A combination of life’s distractions, ill discipline and slow reading mean that I have only managed to finish 11 books this year. I am almost embarrassed to admit to such a paltry tally. There are people who can rip through that many titles in less than a month. I envy them their capacity. But it is what it is. Eleven. As is now my habit, there is a tweet thread of brief reviews of each book – summarised in the image below.

Another year, another tweet thread of the books I read these past twelvemonth. Click on the images to access higher resolution versions which are just about legible, or better still, read the thread on Twitter. In 2022 I managed just 20 titles, five of them novels and seven by women.

One final look back before I turn to face 2022. Following a practice started last year, I have maintained a thread of tweet-sized reviews of the books that I read in 2021 – all of them. The Twitter thread of the books I read in 2021. Click on the image to see the high-res version. There are only eighteen in total, a singularly unimpressive tally – fewer even than I managed in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.

I made what I think was a smart move at the beginning of 2020. Instead of waiting until the year’s end and then struggling to recall what I thought of the books I had read, I created a Twitter thread of one-line reviews as I completed each title. Here, finally, is the entire thread: Books of 2020 – a twitter thread. Click on the image for the high-res version. You may find it easier to scroll through the thread on Twitter.

In a kinder, happier age, when I used to write regularly for the Guardian’s science blog network, I would post summaries of the books I had read at the end of each year. Since the network closed in 2018 I have rather lost the habit. Looking back a the list of titles I got though in 2019, I realise how much I share with Robin Ince the problem of retention.

This week’s Times Higher Education has a nice cover feature listing books recommended by various scholars to students preparing for university.

Steve Aylett’s short book on originality, creativity and individuality may conform externally to the rectilinear format of most other books but is otherwise highly elliptical. I found it maddening. Heart of the Original – Alan Moore loved it. It has chapters, paragraphs, and sentences – just like other books – but somehow those sentences don’t stack up into a shape that is easy to get hold of. I can’t even put my finger on it.

After publishing my round-up of the books I’d read in 2015, the author Christopher Edge got in touch via twitter to offer a review copy of his new book, The Many Worlds of Albie Bright . It’s a short novel for children which has an ambitious amount of science threaded into the plot. At the beginning of the story young Albie has just lost his physicist mum to cancer.

At the tail end of 2015 I reviewed the 23 books that had entertained and enlightened me over the course of the year. My friend Henry Gee, formerly of this parish, managed nearly twice that number.

Two more book reviews from my reading list for this year. On several occasions while reading Being Mortal , surgeon Atul Gawande’s book about end-of-life care, I could feel a lump swelling in my throat and tears behind my eyes pressing for release. I’m not an emotional type but this is an intense book. The intensity is surprising since Gawande’s lucid style is very matter of fact.