A list of all the books I have read since April 2019. Shamelessly copied from both Patrick Collinson and Sam Ringer, I have marked great books in blue and exceptional books in green. Of course these designations only reflect how I viewed them when I read them, and may not constitute a recommendation in perpetuity.
AuthorÂ
Name
Date Finished
Lev Grossman
The Magicians
January 2025
Kaliane Bradley
The Ministry of Time
December 2024
Helen DeWitt
The Last Samurai
November 2024
William Dalrymple
The Anarchy; The Relentless Rise of the East India Company
November 2024
Orhan Pamuk
The Museum of Innocence
October 2024
Scott Warren
The Dragons Banker
October 2024
Andrew Rowe
Sufficiently Advanced Magic
October 2024
J R R Tolkien
Le Seigneur des Anneaux; Le Retour du Roi
September 2024
Neal Stevenson
Anathem
August 2024
Martin Walker
The Dark Vineyard
July 2024
J R R Tolkien
La Seigneur des Anneaux; Les Deux Tours
July 2024
J R R Tolkien
Le Seigneur des Anneaux; La Fraternité de l'Anneau
June 2024
J K Rowling
Harry Potter et les Reliques de la Mort
May 2024
J K Rowling
Harry Potter et le Prince de Sang-Mêlé
May 2024
J K Rowling
Harry Potter et l'Ordre du Phénix
April 2024
Nicholas Crane
Clear Waters Rising
April 2024
Mark Lawrence
The Book That Wouldn't Burn
April 2024
Benjamin Labatut
When We Cease To Understand The World
March 2024
Mikhail Bulgakov
The Master and Margarita
March 2024
Samantha Shannon
A Day of Fallen Night
March 2024
Fonda Lee
Jade Legacy
February 2024
Fonda Lee
Jade War
February 2024
Fonda Lee
Jade City
January 2024
Djeli Clark
A Master of Djinn
January 2024
Paolo Bacigalupi
The Water Knife
January 2024
Paolo Bacigalupi
The Windup Girl
January 2024
Neal Stevenson
Seveneves
January 2024
Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Sympathizer
December 2023
Paul Theroux
Deep South
December 2023
Paul Theroux
Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train Through China
September 2023
David De Jong
Nazi Billionaires; The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties
August 2023
Paul Theroux
The Great Railway Bazaar
July 2023
Margaret Atwood
The Robber Bride
July 2023
Oliver Bullough
Butler to the World
April 2023
Paul Theroux
The Pillars of Hercules; A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean
May 2023
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Black Swan; The Impact of the Highly Improbable
April 2023
R. F. Kuang
Babel; An Arcane History
March 2023
Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Doors of Eden
March 2023
J. R. R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
February 2023
Naomi Novik
Spinning Silver
January 2023
Andrea Wulf
The Invention of Nature; The Adventures of Alexander Von Humboldt, The Lost Hero of Science
December 2022
Mary Wellesley
Hidden Hands; The Lives of Manuscripts and their Makers
November 2022
Walter M. Miller Jr
A Canticle For Leibowitz
November 2022
Catherine Fletcher
The Beauty and the Terror; An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance
November 2022
David Kushner
Masters of Doom
October 2022
Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun
October 2022
Tamsyn Muir
Nona The Ninth
October 2022
W. G. Sebald
The Rings of Saturn
September 2022
Norman Ohler
Blitzed; Drugs in Nazi Germany
September 2022
Peter Carey
Theft
August 2022
Preet Bahara
Doing Justice
July 2022
Bonnie Gramus
Lessons in Chemistry
July 2022
Siddartha Mukherjee
The Emperor of All Maladies
July 2022
Adam Tooze
The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy
June 2022
Judith Schalansky
An Inventory of Losses
May 2022
Justin E. H. Smith
The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is
May 2022
Richard McGregor
The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers
May 2022
Ben Aaronovitch
Amongst Our Weapons
May 2022
Garth Nix
Terciel & Elinor
April 2022
Richard Ayoade
Ayoade On Top
April 2022
Garth Nix
Lirael
April 2022
Greg Egan
The Arrow of Time
April 2022
Shusaku Endo
Silence
April 2022
Garth NixÂ
Terciel & Elinor
