Hello Readers,
I have finally researched and compiled my 2015 Reading List!
There is a total of 150 books on the list; which I doubt very much I will be able to complete in 2015 – but at least it will act as a guide – and for those that I do not get round to reading, they can always be added to my 2016 reading list!
I am going to attempt a different reading approach this year. I generally read at a medium speed, and by doing this I am averaging around 15 books a year. So it is time to speed up and do some scan reading in the places in a book that I see fit! Places like action scenes and scenes that tend to drag on in description will be great places to start. I also have a habit of re-reading certain paragraphs or scenes that are written beautifully or tend to take my breath away, and although this is ‘nice’, I must remember that this is taking away the time that could be spent on other books. If I were to do this even a few times on every book then the time certainly accumulates.
On the list, I have included Classics, Biographies, Teach yourself books, Poetry and a wide range of fiction genres, plus some real-life stories thrown in for good measure! This year I needed include other books that are away from the usual genre areas with which I am familiar. I think that by expanding my literary horizons, I will be colouring my experience as a writer.
Here is the list. I hope you enjoy!
| Book | Author |
| The Red House Mystery | A.A. Milne |
| Naked, Drunk and Writing | Adair Lara |
| Hausfrau: A Novel | Jill Alexander Essbaum |
| The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty | Amanda Filipacchi |
| All Fur Coat | Andrew Holmes |
| The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes | Anna McPartlin |
| Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life | Anne Lamott |
| The Hound of the Baskervilles | Arthur Conan Doyle |
| From A to Biba: The Autobiography of Barbara Hulanicki | Barbara Hulanicki |
| West End Girls: The Real Lives, Loves and Friendships of 1940s Soho and its Working Girls | Barbara Tate |
| Bare Necessity (Original Title: A Compromising Position) | Carole Matthews |
| The Little Old Lady Who Broke all the Rules | Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg |
| Love, Rosie (Original Title: Where Rainbow’s End) | Cecelia Ahern |
| Great Expectations | Charles Dickens |
| David Copperfield | Charles Dickens |
| Jane Eyre | Charlotte Bronte |
| Never Knowing | Chevy Stevens |
| The Double Bind | Chris Bohjalian |
| The Orphan | Christopher Ransom |
| The Book of You | Claire Kendal |
| Never Tell | Claire Seeber |
| Brooklyn | Colm Toibin |
| Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano | Dana Thomas |
| Robinson Crusoe | Daniel Defoe |
| Rebecca | Daphne du Maurier |
| Life Expectancy | Dean Koontz |
| Innocence | Dean Koontz |
| The Unloved | Deborah Levy |
| Swimming Home | Deborah Levy |
| Writing From the Inside Out: Transforming Your Psychological Blocks to Release the Writer Within | Dennis Palumbo |
| The Zookeeper’s Wife | Diane Ackerman |
| My Little Friend | Donna Tartt |
| The Goldfinch | Donna Tartt |
| Teach Yourself: Understanding Psychology | Dr. Nicky Hayes |
| The Power of Now | Eckhart Tolle |
| The Raven | Edgar Allan Poe |
| The House of Mirth | Edith Whalton |
| After Birth | Elisa Albert |
| Escaping Into the Open: The Art of Writing True | Elizabeth Berg |
| Wuthering Heights | Emily Bronte |
| Room | Emma Donoghue |
| Elizabeth’s Missing | Emma Healey |
| Men Without Women | Ernest Hemingway |
| Scoop | Evelyn Waugh |
| Middlemarch | George Eliot |
| 1984 | George Orwell |
| Animal Farm | George Orwell |
| Life: A User’s Manual | George Perec |
| Gone Girl | Gillian Flynn |
| Dark Places | Gillian Flynn |
| The War of the Worlds | H.G.Wells |
| The Time Machine | H.G.Wells |
| A Little Life | Hanya Yanagihara |
| The People in the Tree’s | Hanya Yanagihara |
| Alys, Always | Harriet Lane |
| Put Your Heart on the Paper: Staying Connected In A Loose-Ends World | Henriette Klauser |
| Moby Dick | Herman Melville |
| The Black Book | Ian Rankin |
| The Hobbit | J.R.R.Tolkien |
| The Call of the Wild | Jack London |
