For the father of a newborn, it’s been quite a good year for reading, in the main encouraged by the fact that I’ve not been able to live with my family for most of the year. I suspect 2016 will not be such a literary year.

Looking down the list leads to a few quick thoughts:

• There were works from the canon like Augustine and Seneca that were a bit of struggle and I’m not sure I benefited much from them.
• More Christian books on the list this year than for a while, which was a good thing and a resolution at the beginning of the year.
• The Bonhoeffer biography would be my pick for the best book of the year. An inspiring account.
• Two other books I greatly enjoyed were ‘Watching the English’ (a humorous anthropological study of the English) and a recently-finished history of early evangelicalism (18th century). Both books were so intellectually stimulating in part because they shone a light on things that are extremely close to who I am and so felt very personal.
• 12/32 concerned Africa (not including Augustine). 1 book was in French.

1. Costly Assumptions, by Gbile Akanni
2. How to write fiction, by Guardian masterclass
3. Down and out in Paris and London, by George Orwell
4. Confessions, by St Augustine
5. Didier Drogba, by Ian McShane
6. The Reason for God, by Tim Keller
7. How I Made It, by Modupe Taylor-Pearce and Brian James
8. Debout-Paye, by Armand Gauz
9. The Memory of Love, by Animata Forna
10. King Leopold’s Ghost, by Adam Hochschild
11. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, by Eric Mataxas
12. Black Swans, by Nicholas Taleb
13. Sir Francis Drake, by John Sugden
14. Americanah, by Ngozi Adichie
15. Whites, by Norman Rush
16. Here I stand, by Roland Baintan
17. The State we’re in, by Adele Parks
18. The Art of Travel, by Alain De Botton
19. Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius
20. Write Away, by Elizabeth George
21. Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf
22. Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall
23. The Heart of Me, by Paul Sika
24. Grit to Great, by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval
25. Journey without Maps, by Graham Greene
26. Watching the English, by Katie Fox
27. Africa’s New Oil, by Celeste Hicks
28. Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands, by Paul David Tripp
29. What is a Healthy church?, by Mark Dever
30. Grumpy old men, by Stuart Prebble
31. The Rise of Evangelicalism, by Mark A. Noll
32. The Golden Hour, by Todd Moss