Books & pointless charts revisited

I challenged myself to read a book a week again this year. I haven’t quite managed it, up to 48 with a couple of weeks to go. As with last year, I thought I’d generate some pointless charts (pinching Jane Bryony Rawson’s idea).

If you twisted my arm to make a list, I’d say my favourites that I’ve read this year are:

Mendeleyev’s dream – Paul Strathern
We have always lived in a castle – Shirley Jackson
Flight Behaviour – Barbara Kingsolver
Ruby – Cynthia Bond
Hotel du Lac – Anita Brookner
North Water – Ian McGuire
His Bloody Project – Graeme Burnet
The Talented Mr Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
Anna Karenina – Tolstoy
Another Day in the Death of America – Gary Younge

I read a bit of non-fiction this year, but my range has been mostly literary fiction with a smattering of crime.:

I tend to use the Kindle for convenience, but also this year I hurt my eye at one point, so reading was difficult so listened to a couple of audio books:

An even split between male and female authors this year:

Were these books newly published (say in the last 2-3 years) or older? Mainly older, but the Booker and Bailey’s prize provided a useful way into some new fiction:

The full list is as follows:

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
David Bowie’s Low – Hugh Wicken
Agatha Christie – Murder in Mesopotamia
Mendeleyev’s dream – Paul Strathern
Napoleon’s Buttons – Penny Le Couteur & Jay Burreson
Madame Curie Complex – Julie des Jardins
Strangers on a Train – Patricia Highsmith
The Uncommon Reader – Alan Bennett
The Museum Guard – Howard Norman
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
We Have Always Lived in a Castle – Shirley Jackson
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers
The Code – Ross Bernstein
The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
Paradoxical Undressing – Kristin Hersh
Butterfield 8 – John O’Hara
Gwen John – Sue Roe
Flight Behaviour – Barbara Kingsolver
The Cornish Coast Mystery – John Bude
It’s All in Your Head – Suzanne O’Sullivan
Zukeina Dobson – Max Beerbohm
Night Watch – Patrick Modiano
Ruby – Cynthia Bond
Sussex Downs Murder – John Bude
Vinyl Detective – Andrew Cartmel
101 albums you should die before you hear – Everett True
The Glorious Heresies – Lisa McInerney
Hotel du Lac – Anita Brookner
The Betrayal – Helen dunmore
Freakonomics – Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner
North Water – Ian McGuire
Trout Fishing in America – Richard Brautigan
Gut Symmetries – Jeanette Winterson
The Many – Wyl Menmuir
A Mind to Murder – PD James
Strangers – Anita Brookner
Nancy Mitford – The Pursuit of Love
Another Day in the Death of America – Gary Younge
His Bloody Project – Graeme Burnet
The Dinner – Herman Koch
The Blue Room – Georges Simenon
The Improbability of Love – Hannah Rothschild
Born to Run – Bruce Springsteen
Talented Mr Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
Doris Lessing – The Grass is Singing
100 Prized Poems – William Sieghart (ed)
Eileen – Otessa Moshfegh
Reading the Silver Screen – Thomas Foster

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International