Top 20ish Books of 2019 + The Year of Buying No Books
I couldn’t let January slip by without paying homage to some of my favourite books of 2019. I started writing my list in October and by the end of the year I had landed on an even twenty books, which I thought was a sign I shouldn’t try and cut any of them from the list. Okay fine, it’s twenty-two - I added two more since I started writing this post. I read around a hundred books last year which is more than I’ve ever read in previous years, (though I would say I must have read at least that equivalent in criticism during my uni years), and I think that is partially down to the challenge I set myself of clearing the piles of books that sat on my unread shelves.
I’ve talked about this challenge I set myself a lot, so please humour me if you’ve seen me bang on about it this year in various videos and posts, and you’re more than welcome to scroll through this to the books themselves. But for those reading this in the distant future I will briefly explain; at the beginning of 2019 I decided to stop buying books and try to make my way through the 150 books crowding my to-be-read shelf. As a person who loved nothing more than to buy inordinate amounts of books that I could only look longingly at as I waded through course books, criticism and essays, this was going to be a challenge. But that’s how I got into this mess. Plus there had been books sitting on my shelf for years and years, books I’d been looking at pretty much all my life (ahem, Earthsea) that for some reason I’d never got around to reading. And honestly, it went really well. I only bought two books in 2019 which I made a special dispensation for; one was Marlon James’ Black Leopard, Red Wolf - having written my undergraduate dissertation on A Brief History of Seven Killings, I was desperate to read James’ latest work - and Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth; His Dark Materials were my favourite books as a child and there was no way I was going to wait to read the second part of this companion series.
I finished my Master’s in September 2018, and suddenly after years of university and school, I could finally read whatever I want. And so I started to read recreationally a lot more than I had ever done before. As we headed into 2019, I wrote this blog post, where I talked about making time to do things I love and not feeling bad about it, like I should be being more productive. However, I mentioned in that post that I still feel like I need some structure and I like setting myself goals, and so the Reading Challenge (as I’ve unimaginatively termed it) was born. Now I didn’t read all 150 books - some I put down because I wasn’t enjoying them, some I donated outright because I knew they weren’t for me, and some I have leftover - but I did carve out the time to read again and again, allowing me to read more books than I’d done in years, possibly ever. It focussed me and gave me something to work towards, and it’s completely changed me as a reader. Now I’m not reading within an institution, the challenge was a huge part of helping motivate me to become a voracious reader on my own again and really own the joy I find in reading. On the flip side, I do feel because I had such a huge pile of books, and I only discovered the confidence to put down books I wasn’t enjoying about halfway through the year, I actually think I read less than I could have done. The Challenge has given me the habit of reading lots, and now I feel set free to read more and better going into 2020. The plan is to read around 125 books this year; if you want to follow along or set yourself a challenge of your own, Goodreads can be a fantastic resource to keep track and keep you motivated.
Additionally, not only did it help me make more time to read, but it helped me read things I never would have picked off my shelf otherwise. I read so many fantastic books this year that I’ve either been meaning to read for ages, or haven’t even been meaning to read but picked up quite by chance. Over the years I had garnered quite a random selection of books; Christmas and birthday presents, books that had been pressed on me by friends and family, and also my dad gave me lots of his books before he moved to Memphis to save shipping them over. In honour of this, I’m going to mark with a star the books I know I never would have chosen had I not done this challenge (you’ll notice that it’s lots).
Essentially what I’m trying to say is that this was a really positive ‘resolution’ of sorts, and I would definitely recommend you to do something similar if you feel weighed down by the amount of unread books you have hanging about. Now that I’m back to buying books, I’m able to pick things that suit me as a reader now - although no doubt that will continue to change over time - and curate a collection of unread books to pick from that I’m excited about in one way or another. So without further ado, I will stop rambling and present to you my best books of 2019, presented in various categories. Obviously some of the books are less fresh in my mind than when I originally wrote my reviews so I would recommend having a look at the original ones too if something interests you. But hopefully it should give you some idea how they’ve made an impression on me this year and how I remember them retrospectively.
