2020, eh? Bloody hell.

I always enjoy reading books but this year they have been, almost literally, my saviour. So I have read more than usual since March. I like sharing book recommendations on my website but have always limited myself to sharing only those related to travel and adventure, for that is what my website is about and therefore, I presume, what you the reader are interested in.

But perhaps I’m wrong. Or perhaps I’m changing. Or perhaps it’s just 2020 doing its extraordinary, chaotic demolition of the way things have always been. So I decided to share a selection of the books that made an impression on me during lockdown (March to August 2020), regardless of genre, and ask if in future you’d like me to stick to adventure and travel, or whether you’re happy for me to go wherever the wind blows with the books that I recommend…

Not all of these books will appeal to you, of course. But they all made an impression on me for one reason or another. Those underlined are my pick of the bunch.

Adventure

• Alone at Sea. Crazy man (actually a Doctor) rows ocean in dugout canoe.
• Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe

General Interest

• Nabokov’s Favourite Word Is Mauve: The literary quirks and oddities of our most-loved authors
• Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life
• The Ghost Runner: The Tragedy of the Man They Couldn’t Stop
• Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker
• Unnatural Causes: the life and many deaths of a pathologist
• The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century
• The Wright Brothers
• Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
• On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes
• People of Providence: A Housing Estate and Some of Its Inhabitants

War

• A Higher Call: The Incredible True Story of Heroism and Chivalry during the Second World War
• No Easy Day
• First Light (the best of these three books)

Nature

• Every Day Nature: How noticing nature can quietly change your life
• Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills
• Fingers in the Sparkle Jar: A Memoir

Living Life

• The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere
• The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity
• Figuring by Maria Popova
• Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine by Derren Brown  (better than most ‘happiness’ books)
• Beachcombing at Miramar: The Quest for an Authentic Life
• Intervention: Course Corrections for the Athlete and Trainer (niche!)
• On Liberty and Other Essays
• The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living

Fiction

• Where the Crawdads Sing
• The Narrow Road to the Deep North
• The Nickel Boys
• The Orphan Master’s Son
• Olive, Again
• Leonard and Hungry Paul
• The Bricks that Built the Houses

Race

• So You Want to Talk About Race
• Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race
• Caste: The Lies That Divide Us
• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration

Our World

• How Bad are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything
• Omnivore’s Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World
• The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future
• Grass-Fed Nation