Book Journal

An attempt to keep a record of some of the books I’ve been reading. I know I’m missing a lot - books I tend to dip into rather than read from cover to cover (mainly volumes of poetry) and a number of ebooks I’ve read but lost track of the dates of when I finished them.

On this site you can also see my Micro.blog posts about books and a page of books I am currently reading 📚

You can also find me on Goodreads.

November 2024

• Pietr the Latvian by George Simenon

October 2024

• The Fury by Alex Michaelides
• Exodus: The Archimedes Engine by Peter F. Hamilton
• Reflections on a Marine Venus by Lawrence Durrell
• Magritte by Alex Danchev
• Death’s End by Cixin Liu

September 2024

• Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis

August 2024

• The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
• Don’t Be a Jerk by Brad Warner
• Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino

July 2024

• The Zone of Interest by Martin Amis
• The Box Man by Kōbō Abe

June 2024

• The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds by John Higgs

May 2024

• Buried by Alice Roberts
• The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu

April 2024

• The Anglo-Saxons by Marc Morris
• Turning Over the Pebbles by Mike Brearley

March 2024

• Outline by Rachel Cusk
• Bessie Smith by Jackie Kay

January 2024

• Star Trek: Picard: Rogue Elements by John Jackson Miller
• Why Mahler? by Norman Lebrecht

December 2023

• Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
• Julian of Norwich by Janina Ramirez

October 2023

• Star Trek: Picard: The Dark Veil by James Swallow

September 2023

• Star Trek: Picard: The Last Best Hope by Una McCormack
• Radicalized by Cory Doctorow
• Every House is Haunted by Ian Roberts
• Wittgenstein’s Mistress by David Markson
• The Internet Con - How to Seize the Means of Computation by Cory Doctorow
• Peace, Love & Petrol Bombs by D. D. Johnson

August 2023

• The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society by Andy Miller
• Needless Alley by Natalie Marlow

July 2023

• Tales From The Loop by Simon Stålenhag
• The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells

June 2023

• The Trial of Julian Assange by Nils Melzer
• Tomorrow by Chris Beckett

May 2023

• Two-Way Mirror by Fiona Sampson

March 2023

• Absolutely On Music Haruki Murakami & Seiji Ozawa
• Meru by S. B. Divya

February 2023

• Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
• Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Randell

January 2023

• The Art of Just Sitting: Essential Writings on the Zen Practice of Shikantaza edited by John Daido Loori

December 2022

• The Whistleblower by Robert Peston

October 2022

• Lessons by Ian McEwan

August 2022

• The Saints of Salvation by Peter F. Hamilton

July 2022

• Salvation Lost by Peter F. Hamilton
• Salvation by Peter F. Hamilton
• Three Philosophies and One Reality & NHK Radio Talks by Gudo Wafu Nishijima
• Z by Vassilis Vassilikos
• Burning Man: The Ascent of D. H. Lawrence By Frances Wilson

May 2022

• Big Snake Little Snake: An Inquiry into Risk by DBC Pierre
• Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan’s Food Culture by Matt Goulding
• Erewhon by Samuel Butler

March 2022

• The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman
• Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment by Robert Wright

February 2022

• Homo Irrealis by André Aciman

January 2022

• A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
• The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust Volume Two) by Philip Pullman

December 2021

• Bitter Lemons of Cyprus by Lawrence Durrell

November 2021

• Justine by Lawrence Durrell
• La Belle Sauvage (The Book of Dust Volume One) by Philip Pullman

October 2021

• Letters to a Dead Friend about Zen by Brad Warner
• Anarchism is Movement by Tomás Ibáñez
• Sissy by Ben Borek

September 2021

• Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Do Earth by Tamsin Omond
• The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
• The Snows of Kilimanjaro and other stories by Ernest Hemingway
• Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
• Introducing Buddha by Jane Hope & Borin Van Loon

August 2021

• How Did We Get Into This Mess? Politics, Equality, Nature by George Monbiot

July 2021

• Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

June 2021

• Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats by Barry Miles

April 2021

• Medical Grade Music by by Steve Davis & Kavus Torabi

March 2021

• The Beats: A Graphic Guide by Harvey Pekar, Ed Piskor et al
• Modern Mindfulness by Rohan Gunatillake
• How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens

February 2021

• Jews Don’t Count by David Baddiel
• Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

January 2021

• The Ruins by Mat Osman
• The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry (audiobook rereading)

October 2020

• The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
• Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present by Yanis Varoufakis
• Bob Willis: A Cricketer and a Gentleman by Bob Willis and Mike Dickson

September 2020

• Talking to My Daughter: A Brief History of Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis

August 2020

• Matilda Infantry Tank 1938-45 by David Fletcher

July 2020

• The Periodic Table by Primo Levi
• The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Blythell

June 2020

• My Lord, What a Morning by Marian Anderson

May 2020

• The Book of Tokyo: A City In Short Fiction edited by Jim Hinks, Masashi Matsuie & Michael Emmerich
• Whatever by Michel Houellebecq

April 2020

• We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast by Jonathan Safran Foer
• Ascension by Gregory Dowling
• The Feed by Nick Clark Windo

March 2020

• Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan
• The Secret Purposes by David Baddiel

January 2020

• Baudelaire by Claude Pichois and Jean Ziegler

October 2019

• Ayoade on Ayoade: A Cinematic Odyssey by Richard Ayoade
  Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon

