Last year was a good year for reading (if nothing else). If you couldn’t work/travel/see people for real, at least you could encounter other worlds/perspectives/minds through the medium of the written word. And so I did. Here are some of the best ones I read, in no particular order:

Mindf*ck – Cambridge Analytica and the plot to break America (Wylie): the very scary story of how Brits and Americans were manipulated into supporting Brexit and Trump. A must read.

The Popes (Norwich): A concise history of all the incumbents who ever had the job of CEO of the most powerful organisation the world has ever seen.

Being a beast (Foster): The author immerses himself in the world of various animals – foxes, deer, otters, badgers and swallows – and tries to live life as they do. Odd but mesmerizing.

The hidden life of trees (Wohlleben): Reading this man’s take on the inner life of animals made me a vegetarian. While not quite as good this is still an astonishing book.

Waterlog (Deakin): One man’s quest to swim the different waters of Britain, this is an ode to the element, and a cultural history of the land to boot.

The wild places (MacFarlane): In search of wilderness in the British isles. Similar in many ways to Deakin’s book, it comes as no surprise that the two authors were friends.

The history of England, part 1 (Harrison): covers the period from the ice age to 1600. Very well written. I read it in Swedish but I believe it’s been translated.

Creating a forest garden (Crawford): While I have some quibbles with the content (or lack thereof) there is no doubt this book influenced me more than anything else I read this year.

Animal, vegetable, miracle (Kingsolver): Horrible title and cover design, but the quest of one family to be locavores (eating locally produced food) for a year is as eye-opening as it is heart-warming.

Gardens of the world – two thousand years of garden design (Pigeat): garden porn at its finest. If you’re not inspired to design landscapes after reading this I don’t know that you ever will be.

Economix – how our economy works (and doesn’t work) (Goodwin): If someone had told me I’d find a comic book about economics interesting I would have laughed, but I did. And it made me laugh, too.

Baustilkunde – alle Epoken und Stile (Reid): If you can’t travel, this books still lets you see all the architectural styles in the world. It’s part cultural history, part house porn, plus the drawings are fantastic.

How to draw (Spicer): I picked this up in London in January – little did I expect that I would find myself with so much time to practice, but what an excellent teacher it would turn out to be.

So there you go. An eclectic mix, and hopefully something for everyone. Whichever one of these you pick up I guarantee they will enrich your lives – and that’s not something you can say of many things. Happy reading!