Here are all of the books I have read this year. Seventy-nine or or eighty two if I count the four Cazalet Chronicle novels separately. A big year for reading thanks to lockdowns. Books are scored out of five. My absolute favourites are bold not italicised. It’s been a big year for the classics and for books about poetry or poets and novelists. Not so great for contemporary fiction. Oh well. I’m pleased that in the last month I was able to relish a couple of great books. They’re hard to come by.
Mr Wilder & Me, Jonathan Coe *
The Shepherd’s Life, James Rebanks **
Jillian, Halle Butler
Max, Alex Miller
What Are You Going Through, Sigrid Nunez
These Old Shades, Georgette Heyer **
The Devil’s Cub, Georgette Heyer ***
The Animals In That Country, Laura Jean McKay
A Compass Error, Sybille Bedford *
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, John Le Carré *****
A Favourite of the Gods, Sybille Bedford *
A Family and a Fortune, Ivy Compton-Burnett *****
The Legacy, Sybille Bedford ****
Sybille Bedford: An Appetite For Life, Selina Hastings *
The Light of Common Day, Diana Cooper
The Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad ***
Travels With A Donkey In The Cevennes, Robert Louis Stevenson (terrible translation)
The Master, Colm Toíbín
Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson **
The Women In Black, Madeleine St. John ***
The Essence of the Thing, Madeleine St. John *****
French Exit, Patrick De Witt **
The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James *****
Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece, Michael Gorra****
Howards End, E.M. Forster *****
Things I Learned On The 6.28: A Guide To Daily Reading, Stig Abell ***
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, (The Last twelve tales of the Great Detective), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ***
Germs, Richard Wollheim *****
Shakespearean: On Life & Language in Times of Disruption, Robert McCrum
A Shooting at Chateau Rock, Martin Walker
The Secret History, Donna Tartt ***
The Cazalet Chronicles, Elizabeth Jane Howard ****
Slipstream, Elizabeth Jane Howard
Elizabeth Jane Howard: A Dangerous Innocence, Artemis Cooper ***
Richard III: A Failed King, Rosemary Horrox ***
James Joyce and Italian Svevo: The Story of a Friendship, Stanley Price ***
Confessions of Zeno, Italian Svevo (Ettore Schmitz) **
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce *****
R. F. Foster on Seamus Heaney – Writers on Writers *****
Letters To Camonda, Edmund De Waal **
The Salt Path, Raynor Winn
L’Affaire, Dianne Johnson *
The Spy Game, Georgina Harding ***
The Diary of a Provincial Lady, E. M. Delafield ***
The Weekend, Charlotte Wood *
Keats A Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph, Lucasta Miller *****
Keat’s Odes: A Lover’s Discourse, Anahid Nersessian *****
The Harvest, Georgina Harding
Elizabeth and her German Garden, Elizabeth von Arnim **
Pushing Time Away, Peter Singer
Yeats & Violence, Michael Wood *****
Girl, Woman, Other, Bernadine Evaristo ***
A Maigret Trio, George’s Simenon ***
Darkness At Noon, Arthur Koestler *****
What You Can See From Here, Mariana Leky ****
After Julius, Elizabeth Jane Howard *
Old Baggage, Lissa Evans *
Their Finest, Lissa Evans ***
Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, Heather Clark ****
Three Martini Afternoons At The Ritz: The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton, Gail Crowther
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath*****
Sylvia Plath Poems chosen by Carol Anne Duffy ****
Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller, Jennifer Kloester *
The Black Moth, Georgette Heyer **
The Grand Sophy, Georgette Heyer ****
Venetia, Georgette Heyer **
Two Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Fiona Sampson*****
The Overstory, Richard Powers
Taste: My Life Through Food, Stanley Tucci *
Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer *
A Recipe for a Kinder Life, Annie Smithers *
Nina Simone’s Gum, Warren Ellis***
The Hummingbird, Sandro Veronesi **
Paul, Daisy Lafarge *
The Hero’s Way, Tim Parkes*****
Tenderness, Fiona Macleod *****
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D. H. Lawrence ****
The Burning Man: The Ascent of D H Lawrence, Frances Wilson *****
Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence *****
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