Here is a list of all the books I read this year. Those with asterisks beside them are the ones that made it into my annual Best Books of the Year lists.
- An Introduction to Counselling by John McLeod
- The Book of Vodou by Leah Gordon
- The Light in the Dark: A Winter Journal by Horatio Clare *
- Les Apéros de Trish by Trish Deseine
- The Serpent and the Rainbow by Wade Davis
- On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King *
- Theories of Counseling and Psychotherapy by C.H. Patterson
- The Elements of Style by Strunk & White
- Standards and Ethics for Counselling in Action by Tim Bond *
- The Secrets You Hide by Kate Helm
- Individual Therapy: A Handbook by Windy Dryden (ed.)
- A Kind of Freedom by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
- Nine Lives by Dan Baum
- Less by Andrew Sean Greer
- Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl *
- Psychotherapy and Existentialism by Viktor Frankl *
- A novel which I’m not allowed to name because it’s not coming out until next year
- Your Guilty Secret by Rebecca Thornton
- Dangerous Families: Assessment and Treatment of Child Abuse by Peter Dale et al.
- After She’s Gone by Camilla Grebe
- Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg
- Animals Eat Each Other by Elle Nash
- Normal by Graeme Cameron
- The Dinner by Herman Koch
- Fallen Angel by Chris Brookmyre
- The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett
- Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
- Looking for Alaska by John Green
- The Poison Artist by Jonathan Moore
- Burnt Paper Sky by Gilly MacMillan
- Heft by Liz Moore
- A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara *
- Silence in the Age of Noise by Erling Kagge *
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt *
- The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
- Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- The Last Asylum by Barbara Taylor *
- Unicorns: The Myths, Legends and Lore by Skye Alexander
- The Therapeutic Relationship by Sheila Haugh & Stephen Paul
- An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis by Charles Brenner
- The Secret History of Georgian London by Dan Cruikshank
- Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
- Enchantments of the Clinic by Carl P. Ellerson
- The Evidence Against You by Gillian McAllister
- The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware
- Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter
- One Day by David Nicholls
- Confessions of a Sociopath by M.E. Thomas
- Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris
- The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide
- Tinkers by Paul Harding
- The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck *
- Working Days: The Journals of ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ by John Steinbeck
- Gestalt Therapy Verbatim by Frederick Perls
- The Furies by Katie Lowe
- The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
- Lullaby by Leïla Slimani
- The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
- I’ll Find You by Liz Lawler
- The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar
- Dear Mrs. Bird by AJ Pearce
- Never Greener by Ruth Jones
- The Worlds of Existentialism by Maurice Friedman *
- Anthology of Fear by various authors
- Prince d’Orchestre par Metin Arditi
- The Partisan Heart by Gordon Kerr
- Inventing the Enemy by Umberto Eco
- In a House of Lies by Ian Rankin
- The New Orleans Voodoo Handbook by Kenaz Filan
- The Idiot by Elif Batuman *
- Comme un Enfant Perdu by Renaud Séchan *
- Iron in the Soul by Jean-Paul Sartre
- From the Tree to the Labyrinth by Umberto Eco
- The Night She Died by Jenny Blackhurst
- Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Green
- Behind Closed Doors by Elizabeth Haynes
- The Girlfriend by Michelle Frances
- The Horse Dancer by Jojo Moyes
- Never Tell by Lisa Gardner
- How to Write a Thesis by Umberto Eco
- Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti by Maya Deren
- The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak by Randy Fertel
- A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
- Empire of Sin by Gary Krist
- Haitian Vodou by Mambo Chita Tann
- The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman *
- Tell My Horse by Zora Neale Hurston
- The New Orleans Voodoo Tarot by Louis Martinié & Sallie Ann Glassman
- Contes et Légendes d’Afrique d’Ouest en Est by Yves Pinguilly & Cathy Millet
- See You In The Morning by Mairead Case
- The First Slap by Tara K.
- Wilde About the Girl by Louise Pentland
- Voodoo In Haiti by Alfred Métraux
- Say You’re Sorry by Karen Rose
- How To Be Famous by Caitlin Moran
- Bed by David Whitehouse
- Tape by Steven Camden
- The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
- When All Is Said by Anne Griffin *
- Spirits of the Night: Vaudun Gods of Haiti by Selden Rodman & Carole Cleaver
- Complete Book of Tarot by Cassandra Eason
- Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport *
- Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch *
- The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn
- The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
- A Good Enough Mother by Bev Thomas
- The Taking of Annie Thorne by CJ Tudor
- Five Moral Pieces by Umberto Eco
- A beta-read for a friend
- A sensitivity read for a client
- My novel, in order to edit it
- The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths
- The Book of Legendary Lands by Umberto Eco
- Indexing Books by Nancy C. Mulvany
- Loser Wins by Jean-Paul Sartre
- I Owe You One by Sophie Kinsella
- The Wayward Girls by Amanda Mason
- An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen
- Outsider by Stephen King
- The Secret Keeper by Susan Lewis
- A sensitivity read for a client
- Diary of a Witchcraft Shop by Trevor Jones & Liz Williams
- ‘Hysteria: The Elusive Neurosis’ (Monograph in Psychological Issues vol. XII) by Alan Krohn
- Hysteria: The History of a Disease by Ilza Veith
- Integration and Self-Healting: Affect – Trauma – Alexithymia by Henry Krystal *
- Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Bateman & Holmes
- Phantoms of the Clinic by Mikita Brottman
- The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
- Sex, Power, Money by Sara Pascoe
- Being a Witch and Other Things I Didn’t Ask For by (a different) Sara Pascoe
- Labyrinth by Burhan Sönmez
- The Wife by Meg Wolitzer
Next year I’d like to read more: during the last quarter of 2019 I barely read anything, which brought down my overall average. And I’d like to read some really good novels next year, because although I read a few very good ones, on the whole it wasn’t such a great year for fiction chez scar.
Previous years: 2018