My 2020 reading list
What I read this year
My thoughts on what I have read this year are two-fold. Firstly, I think I have read more work by female authors, which in my opinion is a good thing. Equally, I have not done the statistics to determine whether this is true or not, and I have only read 7 books written by women this year, compared to 20 by men. Surely a correction is in order? I could attribute this imbalance to myself, or the publishing industry and academia; it is probably a mixture of the two.
Secondly, I do not feel like my reading has been quite as varied as it has been in previous years. I have not read my one token fiction book this year, and a surveyor of this list will quickly notice a distinct technological theme involved, as well as good doses of political economy. I do not think this is especially out of fashion, but the occasional bit of weirdness is lacking, in my opinion. Again, another correction for 2021…
Future Histories — Lizzie O’Shea
A well written book that did little for me. I believe the value of history is substantially in its capacity to guide the future, and to make predictions, and O’Shea does an excellent job in this regard. Equally, perhaps because I read a lot on technology, or perhaps because I had just finished Chris Harman’s A People’s History of the World, I was not much…