September 2019

• The Second Sleep by Robert Harris
• Artemis by Andy Weir

July 2019

• A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by Simon Armitage
• Ways of Seeing by John Berger
• Cane by Jean Toomer
• Circe by Madeline Miller

June 2019

• Dr James Barry - A Woman Ahead of Her Time by Michael du Perez & Jeremy Dronfield
• Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
• No Spin by Shane Warne

May 2019

• The Black Book by Lawrence Durrell
• The Messenger of Athens by Anne Zouroudi
• The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

April 2019

• Vengeance in Venice by Philip Gwynne Jones
• The Greek Islands by Lawrence Durrell

March 2019

• Snap by Belinda Bauer
• Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There by Rutger Bregman

February 2019

• The Murderess by Alexandros Papadiamantis
• Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh
• The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
• Mythos by Stephen Fry (audiobook)

January 2019

• Venice: Pure City by Peter Ackroyd

December 2018

• Travels with Epicurus: Meditations from a Greek Island on the Pleasures of Old Age by Daniel Klein

November 2018

• Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• Dark Matter by Michelle Paver

October 2018

• Opening Up by Mike Atherton
• Percy Bysshe Shelley – Poet and Revolutionary by Jacqueline Mulhallen
• Are you experienced? by William Sutcliffe
• The Snowman by Jo Nesbo

September 2018

• The Redeemer by Jo Nesbo
• The Devil’s Star by Jo Nesbo

August 2018

• An Endangered Species by David Gower
• The Complete Short Stories of Raffles by E. W. Hornung
• Terror and terroir – The winegrowers of the Languedoc and modern France by Andrew W. M. Smith
• Monteverdi’s Unruly Women – The Power of Song in Early Modern Italy by Bonnie Gordon
• Adults in the Room: My Battle With Europe’s Deep Establishment by Yanis Varoufakis

July 2018

• Poetry Notebook: 2006-2014 by Clive James
• Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson
• Islam for the Politically Incorrect by Khaled Diab

June 2018

• Introducing Sartre: A Graphic Guide by Philip Thody (author) and Howard Read (illustrator)
• The Fall by Albert Camus
• Jack the Ripper: Case Closed by Gyles Brandreth

May 2018

• Introducing the Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind by Edith Hall
• Instrumental by James Rhodes
• Red Gas by Edward Topol

April 2018

• The Last Weekend by Blake Morrison
• The Executor by Blake Morrison

March 2018

• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
• The Bat by Jo Nesbo

February 2018

• The Outrun by Amy Liptrot

January 2018

• D. H. Lawrence - The Life of an Outsider by John Worthen

November 2017

• The First Bad Man by Miranda July

October 2017

• The Dry by Jane Harper

July 2017

• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
• The Abyss Beyond Dreams by Peter F. Hamilton
• Night Without Stars by Peter F. Hamilton
• Revolution by Russell Brand

June 2017

• The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

May 2017

• The Strings are False by Louis MacNeice
• Rebel with a Cause by Ann Clwyd

April 2017

• Dinosaurs on Other Planets by Danielle McLaughin

March 2017

• The Humans by Matt Haig
• Exit West by Moshin Hamid
• Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor

February 2017

• Sanctuary by Robert Edric

January 2017

• Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer
• Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford

December 2016

• Cricket: The Game of Life by Scyld Berry

November 2016

• Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

October 2016

• Feral by George Monbiot

September 2016

• The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler (audiobook rereading)
• Epiphany Jones by Michel Grothaus
• In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami
• The Book of Seventy by Alicia Suskin Ostriker
• Vanity Fair by William Thackeray (audiobook rereading)

August 2016

• I Saw a Man by Owen Sheers
• Unreliable Memoirs by Clive James
• Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
• Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (audiobook rereading)
• The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark

July 2016

• The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North
• Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

June 2016

• The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

April 2016

• Rivers of London by David Aaronovitch
• Her Last Call to Louis MacNeice by Ken Bruen
• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
• The Vagabond’s Breakfast by Richard Gwyn
• Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky
• The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

February 2016

• Latest Readings by Clive James
• KP: The Autobiography by Kevin Pieterson

January 2016

• Frida: The Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera

November - December 2015

• The Long Earth series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

August 2015

• Normal by Graeme Cameron
• An Event in Autumn by Henning Mankell
• Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• The Warlord’s Legacy by Ari Marmell
• The Conqueror’s Shadow by Ari Marmell

July 2015

• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

June2015

• The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

May 2015

• Ashoka by Charles Allen
• The Fly Guy by Colum Sanson-Regan

April 2015

• Halting State by Charles Stross
• The Divine Comedy by Craig Raine

March 2015

• Wake Up by Jack Kerouac
• Netherland by Joseph O’Neill

January 2015

• Anger is an Energy by John Lydon
• The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

November 2014

• Spiderland by Scott Tennent

October 2014

• Duende by Jason Webster

August 2014

• Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám by Edward FitzGerald, impressive introduction and notes by Daniel Karlin

July 2014

• Fatlands by Sarah Dunant

June 2014

• The Victorian Chaise-Longue by Marghanita Laski

May 2014

• Guerra by Jason Webster
• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• Boredom by Alberto Moravia

October 2013

• Adiamante by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

August 2013

• Dark Eden by Chris Beckett

January 2010

• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell