Through the threshold library

• Education bookshelf
• The Biologist’s bookshelf
• The guidance bookshelf
• The parenting bookshelf
• Miscellaneous bookshelf
• My reads by year

My reads by year

A list of the all the books I have read each year.

2024

1. Interview with the vampire – Anne Rice
2. The Epigenetics Revolution – Nessa Carey
3. Transformer – Nick Lane
4. Dune – Frank Herbert
5. Dune Messiah – Frank Herbert

2023

1. Winter Ghosts – Kate Mosse
2. In the Heart of the Amazon Forest – Walter Henry Bates
3. Spare – Prince Harry
4. Superior – Angela Saini
5. Inferior – Angela Saini
6. Black and British – David Olusoga
7. Goodbye, Dr Banda – Alexander Chula
8. Sad Little Men – Richard Beard
9. Purple Hibiscus – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
10. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
11. No Longer At Ease – Chinua Achebe
12. Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
13. This is not America: Why Black Lives in Britain Matter – Tomiwa Owolade
14. Otherlands: A World in the Making – Thomas Halliday
15. Sea of Poppies – Amitav Ghosh
16. River of Smoke – Amitav Ghosh
17. Flood of Fire – Amitav Ghosh
18. Black Swan Green – David Mitchell
19. Number 9 Dream – David Mitchell

2022

1. Winners Take All – Anand Giridharadas
2. Orientalism – Edward Said
3. Poor Economics – Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
4. The Great Education Robbery – Nigel Gann
5. Mission Economy – A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism – Mariana Mazzucato
6. The Tyranny of Merit – Michael Sandel
7. Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
8. The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality? – Cheikh Anta Diop
9. Capital in the 21st Century – Thomas Piketty
10. What is Life? – Paul Nurse
11. At the edge of uncertainty – Michael Brooks

2021

1. Divided: Why we are living in an age of walls – Tim Marshall
2. A brief history of neoliberalism – David Harvey
3. Capitalism and Freedom – Milton Friedman
4. Development as Freedom – Amartya Sen
5. The Beautiful Tree – James Tooley
6. Dictators without borders: Power and Money in Central Asia – Alexander Cooley and John Heathershaw
7. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism – Benedict Anderson
8. Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack – Richard Ovenden
9. The Debt Delusion: Living within our means and other fallacies – John Weeks
10. Nations and Nationalism – Ernest Gellner
11. 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism – Ha Joon Chang
12. Decolonising the Mind – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
13. A History of the Bible – John Barton
14. The Wretched of the Earth – Frantz Fanon
15. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa – Walter Rodney
16. White Skin, Black Masks – Frantz Fanon
17. The Shock Doctrine – Naomi Klein
18. It Takes A School – Jonathan Starr
19. The Fortunes of Wangrin – Amadou Hampaté Ba
20. Empireland: How Imperialism has shaped Modern Britain – Sathnam Sanghera
21. Bite of the Mango – Mariatu Kamara

2020

1. When breath becomes air – Paul Kalanithi
2. The Dispossessed – Ursula Le Guin
3. The Book of Humans – Adam Rutherford
4. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
5. The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexander Dumas
6. An American Marriage – Tayari Jones
7. Four Ways to Forgiveness – Ursula Le Guin
8. The Telling – Ursula Le Guin
9. Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
10. A Quiet Education – Jamie Thom
11. The Way We Live Now – Anthony Trollope
12. Let My People Go Surfing – Yvon Chouinard
13. The Divide – Jason Hickel
14. Global Education Policy and International Development 2nd Ed. – Verger et al
15. Slade House – David Mitchell
16. K & R – James Smythe
17. Sultana’s Dream – Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain
18. Ghostwritten – David Mitchell
19. Three Circles into One – William Waldegrave
20. Less is more – Jason Hickel
21. On fire: the burning case for a green new deal – Naomi Klein
22. Debt: The First 5000 Years – David Graeber

