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In a year of lockdowns, literature provided ways of escape. Here’s my list of 70 books read in 2021 and a brief verdict.

(* Indicates it has been read before.)

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Five stars

Guide to Greece 1: Central Greece, Pausanias, 2nd cent. AD
Guide to Greece 2: Southern Greece, Pausanias, 2nd cent. AD
The Secret Pilgrim, John le Carré, 1990
The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene, 1948*
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1866
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1911*
The Wealth of Nations: Books I-III, Adam Smith, 1776
The Wealth of Nations: Books IV-V, Adam Smith, 1776
St Nazaire 1942, Ken Ford, 2001
The Comedians, Graham Greene, 1966*
I Wanna Be Yours, John Cooper Clarke, 2020
The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1868

Four stars

Solaris, Stanislaw Lem, 1961
The Franco-Prussian War, Stephen Badsey, 2003
The Anome, Jack Vance, 1973
The American Revolution 1774-1783, Daniel Marston, 2002
Tobruk 1941, Jon Latimer, 2001
Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome, 1889*
The French Wars 1667-1714: The Sun King at war, John A. Lynn, 2002
The Brave Free Men, Jack Vance, 1973
A War of Choice: The British in Iraq 2003-9, Jack Fairweather, 2011
Crash, J. G. Ballard, 1973*
The Russian Civil War 1918-22, David Bullock, 2008
The Mexican War 1846-1848, Douglas V. Meed, 2002
The Asutra, Jack Vance, 1974
Byzantium at War AD 600-1453, John Haldon, 2002
The Chinese Civil War 1945-49, Michael Lynch, 2010
Ivanhoe, Walter Scott, 1819
Stalingrad 1942, Peter Antill, 2007
The Collapse of Yugoslavia 1991-1999, Alastair Finlan, 2004
The Soviet-Afghan War 1979-89, Gregory Fremont-Barnes, 2012
The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins, 1868
The Anglo-Irish War: The Troubles of 1913-1922, Peter Cottrell, 2006
Dimension of Miracles, Robert Sheckley, 1968
Genghis Khan & the Mongol Conquests 1190-1400, Stephen Turnbull, 2003
The Irish Civil War 1922-23, Peter Cottrell, 2008
The Korean War 1950-53, Carter Malkasian, 2001
The Northern Ireland Troubles: Operation Banner 1969-2007, Aaron Edwards, 2011
The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum, 1900*
The Caucasus 1942-43, Robert Forczyk, 2015
We, Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1924
Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie, 1911*
A History of War in 100 Battles, Richard Overy, 2014
Flatland, Edwin A. Abbott, 1884
The Testaments, Margaret Atwood, 2019
One Billion Years to the End of the World, Arkady & Boris Strugatsky, 1977
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson, 1985
The Assassins, W. B. Bartlett, 2001
The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling, 1894*
Five Plays, Anton Chekhov, 1887-1904
The Boer War 1899-1902, Gregory Fremont-Barnes, 2003
Untouched by Human Hands, Robert Sheckley, 1954
Kingdom of Fear, Hunter S. Thompson, 2003
The Magus, John Fowles, 1965
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame, 1908*
La Belle Sauvage, Philip Pullman, 2017
Prehistory: A Very Short Introduction, Chris Gosden, 2018
Trafalgar, Angélica Gorodischer, 1979
Roman Britain: A Very Short Introduction, Peter Salway, 2015
The Plains War 1757-1900, Charles M. Robinson III, 2003
Serpentine, Philip Pullman, 2020
The Falklands War 1982, Duncan Anderson, 2002
Friedrich, Hans Peter Richter, 1961*
The Indian Mutiny 1857-58, Gregory Fremont-Barnes, 2007
The Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988, Efraim Karsh, 2002
The Secret Commonwealth, Philip Pullman, 2019
The Gulf War 1991, Alastair Finlan, 2003
Fireworks, Angela Carter, 1974
The Jacobite Rebellion 1745-46, Gregory Fremont-Barnes, 2011

Three stars

The Eyes of Darkness, Dean Koontz, 1981

Two stars

N/A

One star

N/A

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