla Silmani (January)
“Femme Fatale” — Polly Wiseman (January)
“A Man’s Place” — Annie Ernaux (January)
“The Man Who Saw Everything” — Deborah Levy (January)
“The Italian Teacher” — Tom Rachman (January)
“In the Café of Lost Youth” — Patrick Modiano (January)
“Walthamstow” — Michael Shann (January)
“Vivian” — Christina Hesselholdt (January)
“Soho” — Richard Scott (January)
“Night Sky with Exit Wounds” — Ocean Vuong (January)
“The Pharmacist” — Justin David (January)
“Clothes, Clothes, Clothes Music, Music, Music Boys, Boys, Boys” — Viv Albertine (Feb)
“Charlotte” — David Foenkinos (February)
“How to Relax” — Thich That Hanh (February)
“The Nickel Boys” — Colson Whitehead (February)
“Strange Hotel” — Eimear McBride (February)
“Great Fires: Poems 1982 - 1992” — Jack Gilbert (February)
“Gunslinger” — Edward Dorn (March)
“The Cost of Living” — Deborah Levy (March)
“Melisande! What Are Dreams?” — Hillel Halkin (March)
“Do/Pause” — Robert Poynton (March)
“The Counterlife” — Philip Roth (March)
“Everything I Know About Love” — Dolly Alderton (April)
“Little Miss Awesome” — Ally North (April)
“Little Miss Awesome” — Steve Hussy (April)
“The Facts” — Philip Roth (April)
“Hating Olivia” — Mark SaFranko (April)
“Steps” — Steve Hussy (April)
“Fugitive Pieces” — Anne Michaels (April)
“Insel” — Mina Loy (April)
“The Long Drop” — Denise Mina (April)
“Lincoln in the Bardo” — George Saunders (April)
“Mindfulness in Plain English” — Bhante Henepola Gunaratana (April)
“The Undertaking” — Audrey Magee (April)
“The Land of Decoration” — Grace McCleen (May)
“Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” — Greg McKeown (May)
“The Professor of Poetry” — Grace McCleen (May)
“Carnegie Hall With Tin Walls” — Fred Voss (May)
“Milk and Honey” — Rupi Kaur (June)
“The English Major” — Jim Harrison (June)
“Devil in a Blue Dress” — Walter Mosley (June)
“Welfare” — Steve Anwyll (June)
“Hide and Seek” — Ian Rankin (June)
“Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency” — Olivia Laing (June)
“Brothers in Blood” — Amer Anwar (June)
“Elements of Fiction” — Walter Mosley (July)
“Fante Bukowski” — Noah Van Sciver (July)
“A Fan’s Notes” — Fredrick Exley (July)
“My Dark Vanessa” — Kate Elizabeth Russell (July)
“Good Samaritans” — Will Carver (July)
“The Polish Boxer” — Eduardo Halfon (July)
“Those People” — Louise Candlish (July)
“Black Sun” — Owen Matthews (July)
“Girl” — Edna O’Brien (July)
“Three Women” — Lisa Taddeo (August)
“The Red Right Hand” — Joel Townsley Rogers (August)
“August Is The Wicked Month” — Edna O’Brien (August)
“The Long Goodbye” — Raymond Chandler (August)
“In Praise of Shadows” — Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (August)
“The Sweet Indifference of the World” — Peter Stamm (August)
“Good Day?” — Vesna Main (August)
“The Bluest Eye” — Toni Morrison (August)
“Bank Robber Stories” — Jeffrey P. Frye (August)
“Bird in a Cage” — Frédéric Dard (August)
“Get Carter” — Ted Lewis (August)
“Supporting Cast” — Kit De Waal (September)
“Red Death” — Walter Mosley (September)
“King Kong Theory” — Virginie Despentes (September)
“A Long Way Off” — Pascal Garnier (September)
“Plender” — Ted Lewis (September)
“GBH” — Ted Lewis (September)
“In the Absence of Men” — Philippe Besson (September)
“The Appointment” — Katharina Volckmer (September)
“Swan Song” — Nathan Evans (October)
“One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” — Ken Kesey (October)
“The Gravediggers’ Bread” — Frédéric Dard (October)
“The Wicked Go To Hell” — Frédéric Dard (October)
“‘Nikolai Nikolaevich’ and ‘Camouflage’” — Yuz Aleshkovsky (October)
“All About Sarah” — Pauline Delabroy-Allard (October)
“Skint Estate” — Cash Carraway (October)
“Winter” — Karl Ove Knausgaard (October)
“Greenlights” — Matthew McConaughey (November)
“Narcoleptic” — Steve Hussy (November)
“97,196 Words: Essays” — Emmanuel Carrère (November)
“Jesus’ Son” — Denis Johnson (November)
“The All of It” — Jeannette Haien (November)
“The Fall” — Albert Camus (November)
“Beside The Sea” — Véronique Olmi (November)
“The Patty Diphusa Stories and Other Writings” — Pedro Almodóvar (November)
“Diving Into The Wreck” — Adrienne Rich (November)
“Autumn” — Karl Ove Knausgaard (December)
“Possession” — Annie Ernaux (December)
“Berlin Tango” — Kevin McAleer (December)
“The Song of Lunch” — Christopher Reid (December) (again)
“A Frozen Woman” — Annie Ernaux (December)
“Embers” — Sándor Márai (December)
“Happening” — Annie Ernaux (December)
“I Remain in Darkness” — Annie Ernaux (December)
“Simple Passion” — Annie Ernaux (December)
“A Woman’s Story” — Annie Ernaux (December)
“The Queen’s Gambit” — Walter Tevis (December)
“How We Live Now” — Bill Hayes (December)

