I’ve read some amazing books this year. I’m so impressed with the authors who’ve had a book out in 2020 – they’ve been so stoical and good-humoured about it, and I wish them all the parties in the world once it’s safe. I’ve read a couple of these for work, sometimes when commuting at the start of the year, sometimes on long afternoons when there was nothing else to do. Books have been a huge part of my life since I was a child but it doesn’t matter how many books you read – if you’ve read one or two this year and they’ve made you see the world differently, that’s more than enough!
Top Ten: The Vanishing Half, Red at the Bone, Motherwell, The Consequences of Love, Scabby Queen, Mr Wilder and Me, Trio, Wintering, In the Dream House, Shuggie Bain. Hopefully some surprises in there, but I know these are popular across the board too and it’s good that they’re getting the love they deserve.
Literary Fiction
Middle England – Jonathan Coe
One Year of Ugly – Caroline McKenzie
Big Sky – Kate Atkinson
The High Moments – Sara Ella Ozbek
Requiem for a Knave – Laura Carlin
The Talk of Pram Town – Joanna Nadin
The Unexpected Love Objects of Dunya Noor – Rana Haddad
The Motion of the Body Through Space – Lionel Shriver
Love and other Thought Experiments – Sophie Ward
Actress – Anne Enright
The Group – Lara Feigel
Red at the Bone – Jacqueline Woodson
The Strawberry Thief – Joanne Harris
The Harpy – Megan Hunter
Tulip Fever – Deborah Moggach
Monogamy – Sue Miller
The Vanishing Half – Brit Bennett
Station Eleven – Emily St John Mandel
The Anointed – Michael Arditti
The Pull of the Stars – Emma Donoghue
The Mothers – Brit Bennett
Rainbow Milk – Paul Mendez
The Magnificent Sons – Justin Myers
The Pharmacist – Justin David
Mostly Dead Things – Kristen Arnett
Friends and Strangers – J. Courtney Sullivan
Scabby Queen – Kirstin Innes
Small Pleasures – Clare Chambers
My Dark Vanessa – Kate Elizabeth Russell
Victoria Park – Gemma Reeves
An Archive of Happiness – Elizabeth Reeder
The Scoop – Cat Walker
Mr Wilder and Me – Jonathan Coe
Trio – William Boyd
The Most Fun We Ever Had – Claire Lombardo
When I Ran Away – Ilona Bannister
You Exist Too Much – Zaina Arafat
The Inverts – Crystal Jeans
The Wages of Sin – Kaite Welsh
Shuggie Bain – Douglas Stewart
Commercial Fiction
The Thirty List – Eva Woods
How to be Famous – Caitlin Moran
Did you see Melody? – Sophie Hannah
The Last Act of Adam Campbell – Andy Jones
The Model Wife – Julia Llewelyn
If the Dress Fits – Carla de Guzman
Diary of a Confused Feminist – Kate Weston
Like a House on Fire – Caroline Hulse
When You Read This – Mary Adkins
If I Never Met You – Mhairi McFarlane
Grown Ups – Marian Keyes
The Cancer Ladies Running Club – Josie Lloyd
Just Friends – Holly McCullough
Only You – Kate Eberlen
The 24-hour Café – Libby Page
Pretending – Holly Bourne
For When I’m Gone – Rebecca Ley
No, we can’t be friends – Sophie Ranald
A Ration Book Wedding – Jean Fullerton
A Borrowed Life – Kerry Anne King
Very Nearly Normal – Hannah Sunderland
Precious You – Helen Monks Takhar
Logging Off – Nick Spalding
Invisible Girl – Lisa Jewell
Big Summer – Jennifer Weiner
The Shelf – Helly Acton
A Groom with a View – Sophie Ranald
The Other Passenger – Louise Candlish
In Case You Missed It – Lindsey Kelk
Out with the Ex, In with the New – Sophie Ranald
Five Hundred Miles from You – Jenny Colgan
The Lies You Told – Harriet Tyce
The Longest Whale Song – Jacqueline Wilson
The New Girl – Harriet Walker
Ghosts – Dolly Alderton
Olive – Emma Gannon
A Sense of Place – Maisie Mosco
You can’t fall in love with your ex (can you)? – Sophie Ranald
Dancing the Charleston – Jacqueline Wilson
Unfiltered – Sophie White
Mad Love – Nick Spalding
Checking Out – Nick Spalding
Bricking It – Nick Spalding
The Woman Who Wanted More – Laura Zimmerman
Why Mummy’s Sloshed – Gill Sims
Finders Keepers – Sabine Durrant
The Summer Job – Lizzy Dent
Love your Life – Sophie Kinsella
The Girls are all So Nice Here – Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
Going Green – Nick Spalding
Everything’s Perfect – Nicole Kennedy
I Give it a Year – Helen Whitaker
Christmas at the Island Hotel – Jenny Colgan
Non-fiction
The Good Ancestor – Roman Krznaric
Motherwell – Deborah Orr
Things I Learned from Falling – Claire Nelson
VSI – Silent Film
Staunch – Eleanor Wood
Mrs D is Going Without – Lotta Dann
VSI (Very Short Introductions) – Dementia
VSI – City Planning
VSI – Canada
VSI – American military history
VSI – US Supreme Court
VSI – French Philosophy
VSI – Montaigne
VSI – Biogeography
VSI – World Music
VSI – Global Islam
With Friends like These – Danny Wallace
VSI – The Ghetto
VSI – Nuclear Weapons
Everybody Died So I Got a Dog – Emily Dean
VSI – American Business History
VSI – The Russian Economy
VSI – Ecology
VSI – Philosophical method
Where There’s a Will – Emily Chappell
VSI – Socialism
What have I Done? – Laura Dockrill
Frida in America – Celia Stahr
VSI – Philosophy
Uncanny Valley – Anna Wiener
The Consequences of Love – Gavanndra Hodge
Hippy Dinners – Abbie Ross
Hidden Valley Road – Robert Kolker
Wintering – Katherine May
A Place for Everything – Anna Wilson
Good Morning, Destroyer of Men’s Souls – Nina Renata Aron
In the Dream House – Carmen Maria Machado
The Pink Line – Mark Gevisser
Uncovered – Leah Lax
Glorious Rock Bottom – Bryony Gordon
Coming Undone – Terri White
Sybille Bedford, An Appetite for Life – Selina Hastings
The unexpected joy of the ordinary – Catherine Gray
Lady Sidekick – Anneka Harry
More than a woman – Caitlin Moran
The Little Book of Humanism – Andrew Copson and Alice Roberts
All the Young Men – Ruth Coker Burks
The Sopranos Sessions – Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz
My Friend Anna – Rachael DeLoache Williams
The Woman who Fooled the World – Beau Donnelly and Nick Toscano
The Covent Garden Ladies – Hallie Rubenhold
House of Glass – Hadley Freeman
Graphic novels, poetry and plays:
Bingo Love – Tee Franklin
With Some Wild Woman – Jill Gardiner
Reckless Paper Birds – John McCullough
The Times I Knew I Was Gay – Eleanor Crewes
Tally’s Blood – Anne Marie Di Mambro