I read a lot, and these days I also draw about the books I read. In 2017 though, my reading didn’t feature as much in my drawings. Here are 20 from 2017 in no particular order and the drawings.

The Best, not in order

• A year of magical thinking (Joan Didion): sketchbook drawing posted earlier here
• You must change your life: Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin (Rachel Corbett): Loved. Saw a different perspective of the Letters to a young poet author.
• Lives of the artists lives of the architects (Hans Ulrich Obrist): I loved this book, and drew (and literally drew) a lot from this book again and again.
• Reclaiming conversation: Sherry Turkle
• M Train (Patti Smith): Sketchbook drawing posted earlier here
• Liminal thinking (Dave Grey): Must read, like his earlier book Gamestorming that I return to again and again.
• Felicity (Mary Oliver)
• A woman looking at men looking at women (Siri Hustvedt): I’ve been a fangirl of SH since I read The Enchantment of Lily Dahl and The Sorrows of an American, and I enjoyed this one more than Living, Thinking, Looking, not least because of the essay she wrote about sculptor Louise Bourgeois, who I was just getting interested in.

Feeling is crucial to understanding a work of art. “Einfuhlung” coined by Robert Vischer in 1873 is “a way of feeling oneself into a work of art,” which ultimately becomes “empathy” in English. The meaning of an object influences the feelings it evokes.

• Re-read Redesigning Leadership (John Maeda): As always I go back to reading John Maeda’s books at crucial times in my life. I was so happy to read this book while struggling with the leadership role. I think what I liked most was another way of approaching leadership – the artistic approach which I really resonated with. This was drawn on a flight layover.

• Make it new: A history of Silicon Valley Design (Barry Katz): One word: Awesome.
• In Other Words (Jhumpa Lahiri)
• Re-read The end of the affair (Graham Greene): Listen to this.
• You and a bike and a road (Eleanor Davies): Inspiring and beautiful. Became one of my all-time favorite books.
• Kiki de montparnasse (Jose-Luis Bocquet and Catel Muller): Fabulous and engrossing.
• Re-read The Emigrants (WG Sebald): sketchbook drawing posted earlier here

And the rest

• Everything I never told you (Celeste Ng)
  
• The history of love (Nicole Krauss)
• A union of doubts (TL Uglow)
• At the Existential cafe: Freedom, being and apricot cocktails (Sarah Bakewell)
• Living, thinking, looking (Siri Hustvedt)