The best of the best/must-reads/will stay with me forever/don’t know what separates them from the other books but something does
In the Distance by Hernan Diaz
Original review here
This reimagined Western spoke to my soul. Cheesy, but true. You know when people ask ‘what would you recommend I read?’, this is one of those books that instantly pops into my head but then I second guess myself. It’s a quiet, subtle book that steals into your thoughts, and I’m finding that it’s these books that I love the most at the moment. They are not loud or attention-grabbing in the way that other books are, but they are all the more fascinating and powerful for it.
Protagonist Håkan and his brother make their way to the US from Sweden in the mid-nineteenth century; while they plan to journey to New York, Håkan loses track of his brother at a pit stop en route, leaving him stranded on the opposite side of the country. Throughout the novel, Håkan is trying to make his way across the American west to New York and his brother, but what results is a narrative that revisits and reimagines the idea of a journey, of coming-of-age, of immigrant experience. Diaz captures Håkan’s profound loneliness, using the huge American landscape to create a sense of alienation and foreignness. This is an epic novel that doesn’t just stop at beautiful writing and grand ideas; naturally Håkan does not escape the drama of a Western, and finds himself forced to grow up amongst strangers and stranger events. Accordingly, the prose effortlessly shifts through different registers; dreamlike and hallucinatory or straightforwardly realistic. I absolutely loved it and although I’m desperate to reread it, I’m trying to go a little longer before I do.
*The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley
Original review here
For much the same reasons as the above, I loved this novel about fourteenth century Norse settlers in Greenland. Though the two books are vastly different in style - this one written like a Norse saga - they share an overwhelming awe for their setting, skilfully recreating the brutality and beauty of vast intractable landscapes. This novel also explores the isolation and alienation these landscapes can invoke, but this time on a community; the Norse settlers on which the novel is based did eventually abandon their lives in Greenland because of the incredibly harsh conditions and their relative removal from their mother country. Smiley was inspired to write it during her own time studying in Iceland, and wanted to commemorate these settlers’ lives. I’d say she did a beautiful job.
The saga style means this novel is much more formalised and reads more like an oral narrative; there is no twentieth century psychological realism here. However, it is incredibly moving nonetheless, in the subtle ways it brings you to care about its characters, and the incredible attention Smiley pays to the smallest notes of emotion even the most aloof character can betray. It is full of drama, though nothing is overwrought or overwritten. It’s worth noting that there is a large cast of characters with similar names to keep up with, and there are many seal hunts to go on, but its world is so complete in its rendering that the deceptively simple lives of these farming Greenlanders become fascinating and complex in their religious and social problems, let alone the unrelenting harsh weather and winters. If you are willing to give this novel your time, it will reward you endlessly with the small things as well as the big. Again one I’m desperate to reread only a couple months after finishing it.
Still the best of the best but for other reasons(?)/you should still definitely read these/please/many unexpected loves
*The Idiot by Elif Batuman (Special Award for Making Me Laugh Loads)
Original review here
I never really expected this novel to make it into my top reads of the year, even after I’d immediately finished it. But honestly, I haven’t stopped thinking about it, probably because it made me laugh more than any other novel I’ve ever read. Like actual real life proper laughing. I chuckled so much on my sunbed my mum who was sat next to me had to read it; in turn she loved it so much she passed it on to her friend.
It’s about a young woman who goes to Harvard in the 90s and is basically ‘the idiot’, bumbling her way through various awkward young-person experiences and trying to find herself and a partner she loves on the way. I marked this one as one I wouldn’t have read without a bit of prompting because I expected it to be a bit too cerebral for me, and I was judging it really in terms of its titular reference to Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, which I haven’t read (though it is actually on my shelves to read). But actually, although it was clever and academic and took time to examine topics like language - particularly from the perspective of learning a second language - this novel incorporated it so seamlessly within its protagonist’s narrative voice that it was immensely enjoyable. And you don’t have to have read Dostoyevsky (though perhaps I’ll return to it when I have). The plot becomes a bit rambling and aimless, but this reflects Selin’s experience as a woman growing up, and I enjoyed each of the scenes so much it was easy to fall into her step. I’ll definitely be paying attention to anything Batuman writes in the future.
