I can’t claim credit for this idea, that was fellow journalist Charlotte Tobitt and her blog post ‘Everything I read in 2016 rated’. We spoke on Twitter about her choices, as I’m always interested in what books people like or dislike. Here’s my list of 46 books.
(* Indicates it has been read before.)
Five stars
Fall of the Roman Republic, Plutarch, c. 1st cent. AD
The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler, 1953*
The Conquest of Gaul, Julius Caesar, c. 1st cent BC
The Annals of Imperial Rome, Tacitus, c. 116
White Line Fever, Lemmy (with Janiss Garza), 2002
The Histories, Herodotus, c. 5th cent. BC
The Voyage to Argo (The Argonautica), Apollonius of Rhodes, c. 3rd cent. BC
Four stars
The High Window, Raymond Chandler, 1942*
The Lady in the Lake, Raymond Chandler, 1943*
A History of Prussia, H. W. Koch, 1978*
The Little Sister, Raymond Chandler, 1949*
Shakespeare, Bill Bryson, 2007
LaBrava, Elmore Leonard, 1983
Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell, 1938*
The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers, 1983
Chapter and Verse, Bernard Sumner, 2014
The Alexiad, Anna Komnene, 1148
Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet, 1983
The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius, 121
Three stars
The Lair of the White Worm, Bram Stoker, 1911
Field of Prey, John Sandford, 2014
Playback, Raymond Chandler, 1958*
The Secret History, Procopius, 550
The Terminal Beach, J. G. Ballard, 1964*
The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett, 1929
The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin, 1971
On Living and Dying Well, Cicero, c. 1st cent. BC
Willnot, James Sallis, 2016
Utopia, Thomas More, 1516
The Heat’s On, Chester Himes, 1961
Republic, Plato, c. 380 BC
Monday Starts on Saturday, Arkady & Boris Strugatsky, 1964
The Shepherd’s Crown, Terry Pratchett, 2015
Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee. 2015
The Real Cool Killers, Chester Himes, 1959
Maximum Bob, Elmore Leonard, 1991
The Lonely Londoners, Sam Selvon, 1956
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte, 1847
All Shot Up, Chester Himes, 1960
American Buffalo, David Mamet, 1975
Two stars
The Wall, Tom Buchwald, 2008
German Invasion Plans for the British Isles 1940, Various, 1940
One star
The Fifth Child, Doris Lessing, 1988
The Soft Machine, William Burroughs, 1961
The Lottery and Other Stories, Shirley Jackson, 1948
Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse, 1922