April 2022
Sebastian Mallaby
The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Art of Disruption
March 2022
Sue Burke
Semiosis
March 2022
Greg Egan
Schilds Ladder
March 2022
Annie Murphy Paul
The Extended Mind; The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain
February 2022
Greg Egan
The Eternal Flame
February 2022
Greg Egan
Teranesia
February 2022
Billy Kenber
Sick Money; The Truth About the Global Pharmaceutical Industry
January 2022
Renata Adler
Speed Boat
January 2022
Sherwin B. Nuland
How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter
January 2022
Orson Scott Card
Ender's Game
January 2022
Isaac Asimov
Second Foundation
December 2021
Jacob Helberg
The Wires of War; Technology and the Global Struggle for Power
December 2021
Cixin Liu
Deaths End
December 2021
Ruth Ozeki
The Book of Form and Emptiness
December 2021
Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic
Critical Race Theory
November 2021
Alex Kerr
Lost Japan
November 2021
Ben Aaronovitch
What Abigail Did That Summer
November 2021
Anonymous
The Secret Barrister
November 2021
Rachael Carson
Silent Spring
October 2021
Natasha Pulley
The Bedlam Stacks
October 2021
Mark Beaumont
Africa Solo
October 2021
Bella Mackie
How to Kill Your Family
October 2021
Sally Rooney
Beautiful World, Where Are You
October 2021
Milan Kundera
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
October 2021
Isaac Asimov
Foundation and Empire
October 2021
Fumio Sasaki
Goodbye, Things; on minimalist living
October 2021
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago
September 2021
Caoilinn Hughes
The Wild Laughter
September 2021
Henry Miller
The Colossus of Maroussi
September 2021
Robert Jackall
Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers
September 2021
N. K. Jemsin
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
September 2021
David Peace
Tokyo Redux
August 2021
Ruth Ozeki
A Tale for the Time Being
August 2021
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Shards of Earth
August 2021
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Cage of Souls
July 2021
Isaac Asimov
Foundation
July 2021
Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
July 2021
Haruki Murakami
Colorless Tzukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage
July 2021
Cixin Liu
The Dark Forest
July 2021
Graham Norton
Home Stretch
July 2021
William Gibson
Neuromancer
July 2021
James C. Scott
Seeing Like a State
July 2021
Martin Gurri
The Revolt of the Public
June 2021
Philip Pan
Out of Mao's Shadow
June 2021
Evan Osnos
Age of Ambition
June 2021
Jordan Mechner
The Making of Karateka
June 2021
Greg Egan
Zendegi
June 2021
Eric Berger
Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX
June 2021
Andy Weir
Project Hail Mary
June 2021
Douglas Hofstadter
I am a Strange Loop
June 2021
M. Mitchell Waldrop
The Dream Machine
May 2021
Sam Lipsyte
Hark
May 2021
Greg Egan
The Clockwork Rocket
May 2021
Haruki Murakami
Kafka on the Shore
May 2021
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant
May 2021
Roger Lowenstein
When Genius Failed
May 2021
Brad Stone
The Everything Store
April 2021
David Enrich
The Spider Network
April 2021
Nathaniel Popper
Digital Gold: The Untold Story of Bitcoin
April 2021
Sam Walton
Made in America
April 2021
Paul Kalanithi
When Breath Becomes Air
April 2021
Robert Iger
The Ride of a Lifetime
April 2021
Jordan Mechner
The Making of Prince of Persia
April 2021
Hilary Mantel
The Mirror and the Light
March 2021
Becky Chambers
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within
March 2021
Helen Habila
Oil on Water
March 2021
Toby Ord
The Precipice
March 2021
Milan Kundera
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
March 2021
Arkady Martine
A Desolation Called Peace
March 2021
Niall Williams
This is Happiness
February 2021
Svetlana Alexievich
The Unwomanly Face of War
February 2021
Andy Weir
Artemis
February 2021
Haruki Murakami
South of the Border, West of the Sun
February 2021
Samantha Shannon
The Bone Season
February 2021