Books in bold were particularly good.

Books Read 2019

31/12/2019

“How Saints Die” — Carmen Marcus (January)
“Pulse” — Julian Barnes (January)
“The Lonely Witness” — William Boyle (January)
“Far From True” — Linwood Barclay (January)
“Rather Be The Devil” — Ian Rankin (February)
“The Porcupine” — Julian Barnes (February)
“Monsieur” — Emma Becker (February)
“Maggie & Me” — Damian Barr (February)
“The Murder of Halland” — Pia Juul (March)
“The Easter Parade” — Richard Yates (March) (again)
“Knots and Crosses” — Ian Rankin (April)
“Black-Eyed Susans” — Julia Haeberlin (April)
“Madame Bovary” — Gustave Flaubert (April)
“Mrs Sartoris” — Elke Schmitter (April)
“Common People” — Various (May)
“Talking It Over” — Julian Barnes (May)
“Paper Ghosts” — Julia Haeberlin (May)
“Silent Scream” — Angela Marsons (May)
“Stop Doing That Shit” — Gary John Bishop (May)
“Sister, Sister” — Sue Fortin (May)
“To The Back of Beyond” — Peter Stamm (May)
“Is Monogamy Dead?” — Rosie Wilby (May)
“Insomniac City” — Bill Hayes (May)
“Goodbye, Things” — Fumio Sasaki (June)
“Notes to Self” — Emilie Pine (June)
“Only The Ocean” — Natasha Carthew (June)
“Acts of Infidelity” — Lena Anderson (June)
“The Good Son” — Paul McVeigh (July)
“Constellations” — Sinéad Gleeson (July)
“The Opposite of Loneliness” — Marina Keegan (July)
“Troubling Love” — Elena Ferrante (July)
“Notes on a Nervous Planet” — Matt Haig (July)
“Train Dreams” — Denis Johnson (July)
“All The Blood Is Red” — Leone Ross (July)
“The Artistic Life” — Mark SaFranko (August)
“The Park Bench” — Chabouté (August)
“The Assault” — Harry Mulisch (August)
“Peach” — Emma Glass (August)
“Come Let Us Sing Anyway” — Leone Ross (August)
“He’s Done Ever So Well for Himself” — Justin David (August)
“Drug Story” — u. v. ray (August)
“Daddy’s Girl” — Debbie Drechsler (September)
“The Summer of Love” — Debbie Drechsler (September)
“Threads” — Nathan Evans & Justin David (September)
“Lowborn” — Kerry Hudson (September)
“Made in Scotland” — Billy Connolly (September)
“Cnut” — Nathan Evans (September)
“Paul Moves Out” — Michel Rabagliati (September)
“Paul Goes Fishing” — Michel Rabagliati (September)
“Cleveland” — Harvey Pekar and Joseph Remnant (September)
“Alone” — Chabouté (September)
“Snow” — Maxence Fermine (September)
“Normal People” — Sally Rooney (September)
“AutoFellatio: A Memoir” — James Maker (September)
“My Year of Rest and Relaxation” — Ottessa Moshfegh (September)
“In The City of Love’s Sleep” — Lavinia Greenlaw (October)
“Scrapbook” — Adrian Tomine (October)
“32 Stories” — Adrian Tomine (October)
“The Pale Ones” — Bartholomew Bennett (November)
“A Choice of Whitman’s Verse” — Walt Whitman (November)
“Of Mice and Men” — John Steinbeck (November)
“Hard Labor” — Don Winter & Fred Voss (November)
“Love, etc” — Julian Barnes (November)
“Before She Met Me” — Julian Barnes (November)
“Northern Boy” — Iqbal Hussein (November)
“Stone in a Landslide” — Maria Barbal (November)
“The Fast 800” — Dr Michael Mosley (November)
“New York City in 1979” — Kathy Acker (November)
“The Reader” — Raymond Jean (November)
“How to be Alone” — Lane Moore (December)
“Stillness is the Key” — Ryan Holiday (December)
“Walk Through Walls” — Marina Abramović (December)
“The Flame” — Leonard Cohen (December)
“The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving A Fuck” — Sarah Knight (December)
“The Years” — Annie Ernaux (December)
“Lullaby” — Leïla Slimani (December)

Books in bold were particularly good.