*The Progress of Love by Alice Munro (Special Award for Best Short Stories Because Usually Stories Wouldn’t Be in This List)
Original review here
I don’t usually love short stories quite as much as I loved Munro’s collection. They were so rich and evocative that they felt much more fulfilling and as a result, memorable. Set in rural Ontario, they are initially unassuming stories that explore quiet communities, confronting the inheritance of the female line, long term relationships, love, loneliness, bigotry, family, small town life, and what we owe to others. She has a wonderful ability to create and maintain tension making this book a surprising page-turner. I’ve bought more of her collections to read this year, I loved them so much.
*The Earthsea Quartet by Ursula Le Guin
Original review here
After over twenty years on my bookshelf, I finally got round to reading Earthsea, and it was absolutely wonderful. It may have all the tropes of traditional fantasy - dragons and wizards, magic and mysterious evil beings - but these novels are quiet gestures to the power of balance in all things, friendship, love and respect. Her magic system, based on equilibrium with nature and matter, along with a nod to the power of language, naming and words is not only clever, it is also beautiful. There is balance, too, in the way Le Guin writes; there is neither too much nor too little, each sentence managing to create a rich and evocative world, whilst leaving room for thought and contemplation. Even better, recognising the ways she let down feminist readers in the 70s trilogy, the final novel (and from what I gather, other later writings set on Earthsea) rewrite those aspects to create a more inclusive world. I loved it, and would highly recommend for both fantasy and non-fantasy readers.
For the sheer achievement/fascinating, layered and ambitious/the big ideas
The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
Original review here
I read the second and third instalment of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy this year, but my favourite was this middle book, though you can see my review for the final book here [link to come later this week]. In general though, this was an excellent series that I will definitely be rereading eventually. It imagines what would happen if humans were to be threatened by a more technologically advanced alien race. The novels have a huge scope that cover lots of interesting science (they are hard science fiction after all), but also philosophy, morality, politics, history and literature. It’s a heady mix that makes for a really impressive work. The Dark Forest is particularly great because it is focussed, well-paced and it has a truly fantastic and very moving ending.
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
Original review here
This was touted as the next Game of Thrones… let me tell you, it is absolutely nothing like it. But when I heard James was writing fantasy, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. As I said above, I wrote on A Brief History of Seven Killings for my dissertation and I am fascinated by James’ writing and the sheer ambition of his work. Plus we all know I have a soft spot for speculative fiction.
This is the first novel in a proposed series, and it follows Tracker, unsurprisingly renowned for his ability to track people with his nose. He is tasked with finding a missing boy whose whole family was murdered, along with a motley crew of supernatural beings. Unsurprisingly, the boy is more important than he seems at first. This may sound like something sort of close to a normal fantasy plotline, but in James’ hands it is transformed into something wholly new and also wholly mad. The novel explores the nature of power, desire, truth and narrative. And if this sounds lofty, it is accompanied by James’ signature violence and unabashed bodily description. In fact it’s very important to recognise just how violent this novel is, as I imagine it’d be triggering to many, especially with regards to its descriptions of sexual violence. James’ novels aren’t easy to read; his prose here is hallucinatory and confounding, but it is also rewarding. He really knows how to write a good character and get your heart racing. A final warning, the first hundred pages are the trickiest to grasp; once you’re through Tracker’s back story, you’re well on your way.
*Solar Bones by Mike McCormack (Special Award for Sounding Pretentious but Actually Being Great)
Original review here
I picked this book off the shelf, read that it was comprised of one long sentence, and inwardly despaired. I like tricky books, but there’s something about long sentences that really gets my hackles up. I have a fear of stream of consciousness, possibly from some sort of university modernism hangover. Anyway, as you might be able to tell, I ended up really enjoying this book.
It describes three hours in the (after)life of Marcus Conway, who is returned to his family kitchen in County Mayo for three hours on All Soul’s Day. There, he reminisces about everything from the big to the small. The lack of full stops allows McCormack to move with ease between the memories of Conway’s life as a civil engineer and small town life, to the international, the global and the universal, each element rippling into the next. It is surprisingly moving and a beautiful hymn to a life that never existed, but is lived in parts by humans everywhere.
