Well, the “We’re” will have to be aspirational for now. But here’s a What I’ve Been Reading list:
January 2021
The Corner That Held Them, by Sylvia Townsend Warner
February
The Iron Road: The Illustrated History of Railways, by Christian Wolmar
March
Hitler, My Neighbour, by Edgar Feuchtwanger
April
Of Smiling Peace, by Stefan Heym
May
Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education, by Sybille Bedford
June
Hav, by Jan Morris
July
The Late Mattia Pascal, by Luigi Pirandello
Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke
War of Shadows, by Gershom Gorenberg
August
Men at Arms, by Evelyn Waugh
Lud-in-the-Mist, by Hope Mirlees
The Lanchaster Tradition, by GF Bradby
September
Kingdoms of Elfin, by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Love Among the Ruins: A Romance of the Near Future, by Evelyn Waugh
October
Earth, by Emile Zola
Koba the Dread, by Martin Amis
November
Orwell and Politics, collected writings by George Orwell
December
The Cat’s Cradle Book, by Sylvia Townsend Warner
January 2022
The Road to Middle-Earth, by Tom Shippey
February
Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
March
The Every, by Dave Eggers
April
The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin
The Premonition, by Michael Lewis
May
Helena, by Evelyn Waugh
The Nineties, by Chuck Klosterman
The Splendid and the Vile, by Erik Larson
The Feast of the Goat, by Mario Vargas Llosa
Mr. Fortune’s Maggot, by Sylvia Townsend Warner
June
Kingdom of Characters, by Jing Tsu
Distant Lands, by Halford Mackinder
Creating the 20th Century, by Vaclav Smil
Gentleman of the Road, by Michael Chabon
July
Homeland Elegies, by Ayad Akhtar
J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, by Tom Shippey
To the Edge of the World: The Story of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, by Christian Wolmar
August
That Hideous Strength, by C.S. Lewis
The Great Railway Revolution: The History of Trains in America, by Christian Wolmar
September
The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis
Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America, by Angie Schmitt
October
Geography is Destiny: Britain and the World, a 10,000 Year History, by Ian Morris
November
The Han: China’s Diverse Majority, by Agnieszka Joniak-Luthi
Summer Will Show, by Sylvia Townsend Warner
December
The Naked Olympics: the True Story of the Ancient Games, by Tony Perrottet
January 2023
Big Sister Little Sister Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth Century China, by Jung Chang
February
Floating to Space: The Airship to Orbit Program, by John M. Powell
March
Hard Times, by Charles Dickens
Numbers Don’t Lie, by Vaclav Smil
Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000, by Stephen Kotkin