Tag: non-fiction

Reading Log

We are now three quarters of the way through the disaster that is 2020 – only three more months to grind out – and to mark the occasion I thought I’d do a log of everything I’ve read so far this year.

I appreciate that it would have made more sense to do this 6 months into the year, but I’ve missed the boat and had some spare time last night, so quickly tallied up the texts on excel, dividing into fiction and non-fiction categories.

It was surprising to see that I’d read almost as many fiction texts as non-fiction texts (13 vs. 15). Since graduating with an English Literature degree, my natural inclination has been to drift towards historical/geopolitical books – a kind of sub-conscious rebellion against all the fiction I consumed in my three years in Manchester. That said, it seems I’m still partial to the odd novel.

I suppose part of the reason why I feel like I have always got a non-fiction book in my hand is because they invariably seem to be longer. Whereas I can get through a novel in 3-4 days, a 700-page historical text can take 2-3 weeks.

Reading List 2020

Fiction

  1. Mikhail Bulgakov, ‘The Master and Margarita’
  2. Albert Camus, ‘The Outsider’
  3. Albert Camus, ‘The Plague’
  4. Chuck Palahniuk, ‘Fight Club’
  5. David Foster Wallace, ‘Infinite Jest’
  6. Henry Miller, ‘Tropic of Cancer’
  7. Ian McEwan, ‘Machines Like Me’
  8. John Steinbeck, ‘Cannery Row’
  9. Julian Barnes, ‘England, England’
  10. Julian Barnes, ‘The Sense of an Ending’
  11. Patrick Hamilton, ‘Hangover Square’
  12. Salman Rushdie, ‘Quichotte’
  13. Virginia Woolf, ‘To the Lighthouse’

Non-Fiction

  1. Alex Ferguson, ‘My Autobiography’
  2. Andy Malsen, ‘Write to Sell: The Ultimate Guide to Great Copywriting’
  3. Chris Wickham, ‘Medieval Europe’
  4. Eugene Rogan, ‘The Arabs: A History’
  5. John Romer, ‘A History of Ancient Egypt’
  6. Marc Morris, ‘The Norman Conquest’
  7. Micheal Atherton, ‘Atherton’s Ashes’
  8. Paul Strathen, ‘The Medici’
  9. Reni-Eddo Lodge, ‘Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race
  10. Simon Jenkins, ‘A Short History of England’
  11. Thomas Williams, ‘Viking Britain: A History’
  12. Tom Holland, ‘In the Shadow of the Sword’
  13. Tom Holland, ‘Millenium’
  14. Tom Holland, ‘Persian Fire’
  15. Uwe Schutte, ‘Kraftwerk: Future Music From Germany’

In terms of what’s up next… Judith Herrin’s new book, Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe, is certainly on my reading list, and so too is Maggie O’Farell’s period tale, Hamnet. Sport-wise, Cricket 2.0 by Tim Wigmore and Freddie Wilde has been causing a bit of a storm, so I will try and get my hands on that.