*A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth (Special Award for Being Absolutely Huge)
Original review here
This is a hefty tome that left me quite bereft at the end of it; I'd so completely immersed myself in its world that I didn't know what to do with myself. It follows four inter-related families' lives over the course of about eighteen months (I know, I expected a 1400 page novel to cover decades) as they try to live and love in newly independent India, complete with all the scars of Partition. The title comes from the particular story thread of young woman Lata, whose mother is desperately trying to marry her off, but there is a much grander and more epic scope at work here. Seth moves easily between the sections following family life and drama, others depicting the government of the local region, and yet others describing the workings of the local shoe factory. It held my attention remarkably well which is an enormous achievement in and of itself, and it is a novel I will never forget for the warmth that suffuses Seth’s writing and the world he so thoroughly creates.
O the nostalgia!
The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman
Original review here
I’m beginning to discover in revisiting Pullman’s writing as an adult that he is the king of plot. He keeps it moving (though not too fast), and as a result his books are always page turners. This is the second novel in a companion series to my childhood favourite, His Dark Materials. Where the first Book of Dust was a prequel featuring a baby Lyra, this one is a sequel that revisits an adult Lyra struggling with her relationship to her daemon and thus, herself. It begins a whole new adventure and the cliffhanger at the end has me desperate for the next instalment. The writing is clear and concise, but the ideas are all still there, and it’s clear this is a more contemporary series with contemporary concerns; fascism, the problem of borders and refugees, and the danger of insular university philosophy all feature, along with his usual interests in matter and religion.
The classics I should have read ages ago
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Original review here
I love Toni Morrison, and I feel like I’m drip feeding myself her books especially as there will be no more after her passing last year, of which I was very sad to hear. But she left us with many beautiful works, including Song of Solomon. This novel follows a young black man who grows up in a strained and strange environment, stuck between two deeply unhappy parents, an eccentric aunt called Pilate, his best friend who comes from much meaner circumstances and a cousin who is murderously in love with him. He is influenced by the toxic misogynistic masculinity his father presses upon him, and leaves the comfort of his middle class Michigan home to greedily seek a purported family treasure in the South. It is an affecting coming of age that deals with the intersection of race, gender and class and is brought to life in Morrison’s deeply layered prose that seems to speak directly to the body.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Original review here
The likes of Morrison cite Hurston as their literary forerunner, and I can see why. But Hurston’s prose is uniquely beautiful; it twists free of convention, striking a lyrical note that captures emotion without being overwrought. This novel follows young Janie, who finds herself in two unhappy marriages before finally finding someone that helps her along the way to finding herself. It examines race, gender, relationships and community. It’s wonderful and well worth a read.
*A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (Special Award for Making Me Cry Like a Baby)
Original review here
This is another book I would never have expected to make it into my top books of the year, but it made me cry so much I wanted to commemorate it in some way. And I’ve slotted it into this section because it is a classic of American literature. It’s not a perfect novel, but there are lots of good things about it. It’s narrated by a young man whose mother is killed by his strange charismatic little friend Owen Meany. Although Owen’s stray ball at a school baseball game leaves him motherless, he remains very much attached to Owen and the two grow up together in 1950s/60s New Hampshire. I liked it as a historical fiction piece as much as anything, but Irving has a way with characters and his writing is easy and confident. The iterative structure and length irk some readers, but I didn’t mind too much and it leads to a gut wrenching climactic ending that made me cry buckets. I feel like that’s worth recognising in a book (even if I was maybe a tad hormonal at the time).
*Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
Original review here
This is an unpleasant and uncomfortable book, which is kind of the point. It is set in post-Apartheid South Africa and follows a disgraced Professor who serves to help Coetzee examine the workings of power, violence, race and gender on a country that is rapidly changing. It is a disturbing read not just for its literal brutality but also because of its confidence to wade into the entanglements at the centre of systems of oppression. All of this complexity in Coetzee’s unsparing prose makes this a gut punch of a book, and one that is well worth reading.
For the fun/the enjoyability
*Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Original review here
This is a fun book. It’s Dickens, queered and rewritten with a contemporary lens, and it’s fantastic. It’s about a young woman who grows up amongst a group of thieves (or ‘fingersmiths’) in Victorian London, who enters into a deal with one of her associates to defraud a young country girl of her inheritance. It’s full of twists and turns and thus is a real page-turner.
