2020: My year in books

The year of the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown, I made a strenuous effort to use some of this time for reading. The result is my most prolific year as a reader, in which I completed a record 50 books, a total of 13,044 pages (so an average book length of 261 pages).

Of those 50 books, just 10 of those books were written by women. 13 of them were non-fiction. The most recently published (Voter Suppression in US Elections) came out in 2020, the oldest (The Iliad) was written nearly 3,000 years ago. The longest (Perdido Street Station) was 837 pages, the shortest (Lycidas) less than 50.

There were some trends that influenced my reading. Firstly, the pandemic and lockdown itself directly prompted some investigation into such circumstances, notably Rebecca Solnit's fascinating A Paradise Built in Hell. In a year in which I wasn't able to take holidays abroad, my television viewing habits included watching some old Michael Palin travel documentaries, which encouraged me to take an unread copy of his Himalaya off the book shelf after many years. One of his documentaries on Ernest Hemingway also prompted me to pick up that author again, and even re-read my favourite of his books (rereading being a very rare occurence for me). Finally there is a cluster of children's books which I read in French, as my learning of that language continues. A goal for next year is to push myself to read more challenging French literature, particularly to dive into works by writers, such as Camus, who I have previously read in translation.

Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut's fiction can be varied in style and subject, but is always characterised by brevity, wit and hidden depth. This darkly funny book bears all these virtues and deploys them with elan, in a story that concerns a writer accused of being a Nazi propagandist. Written from his prison cell as he awaits trial for war crimes, Howard Campbell Jr tells us his life story, as a speech writer for Goebbels and purportedly a double agent for the Americans. A moral book that examines the transgressive nature of art and literature when deployed for other means, it is also a philosophical meditation on the nature of guilt and responsibility.

The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

A book with an imposing reputation. The premise is simple enough - the devil comes to 1930s Soviet Moscow, and mayhem ensues. Variously categorised as fantasy, farce, thriller, romance, satire or even a religious text, it is probably best to go in fairly cold and just enjoy the ride. I found it an absolute joy from the first to the last page.

Atomic Habits - James Clear

This self-help book by entrepreneur and author Clear is built around a system of how to structure your self-improvement through a process of repeatable habit forming. I had already adopted the use of a habit-tracking app in 2019, primarily for tracking my intermittent vegetarianism and learning of French, but since reading this practical and readable guide I have expanded that to cover most of my habits, from meditation to exercise and indeed to reading.

Hard to Be a God - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

A science fiction novel by the Russian Strugatsky brothers, in which a human from a futuristic Earth is living undercover on another planet whose development has so far advanced only as far as the middle ages. Grappling with themes of how passive an anthropological observer can be, as well as the moral quandaries that arise from essentially having a more advanced view of society than your peers, it put me most strongly in mind of those Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes about the Prime Directive. Enjoyable.

Blood, Sweat and Pixels - Jason Schreier

This collection of interviews and histories about the development of video games is an interesting insight into an industry that once tempted me as perhaps the most appealingly creative corner of the technology sector. While Schreier's light but sincere journalistic tone is full of applause and appreciation for the output, his first-hand tales of nightmarish project crunch, endless existential threat and of course personal and corporate infighting has killed off what little romantic notions I had of the industry. A compelling picture of an industry with the sprawl and scale of the technology sector, but the relentless insanity of the film industry. Thanks, but no thanks.

The Noise of Time - Julian Barnes

A sympathetic portrait of composer Dmitri Shostakovich, and the difficult relationship between the Soviet state and his art, has been described by some as English author Barnes's masterpiece. It is the first of his novels that I have read, but on the strength of this I am certainly inclined to return for more. Wielding a deceptively delicate prose that traces in and out of large themes without ever seeming to shift tone, I found it immensely readable, educational and moving.

Perdido Street Station - China Miéville

This sprawling, bonkers work of speculative fiction from Miéville is hard to describe in any way that can truly capture the breathtaking scope of its ambition. More than just straddling genres, Miéville moves between them like quicksilver, never giving the reader a chance to catch their breath before throwing something else at them. A prosaic description would cover the details of the plot - a well-meaning scientist takes on a research task and accidentally unleashes something awful - and the setting - the colourful city of New Crobuzon, in the world of Bas-Lag, a place of steampunk, magic and police-state capitalism - but really this is a novel which must be read to be appreciated.

