Read in 2015

  • The Prank: the best of young Chekhov – selected by Anton Chekhov
  • The Good Story – Arabella Kurtz & J.M. Coetzee
  • Under The Blue Sky by David Eldridge (from The Methuen Drama Book of Royal Court Plays 2000-2010)
  • The Pilgrim Hawk by Glenway Wescott
  • Oh What a Paradise It Seems by John Cheever
  • Love is a Fervent Fire by Robin Jenkins (The sort of novel that Cold Comfort Farm parodies. Appalling.)
  • Poems of Love and War by Mary Borden (Harsh and original WWI poetry. Recommended.)
  • The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson
  • The Renaissance (Oxford VSI series, first published as The Renaissance Bazaar) by Jerry Brotton
  • Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: a tale of love and fallout by Lauren Redniss
  • The Scottish Suffragettes by Leah Leneman
  • One Million Tiny Plays About Britain by Craig Taylor
  • Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse by David Mitchell
  • Existentialism (Oxford VSI series) by Thomas R. Flynn
  • A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
  • Grief Is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
  • City by Clifford D. Simak
  • The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers (recommended!)
  • Artful by Ali Smith
  • The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art by Joyce Carol Oates (ghastly)
  • Intrusion by Ken MacLeod
  • Adventures in Human Being by Gavin Francis (recommended!)
  • In The Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman (abandoned at halfway point. Dreadful rubbish)
  • Art in History by Martin Kemp
  • 10 Billion by Stephen Emmott
  • [big interruption to reading life]
  • The Inspector by Nikolai Gogol (translated by Pevear & Volokhonsky)
  • La Planète des singes by Pierre Boulle (en français)
  • Traffic (lecture) by John Ruskin
  • Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson (dreadful rubbish)
  • The Linden Tree by J.B. Priestley
  • On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz
  • An Inspector Calls by J.B. Priestley
  • Slapstick or Lonesome No More by Kurt Vonnegut
  • The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
  • Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (excellent introduction by Lynne Truss)