Books Read 2018

1/1/2019

Metroland — Julian Barnes (January)
All Is Silence — Manuel Rivas (January)
The Bell Jar — Sylvia Plath (January)
Limonov — Emmanuel Carrere (January)
The Looking-Glass Sisters — Gøhril Gabrielsen (January)
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning — Alan Sillitoe (February)
Silence — Shusaku Endo (February)
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner — Alan Sillitoe (February)
Winesburg, Ohio — Sherwood Anderson (February)
Fragments from My Diary — Maxim Gorky (March)
The Days of Abandonment — Elena Ferrante (March)
The End of the Affair — Graham Greene (March)
A Scattering — Christopher Reid (March)
Lost and Found — Jules Montague (April)
Outline — Rachel Cusk (April)
We Should All Be Feminists — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (April)
The Plains — Gerard Murnane (April)
Sympathy — Olivia Sudjic (April)
Birthday Letters — Ted Hughes (May)
Packing My Library — Alberto Manguel (May)
The Nothing — Hanif Kureishi (May)
My Name is Leon — Kit De Waal (May)
Everyman — Philip Roth (May) (again)
12 Rules for Life — Jordan Peterson (June)
Left in Dark Times — Bernard-Henri Levy (June)
Transit — Rachel Cusk (June)
The Plot Against America — Philip Roth (July)
A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better — Benjamin Wood (July)
Conversations With Friends — Sally Rooney (July)
Kudos — Rachel Cusk (July)
Story of the Eye — Georges Bataille (July)
Crudo — Olivia Laing (August)
The Double — Fyodor Dostoyevsky (August)
Pitch Dark — Renata Adler (August)
The Trick to Time — Kit De Waal (September)
Sentenced to Life — Clive James (September)
The Lost — Claire McGowan (October)
Temptation — Vesna Main (October)
Special Delivery — Iselin C. Hermann (October)
The Only Story — Julian Barnes (October)
Last Exit to Brooklyn — Hubert Selby Jr. (October)
Six Foot Six — Kit De Waal (October)
The Long Take — Robin Robertson (October)
Everything Under — Daisy Johnson (October)
The Last Wolf — Laszlo Krasznahorkai (November)
Judas — Amos Oz (November)
Elevation — Stephen King (November)
Big Magic — Elizabeth Gilbert (November)
Men Explain Things — Rebecca Solnit (November)
The Outrun — Amy Liptrot (December)
Boyhood Island — Karl Ove Knausgaard (December)
Blue Light Yokohama 3 — Nicolas Obregon (December)
The Adversary — Emmanuel Carrere (December)
White Teeth — Zadie Smith (December)
The Song of Lunch — Christopher Reid (December)
Asymmetry — Lisa Halliday (December)

Books in bold were particularly good.

Books Read 2017

1/1/2018

Smashed in the USSR: Fear and Loathing on the Steppes — Caroline Walton & Ivan Petrov (January)
The Lesser Bohemians — Eimear McBride (January)
The Sex Lives of English Women — Wendy Jones (January)
The Lonely City — Olivia Laing (January)
Nutshell — Ian McEwan (January)
Grief Is The Thing With Feathers — Max Porter (January)
The Essex Serpent — Sarah Perry (February)
The London Train — Tessa Hadley (February)
On Love — Charles Bukowski (February)
First Love — Gwendoline Riley (March)
The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays — Simon Leys (March)
Remedy Is None — William McIlvanney (April)
Future Sex — Emily Witt (April)
Sins as Scarlet — Nicolas Obregon (June)
Anything is Possible — Elizabeth Strout (June)
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay — Elena Ferrante (June)
The Story of The Lost Child — Elena Ferrante (July)
Backbone Flute — Vladimir Mayakovsky (July)
A Man in Love — Karl Ove Knausgaard (July)
The Dying Animal — Philip Roth (July) (again)
In Gratitude — Jenny Diski (July)
The Tryst — Monique Roffey (July)
The Power of Meaning — Emily Esfahani Smith (July)
Trysting — Emmanuelle Pagano (August)
The Key — Junichiro Tanizaki (August)
My Name Is Lucy Barton — Elizabeth Strout (August)
Sabbath’s Theatre — Philip Roth (September)
On the Suffering of the World — Arthur Schopenhauer (September)
The Children Act — Ian McEwan (September)
The Child in Time — Ian McEwan (September)
Sylvia — Leonard Michaels (October)
Portrait of a Mother as a Young Woman — Friedrich Christian Delius (October)
Four Major Plays: A Doll’s House; Ghosts; Hedda Gabler; The Master Builder — Henrik Ibsen (October)
Venus in Furs — Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch (October)
Bonjour Tristesse — Françoise Sagan (October)
Christodora — Tim Murphy (October)
The Shooting Party — Anton Chekhov (October)
Levels of Life — Julian Barnes (November)
Dunbar — Edward St. Aubyn (November)
The Cut — Anthony Cartwright (November)
Henry and June — Anais Nin (November)
The Power of Now — Eckhart Tolle (December)
The Kingdom — Emmanuel Carrere (December)
Tony & Susan — Austin Wright (December)

Books in bold were particularly good.

