I had never done the practice of writing down all of the books I read for an entire year. In 2020, it is time to do so. Without further ado, I present to the kind reader the result of my literary work in this year of the plague. Here is the list:
1) Dog body, Diana Wynne Jones
2) Empires, Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper
3) The Wills, Margaret Atwood
4) Blood Fields, Karen Armstrong (read again)
5) Fragile Things, Neil Gaiman (read again)
6) Elegant men, Samir Machado de Machado
7) If it’s a question, Primo Levi
8) Paletó e Eu, Aparecida Vilaça
9) The Ministry of Truth, Dorian Lynskei
10) Human Diversity, Charles Murray
11) Coraline, Neil Gaiman (read again)
12) The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin (re-reading)
13) Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet, Lyndal Roper
14) The Farthest Coast, Ursula K. Le Guin (read again)
15) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo, anonymous, translation by JRR Tolkien (re-reading)
16) Great Gods, Ara Norenzayan (re-reading)
17) The greatest show in the world, Richard Dawkins
18) The War of Paraguay, Luiz Octavio de Lima
19) The Abolition of Man, CS Lewis
20) Improbable development, William von Hippel
21) The King Must Die, Mary Renault (read again)
22) The Bull of the Sea, Mary Renault (read again)
23) Ebola, David Quammen
24) The Ocean At The End Of The Alley, Neil Gaiman (read again)
25) Spillover, David Quammen
26) Odren’s daughter, Ursula K. Le Guin
27) The word for world is forest, Ursula K. Le Guin
28) Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
29) Conqueror, Roger Crowley
30) These truths, Jill Lepore
31) Dominion, Tom Holland
32) The New Zealand Penguin Story, Michael King
33) Seawall, Life, Simon Stephens, and Nick Payne
34) The rules of contagion, Adam Kucharski
35) Good Omens, Neil Gaiman, and Terry Pratchett (read again)
36) Cadet and Captain Luiz Maklouf Carvalho
37) The Age of Blackout, Catherine Nixey
38) How to Beat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps, Andrew Rowe
39) The Triumph of Christianity, Bart D. Ehrman (re-reading)
40) Stories from Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
41) Supervisor, Angela Saini
42) Kindred, Octavia E. Butler
43) The Absolute Brightness by Leonard Pelkey, James Lecesne
44) Memoirs of a Primate, Robert Sapolsky (re-reading)
45) The life and times of Prince Albert, Patrick Alitt
46) Five Paths to Forgiveness, Ursula K. Le Guin
47) Herbie, Rich Cohen
48) The Silk Roads, Peter Frankopan
49) Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code, Bart Ehrman
50) The spectacle of the races, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz
51) The Greek and Persian Wars, John R. Hale
52) An Adult’s Guide to Dinosaurs, Ben Garrod
53) The human flood, Paul Morland
54) Tehanu, Ursula K. Le Guin (re-reading)
55) Immune, Matt Richtel
56) Did Jesus Exist ?, Bart Ehrman (read again)
57) Fire from Heaven, Mary Renault
58) In Search of Black History, Bonnie Greer
59) The Sandman I, Neil Gaiman
60) The Other Wind, Ursula K. Le Guin (read again)
61) Charles de Gaulle: A Biography, Julian Jackson
62) Against Empathy, Paul Bloom
63) Churchill: Walking with Fate, Andrew Roberts
64) The true creator of everything, Miguel Nicolelis
65) Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
66) The Fellowship of Beloved Disciple Raymond E. Brown
67) Summerland, Michael Chabon (read again)
68) Ender’s Game Alive, Orson Scott Card
69) Caffeine, Michael Pollan
70) Pops, Michael Chabon
71) War! What is it good for ?, Ian Morris
72) Children of Ash and Elm, Neil Price
73) How Jesus Became God, Bart Ehrman (read again)
74) The rifles and the arrows, Rubens Valente
75) The Call of the Wild, Jack London
76) The Inklings, Humphrey Carpenter (read again)
77) Talking to the enemy Scott Atran
78) The Wave in the Spirit, Ursula K. Le Guin
79) Almost human, Lee Berger and John Hawks
80) H is for Hawk, Helen MacDonald
81) Husband Jeeves, PG Wodehouse
82) Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
83) Forest is the name of the world, Ursula K. Le Guin (reread)
84) The dispatcher John Scalzi
85) How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt
86) Winnie-the-Pooh, AA Milne
87) The face of the battle, John Keegan
88) No time to save, Ursula K. Le Guin
89) Out of Slavery, Booker T. Washington
90) Beren and Lúthien, JRR Tolkien (re-reading)
91) Peter Pan, JM Barrie
92) The Space Race, Colin Brake et al.
93) The Vaccine Riot, Nicolau Sevcenko
94) Hilary Mantel, bring the bodies up
95) Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
96) The storytelling, Ursula K. Le Guin
97) The Carbonários, Alfredo Sirkis
98) Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
99) A Guerra, Bruno Paes Manso and Camila Nunes Dias
100) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Mark Twain
101) Warlords of Ancient Mexico, Peter G. Tsouras
102) The Republic of the Militias, Bruno Paes Manso
103) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
104) Let’s dream together, Pope Francis and Austen Ivereigh
105) Seventh son, Orson Scott Card
106) How to Argument with a Racist, Adam Rutherford
107) Palmares, Flavio dos Santos Gomes
108) Heaven and Hell, Bart D. Ehrman
109) The strangest people in the world, Joseph Henrich
110) Among others, Jo Walton
111) The Great Melt, Jeff Goodell
112) The causes of war and the spread of peace, Azar Gat
Some quick notes:
1) Of these, 12 books or a tenth come from the genius Ursula K. Le Guin. This is what time is well spent, ladies and gentlemen;
2) Much of it was in audiobook format, although I can’t accurately quantify the fraction;
3) Fiction is not a waste of time: it stimulates creativity and especially the heart.
A less bad New Year for all of us!
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