How Music Works - David Byrne

A series of essays by erstwhile Talking Heads frontman Byrne, this is a charming and infectious celebration of music in many forms, as well as an unconventional memoir of some of Byrne's career highlights. His writing is as disarming and off-beat as you might expect if familiar with his songwriting, and the prose skips along with wit and enthusiasm. If a few of the essays are a little meandering, then his boyish naivety and fervour more than make up for it.

The Tombs of Atuan - Ursula Le Guin

This is the second part of Le Guin's Earthsea series, and a direct sequel to the first novel, A Wizard of Earthsea. However, it departs substantially from the bildungsroman narrative of that excellent novel, and focuses instead on an archaic and misogynistic religious order and their oppressive deification of a young girl, pressganged into a life of monastic servitude. Readable and exciting enough for teenage readers, I was surprised once again at Le Guin's ability to subtly weave political content into a fantasy novel, exploring themes of oppression, intolerance, and the iron grip of organised religion.

The Upright Thinkers - Leonard Mlodinow

A history of scientific thought from American writer Mlodinow. What elevates this above run of the mill pop science is the through line in which Mlodinow is also tracing his relationship with his father, a Holocaust survivor, alongside his relationship with science, and how he worked to bring the two together.

God Bless You, Mr Rosewater - Kurt Vonnegut

This novel from science ficion author Vonnegut is decidedly not science fiction, but instead a straighter story following the title character and his attempts to turn an inherited fortune into philanthropy. Laced with Vonnegut's usual intertextuality and dry wit, it is also a moving story that sits comfortably alongside the rest of his often more outlandish oeuvre.

Augustus - John Williams

This third and final novel from Stoner and Butcher's Crossing author Williams is an epistolary following the life of Augustus Caesar. Impeccably researched and with an unquestionable grasp of the setting and narrative, what really elevates this beyond historical fiction is Williams's incredible ability to weave depth, meaning and emotion into every layer of this dense and epic story. Three novels, three masterpieces: possibly my favourite American writer.

A Paradise Built in Hell - Rebecca Solnit

A thorough and fascinating investigation into the aftermath of natural disasters. Full thoughts here.

The Iliad - Homer

One of the oldest surviving works of Western literature, this epic poem, traditionally attributed to Homer, is set around a short period of a few weeks within the middle of the ten-year-long Trojan way of legend. Despite this, it covers most of the events of the entire war, using a discursive and non-linear narrative style that surprised me in its modernity. I read it in (English) verse, which at times was a challenge, but reading it in this form does lend the work a feeling of performance and theatre that I think would be lacking from a prose translation.

Normal People - Sally Rooney

A wonderfully well-judged story of a young couple's love that is threatened to be thwarted not by circumstance but by an inability to communicate their feelings effectively with each other. An enormous hit when it was released and subsequently adapted as a BBC drama series, I found it very readable (comfortably devoured in a single sitting) and surprisingly affecting. Easy to recommend.

Burmese Days - George Orwell

Orwell's first novel is set in Burma, and is largely drawn from his experience working as a police officer there over a period of five years. While it lacks the ambition and flair of his later fictional work, it is a well-written debut and that has believable characters. It is also a strongly anti-colonial tract, and shows that his writing was from the very start motivated almost entirely by his desire to illuminate his readers in order to move their political views. Well worth reading.

Sweet Tooth - Ian McEwan

This dazzling literary spy novel from McEwan is in many ways a surprising genre choice for a writer who had never previously concerned himself with such material. However, those familiar with his work will know that his novels, though often psychological or political in their intent, are almost always tightly plotted, and the formula of layered revelation native to the spy genre ultimately feels like comfortable ground for McEwan to tread on. As ever, things are not as simple as they may appear on the surface, and the lengthy plot rattles along through a vividly drawn Britain in the nineteen seventies, as our narrator tells us the story of her recruitment and misadventures working on Her Majesty's service. Excellent fun.

Ubik - Philip K Dick

This reality-bending murder mystery about drugs, spies and psychics is packed with the high-concept science fiction ideas for which author Philip K Dick is known. I am a fan of his work in general, but would certainly accept that his output (particularly the earlier novels) can be a little hit-and-miss, at least in terms of quality control. No such issues here. This is a taught and unsettling novel which would be an excellent entry point into Dick's extensive canon.

