This is only the second time I’m publishing a list of books I read. I started doing this in 2021 – here’s the list for that year – partly because I had never kept such a list before, and, perhaps, partly because of covid. Here’s this year’s list with an updated introduction to last year’s post.
I read a lot. I own more than one thousand books, and I regularly cull my library. I also enjoy watching movies and TV – in the past year, I’ve been watching more, though the streaming services haven’t been great. (One exception is Mubi, which has arthouse films and foreign films. This link will get you a free month to try it out, and extend my subscription by one month.)
This year, I read more than 140 books, up on 2022. I read fairly quickly, and some of them – mostly mysteries and thrillers – were books I read in a single evening, or two at most. Some of the books were fairly short, but others were quite long. And I left a few books in the list that I abandoned after about one quarter of their length, just as notes to remind me that I didn’t finish them. Books with asterisks before the titles are recent books, published in the last year or so (at the time of my reading). I often read multiple books concurrently, so there are a few in the 2022 list that I haven’t finished. I only started the last book on the list on December 30, so I haven’t gotten for, but I’ll include it anyway.
You’ll notice a number of books in French; I lived in France for nearly three decades, so read in French regularly, mostly classical literature. Many of these French books are long, and I read a bit less quickly in French than in English. One of my goals for 2022 was to read more in French, and I did so. You’ll also notice a number of plays; I list each one of these as a book even though they aren’t as long as books.
About half my reads were non-fiction, though I haven’t included cookbooks or some books I’ve read for my work. And this also doesn’t count a few dozen photobooks that “read” or “re-read,” since I don’t really count them as reading. Though perhaps if I keep a list next year, I will include them…
My big project for the coming year might be Dickens. I’ve never gotten into his work, and decided to give him another chance with David Copperfield, which I began reading on December 30. Check back next year to see if I’ve read more than one of his novels.
If I’d had more time, I’d include Amazon affiliate links for anyone who wants to contribute to my ongoing book habit. Since I’m not including individual links, if you go to your local Amazon with these links (if you shop from one of these three countries), I’ll get a small percentage: Amazon UK, Amazon US, Amazon FR.
So, here’s the list:
- *The Book of Form and Emptiness, Ruth Ozeki
- Essence of the Heart Sutra, Dalaï Lama
- The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance, Anthony Gottlieb
- Shobogenzo, Dogen
- *Dogen: Japan’s Original Zen Teacher, Steven Heine
- The Iliad, Homer (Caroline Alexander)
- *Upholland, Michael Kenna
- *Metabolical, Robert Lustig
- Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours, Jules Verne
- Poems of the Masters, Red Pine
- The Platform Sutra, Red Pine
- Walking, Erling Kagge
- *Jews Don’t Count, David Baddiel
- The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma, tr. Red Pine
- Bitters, Brad Thomas Parsons
- Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki
- Philosophy in the Garden, Damon Young
- On Getting Off: Sean and Philosophy, Damon Young
- Shakespearean, Robert McCrum
- Life, Part Two, David Chernikoff
- The Russia House, John Le Carré
- Les Mouches, Jean-Paul Sartre
- Huis Clos, Jean-Paul Sartre
- L’insoutenable légèreté de l’être, Milan Kundera
- Morts sans sépulture, Jean-Paul Sartre
- La Putain réspectuese, Jean-Paul Sartre
- *Modern Instances, Stephen Shore
- Marguerite Duras, Laure Adler
- Putin’s People, Catherine Belton
- Les mains sales, Jean-Paul Sartre
- The Taijiquan Classics, Barbara Davis
- There Are No Secrets, Wolfe Lowenthal
- Appeasing Hitler, Tim Bouverie
- Dreaming Yourself Awake, B Alan Wallace,
- Call for the Dead, John Le Carré
- *How to Be Perfect, Michael Schur
- Les fleurs du mal, Charles Baudelaire
- Inner Work, Robert Johnson
- The Red Book, CG Jung
- L’existentialisme est un humanisme, Jean-Paul Sartre