| The Poser | Jacob Rubin |
| Ulysses | James Joyce |
| Write Great Fiction: Revision and Self-editing | James Scott Bell |
| Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen |
| Emma | Jane Austen |
| Daughter | Jane Shemilt |
| Take Joy: A Book for Writers | Jane Yolen |
| The Catcher in the Rye | JD Salinger |
| Into the Forest | Jean Hegland |
| The Glass Castle | Jeanette Walls |
| Three Men in a Boat | Jerome K. Jerome |
| The Executor | Jesse Kellerman |
| The Miniaturist | Jessie Burton |
| Blue-Eyed Boy | Joanne Harris |
| A Kind of Intimacy | John Ashworth |
| The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris | John Baxter |
| On Becoming a Novelist | John C Gardner |
| The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writer’s | John Gardner |
| The Wild Life: A Year of Living on Wild Food | John Lewis-Stempel |
| Of Mice and Men | John Steinbeck |
| Gulliver’s Travels | Jonathan Swift |
| Heart of Darkness | Joseph Conrad |
| Songbird | Josephine Cox |
| The Artist’s Way | Julia Cameron |
| Chanel – The Legend and the Life | Justine Picardie |
| Teach Yourself: Get Your Book Published | Katherine Lapworth |
| The Buried Giant | Kazuo Ishiguro |
| Get in Trouble; Stories | Kelly Link |
| The Wind in the Willows | Kenneth Grahame |
| The Kite Runner | Khaled Hosseini |
| Find Me | Laura Van Den Berg |
| Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy |
| Leonard Cohen: Poems 1956-1968 | Leonard Cohen |
| Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland | Lewis Carroll |
| Little Women | Louisa May Alcott |
| Apple Tree Yard | Louise Doughty |
| The Dice Man | Luke Rhinehart |
| The Handmaid’s Tale | Margaret Atwood |
| Gone With the Wind | Margaret Mitchell |
| Improve your Written English | Marion Field |
| The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Mark Twain |
| London Fields | Martin Amis |
| Runaway | Martina Cole |
| Quant by Quant: The Autobiography | Mary Quant |
| Frankenstein | Mary Shelley |
| The Scold’s Bride | Minette Walters |
| Brick Lane | Monica Ali |
| Writing Down the Bones | Natalie Goldberg |
| The Scarlett Letter | Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times | Neil Astley |
| Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances | Neil Gaiman |
| Land of the Living | Nicci French |
| The Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde |
| The Price of Salt | Patricia Highsmith |
| Amnesia | Peter Carey |
| Want You Dead | Peter James |
| The Courage to Write: How Writer’s Transcend Fear | Ralph Keyes |
| Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children | Ransom Riggs |
| Zen in the Art of Writing | Ray Bradbury |
| The Big Sleep | Raymond Chandler |
| Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff | Richard Carlson |
| Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and other Short Stories | Robert Louis Stevenson |
| Story; Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting | Robert McKee |
| Why we Run: A Story of Obsession | Robin Harvie |
| Serena | Ron Rash |
| Revolution | Russell Brand |
| Clarissa | Samuel Richardson |
| Pride and Prejudice and Zombies | Seth Grahame-Smith |
| Trafficked | Sophie Hayes |
| The Host | Stephanie Meyer |
| Everything’s Eventual | Stephen King |
| The Stand | Stephen King |
| The Shining | Stephen King |
| The Bell Jar | Sylvia Plath |
| Dying for Christmas | Tammy Cohen |
| Finding Your Writer’s Voice: A Guide to Creative Fiction | Thaisa Frank |
| Tess of the D’Urbervilles | Thomas Hardy |
| Jude the Obscure | Thomas Hardy |
| The Murder Bag | Tony Parsons |
| Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew | Ursula K. Le Guin |
| The Hunchback of Notre Dame | Victor Hugo |
| Les Miserables | Victor Hugo |
| Mrs Dalloway | Virginia Woolfe |
| Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov |
| Novel Shortcuts – Ten Techniques That Ensure a Great First Draft | Whitcomb |
| The Woman in White | Wilkie Collins |
| The Moonstone | Wilkie Collins |
| Lord of the Flies | William Golding |
| The Elements of Style | William Strunk Jr and E.B. White |
| The Writer’s Digest Handbook of Novel Writing | Writer’s Digest |
a little bird tweets 