Read in 2016

  • The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle
  • Why Grow Up? Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age by Susan Neiman (philosophy)
  • Solar Bones by Mike McCormack
  • Time Travel: A History by James Gleick (physics, philosophy & literature)
  • The Trial of Roger Casement – Fiona Doran (graphic novel)
  • A Field Guide to Reality – Joanna Kavenna (pretentious, pseudo-intellectual and hollow)
  • The Poison Belt – Arthur Conan Doyle (science fiction!)
  • Journey’s End – R. C. Sherriff (play)
  • IDP: 2043 – collaborative graphic novel by Barroux, Mary Talbot & Kate Charlesworth, Pat Mills & Hannah Berry, Irvine Welsh & Dan McDaid, Adam Murphy & Will Morris. Story editor: Denise Mina. (graphic novel)
  • A Philosophy of Tragedy – Christopher Hamilton
  • Monsters of Men – Patrick Ness
  • The Age of Nothing: How We Have Sought to Live Since the Death of God – Peter Watson (history of atheism since Nietzsche, recommended!)
  • Moon Cop – Tom Gauld (graphic novel, recommended)
  • The Ask and the Answer – Patrick Ness
  • The Undiscovered Self – Carl Jung
  • The Knife of Never Letting Go – Patrick Ness
  • Playthings – Alex Pheby (recommended!)
  • Playing to the Gallery – Grayson Perry
  • A Whole Life – Robert Seethaler (Wanted to like it, couldn’t. Felt forced & contrived.)
  • The Gifts of Reading – Robert Macfarlane
  • Both – Tom Gauld and Simone Lia (graphic novel)
  • The Human Front – Ken MacLeod
  • On Reading Writing and Living with Books (Pushkin Press/The London Library)
  • Seveneves – Neal Stephenson (Gave up on p. 326. Generally readable, but appallingly written characters — zero understanding of human nature.)
  • Life in a Bustle: Advice to Youth (Pushkin Press/The London Library — recommended)
  • True West (play) – Sam Shepard
  • Green Tea – Sheridan Le Fanu
  • German Literature (Oxford VSI) – Nicholas Boyle
  • Death in Rome – Wolfgang Koeppen (translated by Michael Hofmann)
  • Campo Santo – W.G. Sebald
  • Philoktetes – Sophocles (translated by James Scully)
  • Burning Paradise – Robert Charles Wilson
  • Faber New Poets: No. 16 – Rachel Curzon
  • Make Room! Make Room! – Harry Harrison (recommended)
  • The Diary of a Provincial Lady – E.M. Delafield
  • Medea – Euripides – translated by Robin Robertson (recommended)

The cover image captures the feeling perfectly.

  • The Trouble With Women by Jacky Fleming (recommended)

  • A Sleep and a Forgetting – William Dean Howells
  • A Descent into the Maelström – Edgar Allan Poe
  • The Noise of Time – Julian Barnes
  • The Gods Themselves – Isaac Asimov
  • The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters – Adam Nicolson (*recommended!*)
  • Brand New Ancients – Kate Tempest
  • The Encyclopedia of the Dead – Danilo Kiš
  • Penguin Island – Anatole France
  • The Interpreter – Diego Marani
  • Levels of Life – Julian Barnes
  • The Philosopher’s Apprentice – James Morrow
  • The Enlightenment (Oxford VSI) – John Robertson