The Fire Last Time - Chris Harman

This extensive and in-depth account of the revolutionary socialist movement that sprang up in 1968 and reverberated around the world over the following decades is an exhaustive first-hand document recording a failed revolution, its characters and aims, and ultimately the reasons why it was crushed by the rise of neo-liberalism. At times a fairly dry academic text, I found it to be a difficult read, but Harman writes with a great deal of clarity and experience (to the point where at times it is clear he is underplaying his own importance in some events), and it was hugely informative, both in terms of a series of individual events themselves but also in tying together a narrative over decades and continents.

The Fire Next Time - James Baldwin

Read partly as it was being circulated as a must-read on lists relating to the resurgence of the Black Lives Matters movement in the summer of 2020, and the similarity in name to the previous book I read, this seminal book by American writer Baldwin every bit deserves its reputation, and it is clear to see why it was so influential on the civil rights movement following its publication. A short book, formed of two letters, it is written with great acuity and really should be read by anyone interested in racial justice in the US or any other country.

The Mill on the Floss - George Elliot

The Victorian-era English writer Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Elliot, has been high on my list of novelists that I needed to approach for some time. This is her second novel, a psychological story that focuses on a pair of siblings and deals with themes of experience, trauma and circumstance. While showing some trappings of the age, I was surprised how much the novel felt like contemporary fiction, compared to say Jane Austen or Charles Dickens. What at first feels like it could be a slight story of romance gradually blooms into something rather more epic and profound, and it left me with the strong impression that I must read more of her work.

The Odyssey - Homer

A sequel of sorts to The Iliad, the story of Odysseus's long journey home following the Trojan war is stranger yet more linear than its sister work. Again reading in verse (this time a dusty but dignified translation by Alexander Pope), I found it surprisingly funny, and some passages - particularly the descent into the underworld - are vividly drawn and quite breathtaking. My primary irritation in the translations I read of both this and The Iliad was the translators' insistence on almost exclusively translating the Greek gods' names into their Roman counterparts (Zeus becoming Jupiter and so on). An enjoyable read but did require an occasional dip into Wikipedia.

Anecdotal Evidence - Wendy Cope

This late collection from British poet Wendy Cope delicately wraps melancholy within a charming veneer of wit and comedy. Ostensibly a comic poet, it is clear from any one of these short and sharp pieces that Cope's interest is deeper than mere amusement, instead using fine humour to break down our barriers and let her message sneak through.

Conversations with Friends - Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney's first novel was not such a big hit as Normal People, but it has much of its charm and is a cracking page-turner following a complex ménage à quatre.

The Sound of the Mountain - Yasunari Kawabata

This longer work by Nobel laureate Kawabata is a change of pace from Snow Country and Thousand Cranes, double the length of those two works combined. I found it a difficult read; a meditation on age, death and infidelity that meanders a bit. It was ultimately worth persevering, but I would recommend Snow Country as a better place to start if you are new to Kawabata's work.

I Heart Logs - Jay Kreps

This short and helpful book about log streaming within software architecture is a helpful introduction both to the underlying philosophy and some of the prominent technologies in the field.

User Story Mapping - Jeff Patton

A practical guide to the practice described in the title, in which user interaction with a product is "mapped" out as a "story" describing their experience of the product, as opposed to the more traditional practice of mapping out features and what they do. It is a great framework that I wish I could remember to use more frequently, and Patton presents it comprehensively. A good read, although I would also have appreciated a shorter introduction as a first entry to the field.

American Gods - Neil Gaiman

This expansive novel is a playful exploration of an excellent fantasy idea - that gods exist where and how they are believed in. The world Gaiman builds is an America in which gods of the old world (including Egyptian and Norse gods) are drifters, largely forgotten and struggling to make ends meet. They have been replaced by the new gods - Media, Technology, Globalism and the like - and searching for ways to re-establish their dominance. The central character and plot are somewhat forgettable, but the world is beautifully realised and Gaiman has great fun with the premise.