Books Read 2016

9/1/2017

My Universities — Maxim Gorky (January)
The Zone — Sergei Dovlatov (January)
Home of the Gentry — Ivan Turgenev (January)
So Long, See You Tomorrow — William Maxwell (January)
Clever Girl — Tessa Hadley (January)
Separate Flights — Andre Dubus (February)
Adultery and Other Choices — Andre Dubus (February)
Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreev — Maxim Gorky (February)
Redeployment — Phil Klay (March)
Laidlaw — William McIlvanney (March)
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams — Stephen King (March)
They Came Like Swallows — William Maxwell (March)
Fear of Dying — Erica Jong (April)
Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair — Pablo Neruda (April)
Midwinterblood — Marcus Sedgwick (May)
My Brilliant Friend — Elena Ferrante (May)
Patrimony — Philip Roth (May)
Wonder Boys — Michael Chabon (May)
Blue Light Yokohama — Nicolas Obregon (June)
Still Writing:The Perils and Pleasures of the Creative Life — Dani Shapiro (June)
The Papers of Tony Veitch — William McIlvanney (July)
Gilead — Marylyne Robinson (July)
Strange Loyalties — William McIlvanney (July)
Martin John — Anakana Schofield (July)
At Hawthorn Time — Melissa Harrison (August)
The Little Red Chairs — Edna O’Brien (August)
Marie — Madeleine Bourdouxhe (August)
Seven Brief Lessons On Physics — Carlo Rovelli (August)
Tampa — Alissa Nutting (August)
A Summer Affair — Ivan Klima (September)
The Noise of Time — Julian Barnes (September)
Gorsky — Vesna Goldsworthy (September)
Country Girl — Edna O’Brien (September)
Confessions of a Mask — Yukio Mishima (October)
I Remember — Joe Brainard (November) (again)
His Bloody Project — Graeme Macrae Burnet (November)
The Vegetarian — Han Kang (November)
The Engagement — Chloe Hooper (December)
The Story of a New Name — Elena Ferrante (December)

Books in bold were particularly good.

Books Read 2015

1/3/2016

Bird by Bird — Anne Lamott (January)
The Lover — Marguerite Duras (January)
To Rise Again At A Decent Hour — Joshua Ferris (January)
Genie and Paul — Natasha Soobramanien (January)
Ghosting — Jonathan Kemp (February)
Broken Vessels — Andre Dubus (February)
Perfect Lives — Polly Samson (February)
The Russian Master & Other Stories — Anton Chekhov (February)
Father Sergius — Leo Tolstoy (February)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich — Alexander Solzhenitsyn (March)
The Suitcase — Sergei Dovlatov (March)
Pushkin Hills — Sergei Dovlatov (March)
My Childhood — Maxim Gorky (March)
Eugene Onegin — Aleksandr Pushkin (March)
The Compromise — Sergei Dovlatov (April)
Notes From Underground — Fyodor Dostoevsky (May)
Petersburg Tales — Nikolai Gogol (May)
The Gambler — Fyodor Dostoevsky (May)
At Night — Alex Quick (May)
First Love and Other Stories — Ivan Turgenev (June)
Don’t Try This At Home — Angela Readman (June)
Pimp — Iceberg Slim (June)
All That Is — James Salter (July)
Old School — Tobias Wolff (July)
The Ecliptic — Benjamin Wood (July)
Too Loud a Solitude — Bohumil Hrabal (July)
Life Drawing — Robin Black (August)
All Dogs Are Blue — Rodrigo de la Souza (August)
A Girl Is A Half Formed Thing — Eimear McBride (August)
Layla — Nina De La Mer (August)
The Hair of Harold Roux — Thomas Williams (September)
The Gentleman from San Fran. & Other Edits — Ivan Bunin (September)
My Apprenticeship — Maxim Gorky (September)
Dolores Claiborne — Stephen King (October)
The Palace Thief — Ethan Canin (October)
The Best British Short Stories — Nicholas Royle ed. (October)
Revival — Stephen King (November)
The Prank — Anton Chekhov (November)
Anna Karenina — Leo Tolstoy (December)
Contempt — Alberto Moravia (December)

Books in bold were particularly good.

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