In January 2024, I started to do a thing I used to do when I was in my late teens: write down the title of every book that I read as I finished it.
I sometimes think my brain has three separate containers in it: the people I love, the work I’m doing and the books I’m reading. But my reading habits are increasingly idiosyncratic and I follow all sorts of strange directions and indirections. The list helps me work out what is going on.
2024 was dominated by Victorian female novelists, especially Charlotte Bronte and the extraordinary Elizabeth Gaskell, neither of whom I’d read before. Bea had to read JANE EYRE and in chatting to her about it, I realised that I’d never read it. And that got me going. She also persuaded me to read Sylvia Plath’s THE BELL JAR which I admired very much, and I also loved three Amit Chaudhuri novels.
There here was quite a lot of history, not all European, and some brilliant new books around disability. I loved Richard Cockett’s book about Vienna and Dagmar Herzog’s magnificent history of T-4 and its memory. And so much else.
I don’t imagine that this is terribly interesting to anyone else, but here goes all the same, a glimpse into my odd brain:
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BLACK AND BRITISH David Olusego
EMPIRELAND Sathnam Sanghera
BRITONS Linda Colley
THE BELL JAR Sylvia Plath
INGLORIOUS EMPIRE Shashi Tharour
MAGNIFICENT REBELS Andrea Wulf
THE RESTLESS REPUBLIC Anna Keay
FLAUBERT AND MADAME BOVARY Francis Steegmuller
THE BERLIN SHADOW Jonathan Liechtenstein
DANNY’S PEOPLE Virginia Bovell
THE ENORMOUS ROOM EE Cummings
CRITICAL REVOLUTIONARIES Terry Eagleton
A STRANGE AND SUBLIME ADDRESS Amit Chaudhuri
THE UNDESIRABLES Sarah Wise
SOJOURN Amit Chaudhuri
THE SILENTIARY Antonio di Benedetto
AFTERNOON RAAG Amit Chaudhuri
THE LIAR Martin A Hansen
SEDUCTION AND BETRAYAL Elizabeth Hardwick
CALIBAN SHRIEKS Jack Hilton
WOMAN OF ROME Lily Tuck
AFTER MIDNIGHT Irmgard Keun
JANE EYRE Charlotte Brontë
BUTTERFLY OF DINARD Eugenio Montale
THE SINGULARITY Dino Buzzati
THE UNFORGIVABLE Cristina Campo
GERMINIE LACERTEUX Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
THE LILY IN THE VALLEY Honoré de Balzac
NORTH AND SOUTH Elizabeth Gaskell
EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE Joseph Fronczak
THE DEPARTMENT John Pring
A HISTORY OF DISABILITY IN ENGLAND Simon Jarrett
MARY BARTON Elizabeth Gaskell
THE LAST SUPPER: A SUMMER IN ITALY Rachel Cusk
THE PORNOGRAPHER John McGahern
VILLETTE Charlotte Brontë
THIS IS NOT PROPAGANDA Peter Pomerantsev
PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA Machtel Brüggen Israels
VIENNA Richard Cockett
RUTH Elizabeth Gaskell
THE QUESTION OF UNWORTHY LIFE Dagmar Herzog
WHAT KIND OF ISLAND IN WHAT KIND OF SEA Franz Fühmann and Dietmar Riemann
EMPIRE OF NORMALITY Robert Chapman
WIVES AND DAUGHTERS Elizabeth Gaskell