As before (will this become a tradition?), I’ve listed below all the books I’ve read this year.

I choose books mainly based on recommendations from friends, followed by recommendations from reviews in the papers and on the radio, and then from suggestions on my Kindle and on sites like GoodReads.  This year, too, I’ve joined a book club, which has prompted a few of these titles. In the same way as last year, I also wanted to include some classics that I had never looked at properly before.

Here’s the list, this time in chronological order. I’ve marked the ones that surpassed my expectations with *, and any that I thought were overrated with !

• Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
• The Lost Dog – Michelle de Kretser
• The Rooster Bar – John Grisham !
• The Beauty Myth – Naomi Wolf
• India: Another Way of Seeing – various authors
• The British in India – David Gilmour
• City of Djinns – William Dalrymple
• Blokes, Beers, and Burritos – Jo Blakeley
• I am, I am, I am – Maggie O’Farrell *
• Devil’s Peak – Deon Meyer [in translation]
• Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi
• Love Factually – Laura Mucha
• The Unexpected Joy of Being Single – Catherine Gray
• The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
• Slade House – David Mitchell !
• I know why the caged bird sings – Maya Angelou
• The Second Plane – Martin Amis
• Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
• Problems – Jade Sharma
• By Jeeves – P G Wodehouse *
• The Bloody Chamber – Angela Carter
• The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
• Selected Tales – Edgar Allan Poe
• The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton *
• The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky ! [in translation]
• Picnic at Hanging Rock – Joan Lindsay
• Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race – Reni Eddo-Lodge
• The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
• Normal People – Sally Rooney
• The Wizard of Earthsea – Ursula Le Guin
• The Color Purple – Alice Walker
• Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White *
• Convenience Store Woman – Sayaka Murata [in translation]
• The Other Boleyn Girl – Philippa Gregory
• My Sister the Serial Killer – Oyinkan Braithwaite *
• Moby Dick – Herman Melville !
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
• Goddesses in Everywoman – Jean Shinoda
• Collected Ghost Stories – M R James
• The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
• The Antidote – Oliver Burkeman
• Antisocial Media – Siva Vaidhyanathan
• Tough Tough Toys for Tough Tough Boys – Will Self
• Fox 8 – George Saunders
• Dead Famous – Ben Elton
• I Owe You One – Sophie Kinsella
• The Mother-in-Law – Sally Hepworth
• What Red Was – Rosie Price
• The Potter’s Field – Andrea Camilleri [in translation]
• The Longest Way Home – Andrew McCarthy
• Attached – Amir Levine, Rachel Heller
• Nine Perfect Strangers – Liane Moriarty !
• Flight Behaviour – Barbara Kingsolver *
• Doughnut Economics – Kate Raworth
• How to be a Kosovan Bride – Naomi Hamill
• Watching You – Lisa Jewell
• The Better Sister – Alafair Burke
• Hunger – Amélie Nothomb [in translation]
• The Testaments – Margaret Atwood
• The Prenup – Lauren Layne
• The Holiday – T M Logan !
• Christmas Shopaholic – Sophie Kinsella *
• The Understudy – Sophie Hannah, Clare Mackintosh, B A Paris, Holly Brown !