Fiction
Disobedience – Naomi Alderman
Girls of Riyadh - Rajaa Alsanea
The Sea – John Banville
The Monday Night Cooking School – Erica Bauermeister
Your presence is requested at Suvanto – Maile Chapman
The Amenable Woman – Mavis Cheek
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz
Drown – Junot Diaz
The Big Pink – Anne Fine
The Lais of Marie De France
My Cleaner – Maggie Gee
Helpless – Barbara Gowdy
Notes on a Scandal – Zoe Heller
Nature Girl – Carl Hiassen
Anybody Out There? – Marian Keyes
Sushi for Beginners – Marian Keyes
Watermelon – Marian Keyes
The Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
Equal Affections – David Leavitt
Fruit of the Lemon – Andrea Levy
Family Album – Penelope Lively
Dancer – Colum McCann
Fall on your knees – Ann-Marie MacDonald
The Popularity Rules – Abby McDonald
Summer in the City – Pauline McLynn
Purple Hibiscus – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
How to breathe underwater – Julie Orringe
Woman’s World – Graham Rawles
Baby Sister – Marilyn Sachs
A Far Cry from Kensington – Muriel Spark
Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
Mothers milk – Edward St Aubyn
The Bad Sister (omnibus) – Emma Tennant
Whistling for the Elephants – Sandi Toksvig
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen – Paul Torday
If morning ever comes – Anne Tyler
Fanny: A Fiction – Edmund White
The Married Man – Edmund White
Non-Fiction
Paid Servant – ER Braithwaite
The Perfect Scent – Chandler Burr
Good to Great – Jim Collins
A Reader in Promoting Public Health: Challenge and Controversy – J Douglas, S Earle, S Handsley, C Lloyd, S Spurr
Getting to Yes – Roger Fisher, William Ury
Fight the good fight – Catherine Fox
Offbalance: The real world of ballet – Suzanne Gordon
The Thoughtful Dresser – Linda Grant
Julie and Julia – Julie Powell
Fish, flesh and Good Red Herring – Alice Thomas Ellis
Home Life 3 – Alice Thomas Ellis
Perfumes: The A to Z Guide – Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez
The Wordy Shipmates – Sarah Vowell
Selective Memory – Katherine Whitehorn
What’s Offbalance like? & remind me, if you want it, I have a copy of The Long Song by Levy – plan to read it soon, so if you want it afterwards just holla.
Would love to read The Long Song – Levy is a favourite.
Offbalance is great fun (bear in mind I have a special love for trashy Hollywood autobiographies), although some of the problems and power imbalances she describes don’t exist in the UK as we have state arts funding. (There exists, of course, a whole book about the problems and power imbalances created by the UK Arts Council which I read a few years ago!)
Impressive. About twice as many as me (but 50% less than Stephen King, whose list at the end of On Writing inspired me to start a book diary).
Have you read Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates? Not trashy and a fictional autobiography but very very good.
I haven’t read Blonde but you’re not the first person to tell me how good it is, so perhaps now’s the time to move it up my (disorganised, mental) list!