Following my annual practice, I have listed here my “novel” reading for 2024. This is a way of documenting what I get through in a year’s worth of reading on the commute to work, in the evenings after work, and while travelling outside of my “normal” academic reading. My use of the term “novel” reading is loosely adopted, as you will see from the list to include fiction and then really important non-fiction work I get excited to read in my spare time. As you will see, my novel reading shifted away from novels to much more academic reading in my “free time” and then back again. But that approach has been richly rewarding. This year, though, there has been less novel reading compared to previous years. Why is that? Not sure. I was commuting less – due to study leave – but also tackled some big books that left me exhausted. Charles M. Doughty’s Travels in Arabia Deserta (two volumes) was one of those experiences. It was a journey that took me in my reading from one desert setting to another in the form of the Florida Mountains in New Mexico (represented in the set image for this blog post by John Fowler from Placitas, NM) and the mesas of Arizona and Sonora with their porphyry rock fibre, mesquite, lomas, and grease-wood plains. As John C. Van Dyke says, ‘the deserts are not worthless wastes . . . they are the breathing spaces of the west’.
Let’s see what 2025 brings!
1) Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch (Little Brown Book Group, 2013).
2) Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn (Granta, 2012).
3) Donna Tartt, The Secret History (Penguin, 1992).
4) Charles M. Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta, Volume I and II [1888] (Jonathan Cape, 1921).
5) Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men (Picador, 2005) [re-read].
6) Michel Foucault, “Society Must be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76, trans. David Macey (Picador, 2003).
7) Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-1978 [2004], trans. Graham Burchell (Picador, 2007) [re-read].
8) Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979 [2004], trans. Graham Burchell (Picador, 2008).
9) Judy Nickles, Dancing with Velvet (Wild Rose Press, 2012).
10) Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North, trans. Denys Johnson-Davies [1969], (New York Review of Books, 2009).
11) Edward W. Said, Orientalism [1978] (Penguin, 1995) [re-read].
12) Elmer Kelton, Honor at Daybreak (Doubleday, 1991).
13) Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses (Picador, 1992 [re-read].
14) Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing (Picador, 1994) [re-read].
15) Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain (Picador, 1995) [re-read].
16) Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Bartleby and Other Stories (Penguin, 2016).
17) Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (Virago, 2004).
18) Adania Shibli, Minor Detail, trans. Elisabeth Jacquette (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2020).
19) Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian; Or the Evening Redness in the West (Picador, 1985) [re-read].
20) Annie Dillard, For the Time Being (Vintage Books, 1999).
21) Cormac McCarthy, The Counselor (Picador, 2013) [re-read].
22) Tim Winton, Juice (Penguin, 2024).
23) E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, Volume 1: A History of Soviet Russia [1950] (Penguin, 1966).
24) Albert Camus, The Rebel [1951], trans. Anthony Bower (Penguin, 2013).
25) John C. Van Dyke, The Desert: Further Studies in Natural Appearances (Charles Sribner’s Sons, 1901).
Anitra Nelson | Dec 31 2424
Always love this list — thanks Adam.
Andy Mack | Dec 31 2424
Great stuff Adam. I add some oldies to the list:
Erich Maria Remarque – Shadows in Paradise. As script adviser for anti-Nazi films in Hollywood during the second war, Remarque – from first hand experience, shows the humbug that the German Nazis were generally not freaks, just carrying out a job for the boss. The director overrode him, contending the audience wouldn’t believe they weren’t monster freaks. Lessons for today.
2. Ben Elton, dystopian future – Blind Faith. A bit of 1984, mixed with Brave New World and the Old Testament
3. James Paterson, The Store – amazingly, not your regular pulp, but another dystopian story about the power of Amazon to massively exploit workers, and shape popular culture around the compan[‘s consumerist agenda.