17 Our Autumns by Alan Hollinghurst
This follows Dave Win, a moderately successful actor in his late 60s, as he reminisces about significant episodes in his life. Being Hollinghurst he is, of course, gay. He's also half Burmese, though he was brought up by his single (British) mother in a small UK market town and never met his father. Both of these facts shape the course of his life, through early academic success (he wins a scholarship to boarding school) through the acting roles that are open to him. Also central to the story is his relationship with the family who fund the scholarship, and their son, Giles, who becomes a Tory MP.
This was very much what you'd expect from Alan Hollinghurst, but none the worse for that - beautifully written & thought provoking.
18 The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe
Again much as to be expected from Coe, a clever & funny state-of-the-nation novel, set around the period of Liz Truss's brief premiership. The central character is a middle aged editor, who on the side runs a blog exposing right wing politicking. He signs up to attend the 'TrueCon' conference, meeting a selection of unsavoury characters, all of whom are interlinked in some way with a group of his university friends from Cambridge.
This is billed as a murder mystery, though there's no body until 1/3 of the way into the book, and politics & literature are much more in evidence than sleuthing. Still, lots of fun.
19 The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
Newly homeless & penniless Winn, together with her terminally ill husband walk the South West Coast path. I read this for my (newly joined) book group, & it's definitely not something I'd have chosen otherwise. Like many other posters on here I found the author really rather irritating, & I also found a lot of her encounters & comments implausible. I was particularly unconvinced by the number of people commenting on her/Moth's age - I live by the Wales coast path, and being 50+ seems to be practically a qualification for being a long distance hiker.
If it hadn't been for the book group I'd have definitely DNFed, but I was glad in the end that I stuck with it. I came to the conclusion that really, it's a book about the stories we tell ourselves. Winn sees herself not as someone who's been desperately unlucky, but as someone who's been treated unjustly by a world in which most people are unkind. By the end, she's not only come to a certain kind of peace, but she's also allowed Moth to take back his own story, at least to some extent. I may even read the sequels, though I think for my DPs sake I need to leave a bit of a gap (there may have been a bit of reading sections out & ranting going on). Still, in the genre of 'people take long hikes they're woefully underprepared for' I didn't like it anywhere near as much as Wild by Cheryl Strayed.
20 The Gospel of the Eels by Patrik Svensson
In contrast this was an absolute delight. It's subtitled 'A Father, A Son, and the World's most Enigmatic Fish', and it very much does what it says on the tin. Lots of father and son bonding over fishing, lots about the scientific quest to understand exactly how eels work (including work by a young Sigmund Freud, pre-psychoanalysis days), eels in literature, and a great deal more.
The only downside was that I listened to it on audio, & the reading was pretty bad, with some ridiculous put-on voices by the author (a squeaky falsetto for Rachel Carson was a particular low point).