What I Read in 2017: 115 Books
This is the fourth edition in what has now become my annual tradition of recording and reflecting on my yearly reading list. I have increased my reading output each year since I started this project, and this year’s 115 titles surpasses even 2016’s (approximately) 100 titles in quantity and possibly in quality as well. I should also mention that this year’s list also comes from only 10 months of reading, as I hardly opened a book for the last two months of the year (firstly because of final prepartions for the Cambridge Delta Exam, secondly to give my overheated brain a break and to do more rock climbing). Over the last four years I have read over 300 books total, including a whole lifetime’s worth of great literature. I’m happy with this, even if I found this article about a woman who read over 500 novels in one year! My future goals are for expanding more into unfamiliar literary territories, rereading more (which I have rarely done until now), and writing more. Without further ado, here’s the conspectus (unfinished marked with *):
Books (76):
The Lives of Animals by J.M. Coetzee
Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee
Foe by J.M. Coetzee
In the Heart of the Country by J.M. Coetzee
Boyhood by J.M. Coetzee
Youth by J.M. Coetzee
Summertime by J.M. Coetzee
The Master of Petersburg by J.M. Coetzee
The Childhood of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee
The Schooldays of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee
Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee
Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee
Dusklands by J.M. Coetzee
Here and Now by J.M. Coetzee
Three Stories by J.M. Coetzee
My essay on Coetzee’s works here.
G by John Berger
To the Wedding by John Berger
Bento’s Sketchbook by John Berger
The Success and Failure of Picasso by John Berger
Selected Essays by John Berger
Austerlitz by Max Sebald
Vertigo by Max Sebald
The Emigrants by Max Sebald
The Rings of Saturn by Max Sebald
Everyday if for the Thief by Teju Cole
Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole
My essay on Berger, Sebald, and Cole here.
Jazz by Toni Morrison
A Man of the People by Chinua Achebe
Anthills of the Savanna* by Chinua Achebe
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nahisi Coates
The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
My essay on dictator novels here.
Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
On Writing by Stephen King
England England by Julian Barnes
The Porcupine by Julian Barnes
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes
The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes
The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes
Working on completing all his works.
Solar by Ian McEwan
Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan
Black Dogs by Ian McEwan
Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
The Children Act by Ian McEwan
The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
Nutshell by Ian McEwan
I’ve now read everything by this author.
Dark at the Crossing by Elliot Ackerman
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
Discontent and Its Civilizations by Mohsin Hamid
My essay on Hamid, Ackerman, and refugee novels here.
A Pale View of the Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro
I finished reading everything by Ishiguro a few months before the Nobel was announced.
Radetsky March by Joseph Roth
The Emperor’s Tomb by Joseph Roth
Job by Joseph Roth
The Confusions of Young Törless by Robert Musil
Five Women by Robert Musil
The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil (1130 pages!)
Two great Austrian writers I will say more about later.
Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte
The Skin by Curzio Malaparte
Freedom and Death by Nikos Kazantzakis
His version of the Iliad. My essay on Kazantzikis here.
Under the Volcano* by Malcolm Lowry
The Power and the Glory* by Graham Greene
These two well-regarded novels of drunkards in Mexico just didn’t hold my interest; I’ll come back to them (maybe)
Zone by Mathias Enard
Street of Thieves by Mathias Enard
Excellent French author.
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood
I finished her dytopian trilogy this year. Never has Atwood been more relevant.
The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
Ethics in the Real World by Peter Singer
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore
My essay on Stalin here.
Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
A Palace in the Old Village by Ben Tahar Jelloun
The Marquise of O and Other Stories by Heinrich von Kleist
Complete Stories and Parables by Franz Kafka
Deliver Us* by Luigi Meneghello
The author writes about growing up during the war in Malo, a small town where I live now. Too boring for me to finish, alas.
Audio books (39):
My goal was to start with as many Greek/Roman works as possible to reread or fill in some gaps (Cicero, for example, whom I’d never studied). All of the free audiobooks at Librivox are by definition older works out of copyright.
The Iliad by Homer
The Odyssey by Homer
The Aeneid by Virgil
The Oresteia by Aeschylus
The Works of Aeschylus
History of the Peloponesian War by Thucydides
The History of Rome from the Founding of the City by Livy
Agricola by Tacitus
Germania by Tacitus
On Duties by Cicero
Moralia by Cicero
On the Laws by Cicero
Tusculan Disputations by Cicero
Philippics by Cicero
The Life of Cicero by Anthony Trollope
Parallel Lives by Plutarch
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
The Works of Hesiod
Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto
Garibaldi and the Making of Italy by George Trevelyan
The Bhagavad Gita by Unknown Author(s)
Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville
Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas de Quincey
Under the Shadow of Etna by Giovanni Verga
Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
Phaedra by Jean Racine
The Bourguoisie Gentleman by Moliere
The Imaginary Invalid by Moliere
The Miser by Moliere
The Misanthrope by Moliere
The Autobiography of Goethe* by Goethe
Unfortunately, much more boring than I’d hoped.
Faust by Goethe
The Volsungasaga by Unknown Author(s)
The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson
Michael Kohlhaas by Heinrich von Kleist
The Tale of Genji (abridged) by Lady Murasaki Shikabu
Felix Holt: The Radical by George Eliot
Romola by George Eliot
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
Tigerpapers 
Great list thanks for posting! It will help my reading challenge this year.
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Great, thanks!
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hello,
I was wondering if you’d be able to review, “Peeling Potatoes or Grinding Lenses: Spinoza and Young Wittgenstein Converse on Immanence and Its Logic” by Aristides Baltas (2012)?
THANK YOU!
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I’d be interested to see how he justifies using Wittgenstein’s Tractatus for the comparison, when W. himself repudiated that work in subsequent years. If you want to send me a copy I’d certainly take a look and try to write something up.
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Sorry, I don’t have a copy. I just stumbled on this book, googling both Spinoza and Wittgenstein— researching if Wittgenstein had written about or given credit to Spinoza. Both Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Ethics , do seem very similar in structure and style, both (the latter more explicitly than the former) have to do with ethics.
But I cannot find in books and Googling any solid connection between Wittgenstein and Spinoza (eg. Einstein visited Spinoza’s house, 2 Nov. 1920 and a poem to boot).
How much do I love this noble man
More than I could say with words
I fear though he’ll remain alone
With a holy halo of his own…
You think his example would show us
What this teaching can give humankind
Trust not the comforting façade:
One must be born sublime
Didn’t Wittgenstein leave off with his Tractatus in the very same place Einstein left off in his poem (referring to Ethics)?
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Wittgenstein named his Tractatus after Spinoza’s Tractatus, at G.E. Moore’s suggestion. There are similarities with how they present propositions building from underlying principles. Spinoza’s principle was that God and creation were one, Wittgenstein’s that logic could be used to define language and reality. They were both somewhat mystical with rigorous personal rules of morality. The only catch is that W. later completely renounced his own Tractatus in his so-called linguistic turn. Interesting, thanks!
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