*World’s Fair by E. L. Doctorow
Original review here
This novel follows young Edgar growing up in New York in the early twentieth century, and it is one of the loveliest descriptions of childhood I’ve come across. Doctorow captures all the magic of both the big events and the small mundanities that enchant children in this novel, and its historical descriptions of New York also fascinated me. It’s a nostalgic trip to a past that no longer exists, and memorable to me for its warmth.
City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer
Original review here
This is a book comprising of four novellas and some extra material that describes the strange city of Ambergris, where the inhabitants occasionally go missing on account of the secretive mushroom-like people that live underground. VanderMeer is well known for writing weird stuff, and this book certainly didn’t disappoint; it fascinated, surprised and disgusted me throughout and I found it highly enjoyable. The writing is confident and colloquial, making the surrealities of the book easier to absorb. I will definitely be reading more of his work this year.
The best of the rest/uniquely captivating and memorable
*The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
Original review here
In this novel Roy writes marginalised people back into India’s contemporary history to great effect. The story is patchworked together to reflect its characters own meandering narratives, and its prose is richly layered and by turns brutal and lyrical. I really enjoyed it and Roy’s affection and empathy for her characters is clear throughout.
*Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
Original review here
Here’s another novel I didn’t expect to enjoy at all, but ended up loving. It’s about a young woman whose mother is beset by mysterious health problems and the two travel together to an expensive specialist clinic in Spain. This is not a book for anyone who likes a plot-driven novel, but if you are happy with a more ideas-based narrative then this is a fantastic example of how to do it. It interrogates illness and pain, inheritance and mother/daughter relationships, capitalism and its relationship to health and bodies. This is all contained in Levy’s relatively short novel and written in dreamlike prose that uncovers the absurdities at the centre of the story. And it’s also a coming of age novel which sees its protagonist try to ease her identity away from her mother’s. I will definitely be reading Levy’s latest book this year.
*Generations of Winter by Vasily Aksyonov
Original review here
This is a lovely example of contemporary Russian literature; it’s an epic novel that follows the Gradovs - a middle-class family - through the Stalinist era. It’s safe to say it brought tears to my eyes many times over the course of its pages. It is paced well and maintains tension throughout, and it’s prose moves easily through multiple registers, from nostalgic and warm to satiric and acerbic to sparing and heartbreaking.
*The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh
Original review here
Here’s a heady feminist dystopia that surprised me by its ability to contain the many complexities of its premise. It’s told from the perspective of three sisters living on an island who have been told by their parents that men are inherently toxic and dangerous to their health. When three men land on the island after their father’s disappearance, naturally their world is turned upside down. It is a hallucinatory novel that, as I said in my original review, will irritate some readers on account of its haziness, but I think that is part of what makes it a really interesting work.
*Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Original review here
This was another novel I expected to be pretentious and a bit of a slog, only to be surprised by its warmth and vitality. Especially for a novel that is mostly set in the realms of death. Abraham Lincoln’s son Willie Lincoln dies of typhoid in the middle of the civil war, and he finds himself in the ‘bardo’ a middling place between life and death that occupies the same space as the graveyard. In the graveyard he meets an eccentric cast of characters, all of them for some reason unwilling to accept death and move on into it properly. I’d heard many rumours that this novel was difficult to read, but actually I think it’s really it’s unusual conception and format that probably puts some readers off. It reads sort of like a play script; there will be a section of prose proceeded by the speaker’s name and there is no outside omniscient or first person narration beyond this. I found this novel to be a moving and completely unique depiction of grief. The characters are vividly drawn, human and funny as well as having all the absurdities of ghosts in a nineteenth century graveyard written by George Saunders. Of course it has some experimental sections, but I found myself enjoying its strange style; I found it very immediate, as if all the characters were speaking around me, which in turn heightened the emotions of their observation of Willie and his father, as well as the telling of their own stories. One to try if you’re feeling adventurous.
Honourable mentions (sorry i had to - I’ve been distracted by my bookshelves now)/original reviews linked
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi
The Famished Road by Ben Okri
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang
Well done if you made it to the end of this mammoth post ❤️and thank you for all your love on the book posts this year - here's to another great reading year!