2019

1. Trivium 21c – by Martin Robinson
2. Prisoners of Geography – by Tim Marshall
3. The Left Hand of Darkness – by Ursula Le Guin
4. I am Pilgrim – by Terry Hayes
5. The Handmaid’s Tale – by Margaret Attwood
6. Slaughter House 5 – by Kurt Vonnegut
7. A Wizard of Earthsea – by Ursula Le Guin
8. The Tombs of Atuan – by Ursula Le Guin
9. The Farthest Shore – by Ursula Le Guin
10. Tales from Earthsea – by Ursula Le Guin
11. The Other Wind – by Ursula Le Guin
12. The Three-Body Problem – by Cixin Liu
13. The Righteous Mind – by Jonathan Haidt
14. The Curriculum – Gallimaufry to coherence – by Mary Myatt
15. School Leadership and education system reform – edited by Peter Earley and Toby Greany
16. Rocannan’s World – by Ursula Le Guin
17. Planet of Exile – by Ursula Le Guin
18. City of Illusions – by Ursula Le Guin
19. The Word for World is Forest – by Ursula Le Guin
20. Single & Single – John Le Carré
21. How the World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy – Julian Baggini
22. The Coddling of the American Mind – Greg Lukinoff and Jonathan Haidt
23. Blueprint: How DNA makes us who we are – Robert Plomin
24. The New Silk Roads – Peter Frankopan
25. The Paper Menagerie – Ken Liu
26. All That Man Is – David Salazay
27. The Bone Clocks- David Mitchell
28. The Machine – James Smythe

2018

1. What is this thing called knowledge? – by Duncan Pritchard. Read as part of Oxford Universities online CPD course – theory of knowledge
2. Epistemology: Contemporary readings – edited by Michael Huemer
3. What if everything you knew about education was wrong? – by David Didau – my review.
4. Cleverlands – by Lucy Crehan
5. Seven myths about education – by Daisy Christodoulou
6. Making good progress? – by DaisyChristodoulou
7. Why knowledge matters: rescuing our children from failed educational theories – by E.D. Hirsch
8. Ouroboros –  by Greg Ashman
9. What does this look like in the classroom? – by Carl Hendrick and Robin MacPherson
10. The Sword of Honour Trilogy – by Evelyn Waugh
11. Millionaire Teacher – by Andrew Hallam
12. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – by Yuval Noah Harari
13. Millionaire Expat – by Andrew Hallam
14. Tiger Head, Snake Tails: China today, how it got there and why it has to change – by Jonathan Fenby
15. A parent’s guide to raising kids Overseas (Volume 1) – by Jeff Devens
16. Homo Deus: a brief history of tomorrow – by Yuval Noah Harari
17. Fierce conversations: achieving success in work and in life, one conversation at a time – by Susan Scott
18. The first 90 days, updated and expanded; proven strategies for getting up to speed faster and smarter – by Michael D. Watkins
19. 21 lessons for the 21st Century – by Yuval Noah Harari
20. Fahrenheit 451 – by Ray Bradbury
21. Brave new world – by Aldous Huxley
22. This is going to hurt – by Adam Kay
23. Educated – Tara Westover

2017

1. Raising babies – by Steve Biddulph
2. A brief history of everyone who ever lived – by Adam Rutherford
3. Patient H.M. – by Luke Dittrich
4. The Serengeti rules – by Sean Carroll
5. Battle hymn of the tiger teachers: the Michaela way – edited by Katherine Birbalsingh
6. American Gods – by Neil Gaiman
7. Neverwhere – by Neil Gaiman
8. How the Marquis got his coat back – by Neil Gaiman
9. Stardust – by Neil Gaiman
10. The ocean at the end of the lane – by Neil Gaiman
11. Anansi boys – by Neil Gaiman
12. The rise and fall of D.O.D.O – by Neil Stephenson and Nicole Galland
13. What every teacher needs to know about psychology – by David Didau and Nick Rose
14. How to stop time – by Matt Haig
15. Why don’t students like school? – by Daniel Willingham
16. Coraline – by Neil Gaiman
17. The graveyard book – by Neil Gaiman
18. Fragile things – by Neil Gaiman
19. Smoke and mirrors – by Neil Gaiman
20. His Dark Materials: The complete trilogy – by Philip Pullman
21. Trigger Warning – by Neil Gaiman
22. Norse Mythology – by Neil Gaiman
23. Good Omens – by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

