2020 in Books

It's that time of year again, when I list all the words I managed to read. For some reason, this year there's a fair few more of them...

Books read- 36
Pages read- 15,950
Target- 35 (amended up from 27 because, you know, lockdown)

• Fiction/Non-fiction ratio- 10:26- A better year for fiction, but only marginally...

• Longest Book- A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, 1184 pages.

• Shortest Book- The Ascent of Rum Doodle, 192 pages.

• Quickest Read- A three way tie between The Ascent of Rum Doodle, Stasi Child and Just Mercy, each of which took me three days.

• Longest Read- KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, August 2019-August 2020.

• Most Read Authors- A tie this time: Diarmaid MacCulloch, one his book on the English Reformation under Edward VI, and the other his mammoth history of Christianity, and two John le Carre novels.

• Ebooks-  KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Stasi Child, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn, Norton of Everest: Soldier and Mountaineer, Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of the English Republic, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, The Norman Conquest, Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation.

• Audio books- La Belle Sauvage, First Man In: Leading from the Front.

• Useless Fact-A grand total of four other people read the biography of Edward Norton. 367,424 others read Just Mercy.

The List

• The President is Missing, Bill Clinton and James Paterson
• The Long '68: Radical Protest and its Enemies, Richard Vinen
• Where Power Stops: The Making and Unmaking of Presidents and Prime Ministers, David Runciman
• Austerity Britain, 1945-51, David Kynaston
• The Black Death: An Intimate Story of a Village in Crisis, 1345-1350, John Hatcher
• Piers the Ploughman, William Langland
• The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel
• The Ascent of Rum Doodle, W.E. Bowman
• Gorbachev: His Life and Times, William Taubman
• Selling Hitler: The Story of the Hitler Diaries, Robert Harris
• The Ministry of Nostalgia, Owen Hatherley
• Excalibur, Bernard Cornwell 
• A Most Wanted Man, John le Carre
• La Belle Sauvage, Philip Pullman
• Doctor Who: Fear of the Dark, Trevor Baxendale
• The English Civil War: A People's History, Diane Purkiss
• Born in the GDR: Living in the Shadow of the Wall, Hester Vaizey
• The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are, Michael Pye
• My Life, Our Times, Gordon Brown
• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson
• Hidden Histories: A Spotter's Guide to the British Landscape, Mary-Ann Ochota
• First Man In: Leading from the Front, Ant Middleton 
• KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, Nikolaus Wachsmann
• Stasi Child, David Young
• A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Diarmaid MacCulloch
• The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, Timothy Snyder
• Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn, Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire
• The Brothers York: An English Tragedy, Thomas Penn
• Norton of Everest: Soldier and Mountaineer, Hugh Norton
• Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of the English Republic, Paul Lay
• Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century, John Higgs
• The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, Hallie Rubenhold
• Between the Sunset and the Sea: A View of 16 British Mountains, Simon Ingram
• The Norman Conquest, Marc Morris
• Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation, Diarmaid MacCulloch
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John le Carre