John Scalzi
The Collapsing Empire
February 2021
Hannah Mathewson
Witherward
February 2021
Zadie Smith
White Teeth
January 2021
Leigh Phillip's & Michael Rozworski
Peoples Republic of Walmart
January 2021
Sarah Moss
Summerwater
January 2021
Merlin Sheldrake
Entangled Life
January 2021
Zadie Smith
Intimations
January 2021
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Children of Ruin
January 2021
Charles Foster
Being a Beast
December 2020
Silvia Plath
The Bell Jar
December 2020
Ernest Cline
Ready Player 2
December 2020
Ann Leckie
Ancillary Justice
December 2020
Vladimir Nabokov
Pale Fire
December 2020
N. K. Jemsin
The City We Became
December 2020
Alfred Hayes
My Face for the World to See
December 2020
Mike Isaac
Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber
December 2020
Slavoj Žižek
Against the Double Blackmail
December 2020
Maggie O'Farrell
Hamnet
December 2020
Candice Carty-Williams
Queenie
December 2020
Olivia Laing
The Lonely City
December 2020
Afua Hirsch
Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging
November 2020
Greg Egan
Distress
November 2020
Haruki Murakami
A Wild Sheep Chase
November 2020
Salman Rushdie
The Satanic Verses
November 2020
Blake Crouch
Recursion
November 2020
Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson
Why Nations Fail; The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty
November 2020
Haruki Murakami
The Elephant Vanishes
November 2020
Antonio Garcia Martinez
Chaos Monkeys; Mayhem and Mania Inside the Silicon Valley Money Machine
November 2020
N. K. Jemisin
The Stone Sky
October 2020
Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Before the coffee gets cold; Tales from the Cafe
October 2020
David Runciman
How Democracy Ends
October 2020
Tamsyn Muir
Harrow The Ninth
October 2020
James Joyce
Dubliners
October 2020
Greg Egan
Quarantine
October 2020
Elizer Yudkowsky
Inadequate Equilibrium
October 2020
Azadeh Moaveni
Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS
October 2020
Haruki Murakami
After Dark
October 2020
Tade Thompson
The Murders of Molly Southbourne
October 2020
Cixin Liu
The Three Body Problem
October 2020
Christopher Paolini
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
October 2020
Karen Olsson
The Weil Conjectures: On Maths and the Pursuit of the Unknown
October 2020
Silvio Moreno-Garcia
Gods of Jade and Shadow
September 2020
William MacAskill
Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical Way to Make a Difference
September 2020
R. F. Kuang
The Poppy War
September 2020
Phil Knight
Shoe Dog
September 2020
Alix E. Harrow
The Ten Thousand Doors of January
September 2020
Stephen King
The Institute
September 2020
N. K. Jesimin
The Obelisk Gate
September 2020
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Dogs of War
August 2020
Faruk Šehić
Under Pressure
August 2020
Anna Smith Spark
The Tower of Living and Dying
August 2020
N. K. Jemisin
The Fifth Season
August 2020
Steven Levy
Facebook: The Inside Story
August 2020
Arkady Martine
A Memory Called Empire
August 2020
Haruki Murakami
Dance Dance Dance
August 2020
Tamsyn Muir
Gideon the Ninth
August 2020
Tade Thompson
Making Wolf
July 2020
S. A. Chakraborty
The Empire of Gold
July 2020
Ronald Wright
A Short History of Progress
July 2020
Max Brooks
Devolution
July 2020
Becky Chambers
A Closed and Common Orbit
July 2020
Samantha Shannon
The Priory of the Orange Tree
July 2020
Simon Parkin
Death By Video Game
June 2020
Martin MacInnes
Gathering Evidence
June 2020
Jen Williams
The Poison Song
June 2020
Haruki Murakami
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
June 2020
Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns
June 2020
Tim Marshall
Prisoner of Geography
June 2020
Susan Cain
Quiet
June 2020
Naomi Klein
This Changes Everything
June 2020
Eve Babitz
Sex and Rage
June 2020
Billie Holiday
Lady Sings the Blues
June 2020
Shoshana Zuboff
The Age of Surveilance Capatilism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
May 2020
Michael Moore