2016

1. How to raise an adult – by Julie Lythcott-Haims – my review.
2. What is the point of school? – by Guy Claxton
3. Making thinking visible – by Ron Richhardt – my review.
4. Aping mankind – by Raymond Tallis
5. Getting Darwin wrong – by Brendan Wallace
6. The problems of philosophy – by Bertrand Russell
7. Why evolution is true – by Jerry Coyne
8. Faith vs fact – by Jerry Coyne
9. Seven Storey Mountain – by Thomas Merton
10. Seveneves – by Neal Stephenson
11. Never let me go – by Kazuo Ishiguro
12. What is the point of school – by Guy Claxton
13. Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End – by Atul Gawande
14. Religion for Atheists – by Alain de Botton
15. The Remains of the day – by Kazuo Ishiguro
16. Fireflies – by Shiva Naipaul
17. The Young Atheist’s Handbook: Lessons for living a good life without God – by Alom Shaha
18. Justice – Michael Sandel
19. The vital question: why is life the way it is? – by Nick Lane

2015

1. The brain at school: educational neuroscience in the classroom – by John Geake
2. Classroom-based research and evidence-based practice – by Keith Taber
3. Ways of learning: learning theories and learning styles in the classroom – by Alan Pritchard
4. Pedagogy of the oppressed – by Paolo Freire
5. Visible learning for teachers – by John Hattie
6. Thinking, fast and slow – by Daniel Kahneman
7. Raising girls – by Steve Biddulph
8. Full catastrophe living – by Jon Kabat Zinn
9. The moral landscape – by Sam Harris
10. A Universe from nothing – by Laurence Krauss

2014

1. Good work – by Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and William Damon
2. Intelligence reframed – by Howard Gardner
3. Contemporary theories of learning – by Knud Illeris
4. Teaching as if life matters – by Christopher Uhl
5. Nonviolent Communication – by Marshall Rosenberg
6. The last child in the woods – by Richard Louv
7. The sixth extinction: an unnatural history – by Elizabeth Kolbert
8. Neanderthal man – by Svante Paabo
9. The serpents promise – by Steve Jones
10. The language of life – by Francis Collins
11. Creation: the origin of life/the future of life – by Adam Rutherford
12. Your inner fish – by Neil Shubin
13. Life Ascending – by Nick Lane
14. The Baroque cycle (3 books) – by Neal Stephenson
15. The magic of reality – by Richard Dawkins

Earlier

1. Bad Science – by Ben Goldacre
2. Thirteen things that don’t make sense – by Michael Brooks
3. The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks – by Rebecca Skloot
4. The rational optimist – by Matt Ridley
5. Quantum evolution: the new science of life – by Johnjoe Mcfadden
6. The diversity of life – by E.O. Wilson
7. Impossibility – by John Barrow
8. Collapse – by Jared Diamond
9. The self illusion – by Bruce Hood
10. The selfish gene – by Richard Dawkins
11. Genome – by Matt Ridley
12. The secret life of trees – by Colin Tudge
13. The man who mistook his wife for a hat – Oliver Sacks
14. The Handmaid’s tail – by Margaret Atwood
15. The Inheritors – by William Golding
16. The Baroque cycle – by Neal Stephenson
17. The greatest show on earth – by Richard Dawkins
18. The song of the Dodo – by David Quammen
19. The lives of a cell – by Lewis Thomas
20. Fifty ideas you really need to know – by Hayley Birch
21. The violinists thumb – by Sam Keen
22. All the Evelyn Waugh novels and travel writing
23. Game of thrones