Cities of the Plain - Cormac McCarthy

The concluding part of McCarthy's expansive Border Trilogy unites the protagonists of the two previous books (All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing) as they work as young ranch hands outside El Paso, Texas. The romantic and sweeping colour of the two other books slowly drains away here, leaving an increasingly desolate and nihilistic tone that matches some of McCarthy's better known works. As ever, you must be on board with his linguistic preferences to really enjoy the narrative, and while in general there may be less here to savour than in some of his other works, the moments of humanity interspersed among all the bleak meaninglessness do make the journey worthwhile in the end.

Falling Man - Don DeLillo

This difficult and at times seemingly deliberately vague meditation on the psychological after-effects of 9/11 on one New York family is probably the novel of DeLillo's that I have least enjoyed. It is undoubtedly as searing in its insight as, say, White Noise, but I found that (given the difficult subject matter) it lacked his usual dark sense of humour laced through the narrative. An important document perhaps, but a difficult book to recommend.

The Yellow Wall-Paper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

This classic short novella is a strange and ambiguous mystery which can be interpreted in a number of ways. Best experienced with few expectations, I found it thought-provoking and memorable.

The Mysteries of Algiers - Robert Irwin

This nasty, blackly comic spy thriller from The Arabian Nightmare author Irwin is set in Algiers over the course of a few months spanning 1959 and 1960, at the height of the Algerian independence struggle. Far more than just a comedy, the books asks uncomfortable questions about ideology and the susceptibility of the human mind to reprogramming.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (And Other Stories) - Ernest Hemingway

This is a collection of short stories by Hemingway, including the title story which he personally regarded as his best - an opinion I find hard to dispute. As this collection is drawn somewhat randomly from across his career there isn't a hugely consistent tone or theme to be found, but there are some gems alongside the occasional dud.

Inside The Whale and Other Essays - George Orwell

This collection of three lengthy essays by George Orwell is brilliantly written and full of Orwell's intelligence and political insight. Essays cover Charles Dickens, boys' weekly magazines and a length review of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer which discursively examines literary tendencies to live "inside the whale" - that is, sheltered from the outside world.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - Frederick Douglass

This is a memoir by abolitionist and escaped slave Douglass, a famous orator in his day. His life story at times makes for a very harrowing read, but Douglass writes with a clarity and immediacy that means the book is still very readable today.

Silas Marner - George Eliot

This unusually-structured novel from Mary Ann Evans traces the ups and downs in the life of the title character, a weaver who lives as a hermit following a spell in prison after being falsely accused of a crime. It is ultimately a story of redemption and the thawing of a cold heart, but Eliot avoids sentimentality and focuses instead on the psychological story underneath. At times displaying a level of wordiness redolent of the era in which it was written, I still found it hugely enjoyable. I will be continuing my exploration of Eliot's novels.

Voter Suppression in US Elections - Stacey Abrams, Carol Anderson, Kevin M. Kruse, Heather Cox Richardson, Heather Ann Thompson, Jim Downs

Comprising a round-table discussion and a series of essays and articles taken from various publications, as well as Stacey Abrams' statement to the House Judiciary Committee on the subject, this quick read is an in-depth look at the topic of voter suppression in US elections. I bought the e-book after reading about Abrams' work driving voter registration in Georgia, which helped flip the state and therefore swing the election this year, as well as her defeat in the gubernatorial election in 2018. For those unfamiliar with the topic, voter suppression is a range of forms of gerrymandering and legal trickery that has a longstanding tradition in the US, largely focused on disenfranchising African American voters. While familiar with some similar habits in the UK, I was appalled at the range and impact of some tactics used by the right in the US in order to diminish the black vote, bolster the white vote and aggressively undermine the democratic system. For such a short book, I learnt a lot.

The Scar - China Miéville

A loose sequel to Perdido Street Station, this strange steampunk fantasy novel is set in the same world of Bas-Lag, but transports the action from sprawling city New Crubuzon and onto the high seas. I suppose the most obvious comparison might be that work by Miéville's near namesake, Melville's Moby Dick, as it is a story of obsession, adventure, and the dangers of abandon. Terrifying mosquito-human hybrids, giant interdimensional whale monsters, ethereal lizards, vampires, gunships, tentacled mutants and librarians are all mixed together in a near-crazy concoction that is held together by a page turning plot, a light descriptive tone and a surprisingly effective meta-narrative device which is stitched through the voyaging narrative.

