Books I read in 2015

A list of the books read by me in 2015.

Night Walks
by Charles Dickens
Victorian essays.

How to Write Everything
by David Quantick
A fun and funny book.

Some Thoughts on the Common Toad
by George Orwell
Enjoyable essay collection.

Doubling Back
by Linda Cracknell
Ten paths trodden in memory.

Wanderlust
by Rebecca Solnit
A history of walking.

A Book of Silence
by Sara Maitland
A journey is search of the pleasure and powers of silence.

H is for Hawk
by Helen Macdonald
Multi-prize-winning goshawk memoir.

On Silbury Hill
by Adam Thorpe
Monograph about an enigmatic hill.

Four Hedges
by Clare Leighton
A beautifully illustrated year in a garden.

The Overhaul
by Kathleen Jamie
A fantastic book of, erm… poetry!

Landmarks
by Robert Macfarlane
A celebration of landscape writers and words.

Bento's Sketchbook
by John Berger
A compelling mix of journal, reminiscences, sketches, and art theory.

Vertigo
by W.G. Sebald
File under Sebaldian.

Arguably
by Christopher Hitchens
Essays on literature, politics, and religion.

The Children of Hurin
by J.R.R. Tolkien
Tolkien's longest unfinished tale (now finished).

Hitch 22
by Christopher Hitchens
A memoir.

Sir Thomas Browne: a life
by Reid Barbour
Biography of a 17th-century polymath.

The Jeeves Omnibus, vol. I
by P.G. Wodehouse
What-ho!

Urne-Burial
by Sir Thomas Browne
Reflections on the iniquity of oblivion.

Common Ground
by Rob Cowen
A strange book about a local edgeland.

The Walker's Guide
by Tristan Gooley
How keeping your eyes peeled can tell you more about your walk.

Gods of the Morning
by John Lister-Kaye
A Bird's Eye View of a Highland Year.

60 Degrees North
by Malachy Tallack
Around the world in search of home.

Wild Wales
by George Borrow
Its People, Language and Scenery.

Black Apples of Gower
by Iain Sinclair
Stone-footing in memory fields.

The Emigrants
by W.G. Sebald
Part of my yearly Sebaldian binge.

Findings
by Kathleen Jamie
Re-reading some of my favourite ‘nature writing’.

Sightlines
by Kathleen Jamie
Re-reading some more of my favourite ‘nature writing’.

The Rings of Saturn
by W.G. Sebald
My yearly re-reading of Sebald's masterpiece.

The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms
by Charles Darwin
The great man's final book. Pure Darwin!

The Invention of Science
by David Wootton
A new history of the Scientific Revolution.

Threads
by Julia Blackburn
The Delicate Life of John Craske.

Mr Key's Shorter Potted Brief, Brief Lives
by Frank Key
An medium-sized mass of potted nonsense.

The Bonniest Companie
by Kathleen Jamie
A typically wonderful collection of poems.

M Train
by Patti Smith
A fascinating exercise in ‘writing about nothing’.

Coda
by Simon Gray
Re-reading Gray's poignant but funny final volume of diaries.

Granta 133
by Sigrid Rausing (ed.)
What Have We Done?

Sebald's Vision
by Carol Jacobs
High-brow analysis of the enigmatic author's oeuvre.

The Cabaret of Plants
by Richard Mabey
Botany and the Imagination.

Field Work
by Ronald Blythe
Essays on literature, art and the countryside.

After Nature
by W.G. Sebald
A re-reading of three long-form poems, best read as prose.

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