I read a lot. Here’s a list of my favourite books, sorted by the year in which I read them, since I started reading again properly in 2019.

These days, I end up spending a significant amount of time planning what I’m going to read; this has been revolutionary. 2024 was the year in which I read the least books, yet I really enjoyed pretty much all of them. Given that I have a tendency to be overly enthusiastic, I’ve tried to limit myself here to a maximum of three favourites per year.

Books marked with a * indicate those which I read when I was younger and reread.

2024

• The Aleph and Other Stories, Jorge Luis Borges
• The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch
• When We Cease to Understand the World, Benjamín Labatut

2023

• Engine Summer, John Crowley
• Le Grand Cahier: Une Trilogie, Kristóf Ágota
• The Rings of Saturn, W.G. Sebald

2022

• Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, Alfred Lansing
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Greg McKeown
• If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, Italo Calvino

2021

• A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
• God Emperor of Dune, Frank Herbert
• Tigana, Guy Gavriel Kay

2020

• A Death in the Family, Karl Ove Knausgaard
• Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami
• The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov

2019

• Dune*, Frank Herbert
• The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan