My year in books

Happy new year to all but particularly to the Alzabo Soup podcast for running a mammoth Shakespeare / Renaissance English plays readalong in 2024. Obviously a big draw for reading them all is 1. you can boast about it and 2. you can make a big list at the end. Here's mine – I've written a bit more about the entries below on Goodreads. Hope everyone has a good 2025.

Shakespeare plays ranked

1. Hamlet
2. Macbeth
3. A Midsummer Night's Dream
4. King Lear
5. As You Like It
6. Romeo & Juliet
7. Measure for Measure
8. Cymbeline
9. Richard II
10. The Two Noble Kinsmen (with John Fletcher)
11. Twelfth Night
12. Othello
13. Coriolanus
14. The Merchant of Venice
15. The Merry Wives of Windsor
16. The Tempest
17. Henry IV Part 1
18. Antony & Cleopatra
19. Much Ado About Nothing
20. Titus Andronicus (with George Peele)
21. Julius Caesar
22. Henry IV Part 2
23. All's Well That Ends Well
24. Edward III (with others)
25. The Winter's Tale
26. Henry V
27. Love's Labour's Lost
28. Richard III
29. Henry VI Part 2
30. Trolius & Cressida
31. Henry VI Part 1
32. The Comedy of Errors
33. Pericles (with George Wilkins)
34. Henry VI Part 3
35. King John
36. Timon of Athens (with Thomas Middleton)
37. Henry VIII (with John Fletcher)
38. The Taming of the Shrew
39. Two Gentlemen of Verona

Other Elizabethan / Jacobean drama ranked:

1. Thomas Kyd - The Spanish Tragedy
2. John Ford - 'Tis Pity She's A Whore
3. Christopher Marlowe - Edward II
4. John Webster - The Duchess of Malfi
5. Thomas Middleton - The Revenger's Tragedy
6. Francis Beaumont - The Knight of the Burning Pestle
7. Thomas Dekker / John Ford / William Rowley - The Witch of Edmonton
8. John Fletcher - The Woman's Prize, or The Tamer Tamed
9. Ben Jonson - Volpone
10. Thomas Middleton / William Rowley - The Changeling
11. Anonymous (perhaps Thomas Kyd) - Arden of Faversham
12. Francis Beaumont / John Fletcher - Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding
13. Christopher Marlowe - The Jew of Malta
14. Thomas Dekker - The Shoemakers' Holiday
15. Ben Jonson - The Alchemist
16. John Webster - The White Devil
17. Christopher Marlowe - Doctor Faustus

Shakespeariana roughly in order of preference:

• Jonathan Bate - Soul of the Age: the Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare
• Emma Smith - This Is Shakespeare: How to Read the World's Greatest Playwright
• James Shapiro - 1599: a Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
• James Shapiro - 1606: Shakespeare and the Year of Lear
• Harold Bloom - Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
• Stanley Wells - What Was Shakespeare Really Like?
• Stanley Wells - Shakespeare & Co.
• Richard Proudfoot - Shakespeare: Text, Stage & Canon
• Jan Kott - Shakespeare Our Contemporary
• David Bevington - How to read a Shakespeare play
• Germaine Greer - Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction
• Bill Bryson - Shakespeare: the World as a Stage
• G. Wilson Knight - The Wheel of Fire
• Stephen Greenblatt - Shakespeare's Freedom
• E.M.W. Tillyard - The Elizabethan World Picture
• Katherine Rundell - Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne
• Michael Hattaway (ed.) - The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's History Plays
• Margreta de Grazia / Stanley Wells (eds.) - The New Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare

Other non-fiction:

• Lizzy Goodman - Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011
• David Toop - Ocean of Sound: Ambient Sound and Radical Listening in the Age of Communication
• Suzanne Ferriss - Lost in Translation (BFI Film Classics)
• Laura Ashe - Richard II: A Brittle Glory
• Anne Curry - Henry V: Playboy Prince to Warrior King
• Rosemary Horrox - Richard III: A Failed King?

SF (mostly) shorts:

Jack Vance - The Dragon Masters

Jack Vance - The Last Castle

Jack Vance - The Miracle Workers

Jack Vance - The Star King

Jack Vance - 'Abercrombie Station' / 'Chowell's Chickens'

Jack Vance - 'The Mitr'

Jack Vance - 'The Moon Moth'

Jack Vance - 'Ullward's Retreat'

George R.R. Martin - 'A Song for Lya'

Michael Moorcock - Stormbringer

Michael Moorcock - 'The Stealer of Souls' / 'Kings in Darkness' / 'The Flame Bringers'

Kelly Link - 'The Faery Handbag' / 'Stone Animals' / 'Magic For Beginners'

Mariella Frostrup (ed.) - Darkest Desire

Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory

Comics:

Becky Cloonan / Tula Lotay - Somna

Brian Azzarello / Maria Llovet - Faithless, vols. 1 & 2

Kazuo Umezz - The Drifting Classroom, Perfect Edition vol. 1

Edward Ross - Gamish: A Graphic History of Gaming

Richard Corben - DEN vols 1 & 2

Emily Carroll - Through the Woods

K. Briggs - Macbeth

Matt Fraction / Chip Zdarsky - Just the Tips

Kieron Gillen / Jim Rossignol / Jeff Stokely - Ludocrats

Georges Pichard - Marie-Gabrielle de Saint-Eutrope