- Les mandarins I, Simone de Beauvoir
- Le soleil naît derrière le Louvre, Léo Malet
- The Broker, John Grisham
- The Street Lawyer, John Grisham
- The Archer Files, Ross McDonald
- *To You: Zen Sayings of Kodo Sawaki
- Nightmare Alley, William Lindsay Gresham
- Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu (Cleary)
- To You, Kodo Sawaki
- Deep Blues, Robert Palmer
- *Elizabeth Finch, Julian Barnes
- Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, Samin Nosrat
- Au bord de l’eau, Shi Nai-an, Luo Guan-zhong
- *After Steve, Tripp Mickle
- Climbing the Steps to Qingcheng Mountain, Wang Yun
- The Tai Chi Book, Robert Chuckrow
- Tai Chi Concepts and Experiments, Robert Chuckrow
- Life for Sale, Yukio Mishima
- In the Court of King Crimson, Sid Smith
- The Cut, Christopher Brookmyre
- The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes
- *How to Spend a Trillion Dollars, Rowan Hooper
- The Bird Way, Jennifer Ackerman
- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
- Sky Above, Great Wind, Kazuaki Tanihasi
- Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn From the Strange Science of Recovery, Christie Aschwanden
- Awakened Cosmos, David Hinton
- The Partner, John Grisham
- *The Cut, Christopher Brookmyre
- Silverview, John Le Carré
- Armadillo, William Boyd
- Casanova, Maxime Rovere
- L’anomalie, Hervé le Tellier
- *Reality+, David Chalmers
- Galileo’s Error, Philip Goff
- Dopamine Nation, Anna Lembke
- At the Existentialist Café, Sarah Bakewell
- The Sea, The Sea, Iris Murdoch
- The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
- The Fellowship of the Ring, JRR Tolkien
- L’Age de raison, Jean-Paul Sartre
- *How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates
- *The Awoken, Katelyn Monroe Holmes
- *Suspect, Scott Turow
- Crow with No Mouth, Ikkyū
- Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf, Zen Poems of Ryokan
- Wabi-sabi, Leonard Koren
- *The Mindful Photographer, David Ulrich
- Camino Island, John Grisham
- Camino Winds, John Grisham
- Wabi Sabi, Further Thoughts, Leonard Korean
- In Praise of Shadows, Junichciro Tanizaki
- Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C Clarke
- Ways of Seeing, John Berger
- The Beauty of Everyday Things, Soetsu Yanagi
- Samuel Pepys, The Unequalled Self, Claire Tomalin
- *Lessons, Ian McEwan
- 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, Ha-Jon Chang
- The Guardians, John Grisham
- Mortality, Christopher Hitchens
- Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America, Jonathan Gould
- Entretiens, Cioran
- Sur les cimes du désespoir, Cioran
- The Science of Storytelling, Will Storr
- The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith
- Entretiens avec Sylvie Jaudeau, Cioran
- Cioran ou le Dernier Homme, Sylvie Jaudeau
- Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion
- Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, Jessica Brody
- *The Last Chairlift, John Irving
- *Life Time, Russel Foster
- Le livre des leurres, Cioran
- Upgrade, Blake Crouch
- How to Blow Up a Pipeline, Andreas Malm
- The Summons, John Grisham
- The Rainmaker, John Grisham
- The Silkworm, Robert Galbraith
- The Romantic, William Boyd
- The Racketeer, John Grisham
- *The Waste Land – A Biography of a Poem, Matthew Hollis
- The Last Juror, John Grisham
- Life Is Hard, Kieran Setiya
- Career of Evil, Robert Galbraith
- Le mythe de Sisyphe, Albert Camus
- Apology, Plato
- Lethal White, Robert Galbraith
- Troubled Blood, Robert Galbraith
- The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse, Red Pine
- The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot
- Beethoven for a Later Age, Edward Dusinberre
- *The Ink Black Heart, Robert Galbraith
- The Book of Tea, Kakuzo Okakura
- The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, tr. Red Pine
- A Murder of Quality, John LeCarre
- Zen questions, Zazen, Dogen, and the spirit of Creative Inquiry by Taigen Dan Leighton
- One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryōkan
- *A Very Nice Girl, Imogen Crimp
- Watchmen, Alan Moore
- V for Vendetta, Alan Moore
- Bread, Ed McBain
- Les précieuses ridicules, Molière
- Hamlet (Q1), William Shakespeare
- Why Buddhism Is True, Robert Wright
- No One Knows, JT Ellison
- Mayflies, Andrew O’Hagan
- David Copperfield, Charles Dickens