The Lion and The Unicorn - George Orwell

This book is a lengthy three-part essay about English nationalism and what Orwell saw in 1941 as a hampered war effort due to an outdated class system running Britain. It is an intellectually exhilarating read, and one in which it is possible to see the beginnings of ideas which would eventually blossom into Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Prayer-Cushions of The Flesh - Robert Irwin

This short novella by Arabian Nightmare author is a surreal erotic mystery, and perversely perhaps something of a coming of age story following a young prince who has been raised within the harem, waiting for his day to accede to the throne. I enjoyed it but there are better entry points into Irwin's canon - the aforementioned Arabian Nighmare and Satan Wants Me being my two favourites.

Himalaya - Michael Palin

A journal kept by former Monty Python member Palin on his lengthy trip across the whole of the Himalayan region, taking in Pakistan, Nepal, Tibet, China, India and Bangladesh, I found it both informative and, as might be expected, readable and amusing. Palin keeps a concise journal of events and details, and it is perhaps his sketched characterisation of the local people that he meets which linger in the mind longer than grander events such as his audience with the Dalai Lama.

Lycidas - John Milton

I read this epic poem by Milton as a test of whether I might enjoy reading some of his lengthier and more notable works - namely Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. It is an affecting memorial on the death of a friend, and I found the writing to be quite palatable to a modern reader, so those other works are now sat on my Kindle ready to be tackled once I can dedicate the time they will demand.

The Kreutzer Sonata - Leo Tolstoy

This late novella by the War and Peace author is something of a moralising tract, being the related story of a man who has murdered his wife as a result of the apparently inevitable degradation of his personality from pre-marital affairs. While Tolstoy's Christian moralising is a bit tedious and dated, it is written with his usual panache, and I managed to chew through it in a little over one sitting.

Hadji Murat - Leo Tolstoy

I enjoyed this one much more than The Kreutzer Sonata. Written at the end of Tolstoy's life and published posthumously, it surprisingly shares much of its tone and feel with his first notable work - War and Peace, while not sharing any of that daunting tome's mighty length. It is an adaptation of the true story of an Avar rebel commander in the Russian invasion of Chechnya in the early 19th century, who defects to the Russian side to pursue a personal vendetta. It is a page-turning triumph that is both exciting and profoundly insightful. I would be tempted to recommend it as an excellent entry point into Tolstoy's canon.

The Farthest Shore - Ursula Le Guin

This concluding part of Le Guin's original Earthsea trilogy (another series of novels followed some decades later), there is a darker tone than the earlier entries, as she turns her pen to questions of death, decay and desolation, as well as fatherhood and renewal. A wonderful conclusion to the story.

Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Read in French.

This classic of French children's literature is a disarming and strange story about the narrator, a pilot, encountering the eponymous child after crash landing in the desert. The stories he narrates are fable-like, and despite its trappings as an ostensible children's book, the writing is wry and full of depth.

Les Bijoux de la Castafiore - Hergé

Read in French.

One of the later books featuring Belgian comic strip hero Tintin, it subverts the usual formula of the intrepid journalist's adventures by focusing on a story in which nothing happens. This may be the case, but the lack of action proceeds with great hilarity and wit.

Les Cigares du Pharaon - Hergé

Read in French.

An earlier Tintin adventure which introduces many of the regular characters, including Thomson and Thompson (or in French, as I read it, Dupond et Dupont) and villain Rastapopoulos. Showing its age in a few questionable depictions of ethnic minorities (though nowhere near as shockingly as the earlier Tintin in the Congo), it is otherwise an entertaining romp.

Winner Take Nothing - Ernest Hemingway

The title of this short story collection should have given me a stronger hint, but I was not adequately prepared for just how bleak the tales herein would be, even by Hemingway's usual standard. Excellently written and very impactful, the thread which links these stories seems to be some point about the cruelness of life and the futility of existence. If that's your thing then you will enjoy.

The Old Man and The Sea - Ernest Hemingway

I finished the year with a rare occurence for me - re-reading a book that I already know well. Having worked through some of Hemingway's short story collections, I found myself drawn back to this, which I consider to be his finest book. It is a brief ninety or so pages, but contains within it all the obsession of Moby Dick, all the simplicity of The Border Trilogy and all the tragedy of the rest of Hemingway's body of work. If I could recommend one book that I read this year as one I think everyone should read, it would be this.