Stupid White Men (and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation)
May 2020
Dave Cullen
Columbine
May 2020
Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardener
Superforcasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
May 2020
Ben R. Rich & Leo Janos
Skunkworks
May 2020
Peter Thiel
Zero to One; Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
May 2020
Walter Isaacson
The Innovators
May 2020
Ben Oliver
The Loop
May2020
Horatio Clare
Down to the Sea in Ships
May 2020
Mark Beaumont
Around the World in 80 Days
May 2020
Jen Williams
The Bitter Twins
May 2020
Mario Benedetti
Springtime in a Broken Mirror
April 2020
Kai Strittmatter
We Have Been Harmonised: Life in China's Surveillance State
April 2020
Don Delillo
Libra
April 2020
Mark Beaumont
The Man Who Cycled the World
March 2020
Marc-Uwe Kling
QualityLand
March 2020
Haruki Murakami
Men Without Women
March 2020
John Didion
Salvador
March 2020
Christian Parenti
Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence
March 2020
Deborah Levy
The Man Who Saw Everything
March 2020
Iain M Banks
The State of the Art
March 2020
Steven Pinker
The Sense of Style
February 2020
Banana Yoshimoto
Kitchen
February 2020
Haruki Murakami
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
February 2020
Sally Rooney
Normal People
February 2020
Ben Aaronovitch
False Value
February 2020
Becky Chambers
To Be Taught If Fortunate
February 2020
Samuel Stein
Capital City
January 2020
Vicki Jarrett
Always North
January 2020
Louisa Hall
Speak
January 2020
Sally Rooney
Conversations With Friends
January 2020
Sara Baume
A Line Made By Walking
January 2020
Edmund De Waal
The White Road; A Journey Into Obsession
January 2020
Iain M Banks
Use of Weapons
December 2019
Maya Goodfellow
Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats
December 2019
Haruki Murakami
Underground
December 2019
Adam Kay
Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas
December 2019
Haruki Murakami
1Q84 Book Three
December 2019
Philippe Sands
East West Street
December 2019
Marie Brennan
Turning Darkness Into Light
November 2019
Tade Thompson
The Rosewater Insurrection
November 2019
Iain M Banks
The Player of Games
November 2019
Iain M Banks
Excession
November 2019
Andy Weir
The Martian
November 2019
Fintan O'Toole
Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain
November 2019
Tade Thompson
The Rosewater Redemption
November 2019
Neal Stephenson
Cryptonomicon
October 2019
Philip Pullman
The Book of Dust
October 2019
Serhii Plokhy
Chernobyl
September 2019
Peter Hamilton
Salvation
September 2019
Daniel Suarez
Daemon
September 2019
Nick Cohen
You can't read this book
September 2019
John Carreyrou
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
August 2019
Adam Kay
This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor
August 2019
Neal Stephenson
Snow Crash
August 2019
Hannah Kent
Burial Rites
August 2019
Becky Chambers
Record of a Spaceborn Few
August 2019
Haruki Murahami
1Q84 Books One and Two
August 2019
Tade Thompson
Rosewater
August 2019
Jim Al-Khalli
Sunfall
July 2019
Cixin Liu
The Wandering Earth
July 2019
Bernardo Kucinski
K
July 2019
Sarah Thornton
Seven Days in the Art World
July 2019
Caroline Criado Perez
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
July 2019
Dmitry Glukhovsky
Metro 2033
July 2019
J. R. R. Tolkien
Bilbo le Hobbit
June 2019
Blake J. Harris
The History of the Future
June 2019
Stephen Fry
Mythos
June 2019
Sarah Moss
Names for the Sea
June 2019
Murakami
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
June 2019
Jackson Ford
The Girl Who Can Move Sh*t With Her Mind
June 2019
Jodi Taylor
Hope for the Best
May 2019
Andrzej Sapkowski
Season of Storms
May 2019
Haruki Murakami
Norwegian Wood
May 2019
S.A. Chakraborty
Kingdom of Copper
May 2019
Becky Chambers
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet
May 2019
Patrick Rothfuss
The Name of the Wind
April 2019
Patrick Rothfuss
The Wise Man's Fear
April 2019
Chris Kraus
I Love Dick
April 2019
Greg Egan
Diaspora