My Year of Books 2019
I’ve been logging my reading over on Goodreads for a couple years now, and I’ve been enjoying writing reviews there (occasionally for the longer ones I re-post them on my main blog as well). Putting together this list I was surprised by how many reviews I had managed to write, even if some of them are rather short! If you’d like to see my occasional musings on the written word in the coming year feel free to follow or friend me over on Goodreads!
My stand-out author for 2019 is Ben H. Winters, who has emerged as a real fave of mine, a new discovery that came sort of out of nowhere. I tore through four of his books (The Last Policeman, Countdown City, World of Trouble, and the stand-alone Underground Airlines) and I am well into a fifth (Golden State). I feel like he’s really got something.
Wrapped up a couple concluding books in trilogies (Assassin’s Quest by Robin Hobb and Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer), both cool but not as engaging or fun as earlier entries I thought. Reread one of my fave sci-fi graphic novel series, but this time in the original French (Aama by Frederick Peeters) and finally polished off a few “must-reads” (old and new) like Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (entertaining and incisive but the end wasn’t for me), Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (great voice), My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (wanna read more, but perhaps I’ll watch the HBO series, to be honest), and finally finishing The English Patient after starting it nearly 20 years ago. A funny discovery is highlighted right at the top of my Goodreads “Year in Books” page: My shortest book (clocking in at 32 pages) was Six-Dinner Sid which I discovered via a posting on r/whatsthatbook, and cracked me up because I have a neighborhood cat I feed who I coincidentally named Sid.
From a quantity standpoint this is way less than I used to read back in the day and quite a bit more than I did the year before, so I’m happy about that.
Here is my list, including “blurbs” from the linked reviews:
The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review
“Squint and you can see more than a passing resemblance to the world we live in and its anxieties and fears… Even more so now than when the book was released in 2012.”
Assassin’s Quest by Robin Hobb ⭐️⭐️ Review
“…the various characters’ worries, arguments, and frustrations also repeat themselves ad infinitum, and perhaps even ad nauseam.”
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson ⭐️⭐️ Review
“The last third of the book reads more like an RPG at times than a novel, if you’ve ever played D&D or the like you’ll find it hard not to constantly imagine what the “Racial Modifiers” to stats would be (Teklans +2 STR +3 END, Ivyns +2 INT, etc).”
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Atomic Marriage by Curtis Sittenfeld ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review
“…Chandler’s penchant for layering in details of dress and habit, bawdy slang, and colorful and systematic descriptions of Los Angeles in the 1930s truly transport you to another time and place.”
Countdown City by Ben H. Winters ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review
“…Winters lays out a chillingly realistic vision of a pre-apocalyptic world sliding into chaos, a combination of fragile human nature and cynical “realpolitik” government policies that reflect in no uncertain terms the very present problems of our the real world.”
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
L’odeur de la poussière chaude (Aâma #1) by Frederik Peeters ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review
La multitude invisible (Aâma #2) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Le désert des miroirs (Aâma #3) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Tu seras merveilleuse, ma fille (Aâma #4) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“A great sci-fi story that manages to be both discursive and action-packed.”
Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review
“Vandermeer… ties up all the little threads from the first two books in what I would say is a pretty satisfying little knot.”
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review
“Like the eponymous English Patient’s well-worn copy of Herodotus’s The Histories, this novel has a palimpsest-like quality, it is built on the intersection and interaction of many centuries’ worth of ideas, events, and desires…”
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review
“The plot, already plenty melodramatic in Lotto’s half of the novel, becomes straight up over-the-top Gothic in the second (Or perhaps more Dickensian? I think Groff was aiming at all of the above, with plenty of Shakespeare and Sophocles thrown in the mix as well… It’s a lot).”
La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review
“Pullman has pulled off an interesting trick here, filling in corners of the universe of His Dark Materials in ways that are generally unexpected, and that I for one hadn’t even really considered.”
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R.R. Martin & Gary Gianni ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review
“While these novellas have a far lighter tone than ASOIAF, they share that much grander tale’s interest in the lingering traumas of war, and the often corrupt and perverse ways that the sins of the fathers are passed on to their sons, both literally and metaphorically.”
World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review
“Just as with life, you’re left wanting more, but you know the time has come when you turn the last page.”
The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review
“…Chiang always pushes past the most simple consequences and into deeper and more philosophical territory, and often with a surprising sense of optimism and a belief in the essential good of humankind.”
Lupus by Frederik Peeters ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review
“Interesting, discursive, low-key sci-fi with an interesting relationship at its center… Enjoyed the hipster-beatnik vibe and the elegant and unfussy illustrations.”
La geste d’Aglaé by Anne Simon ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Six-Dinner Sid by Inga Moore ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review
Six Dinner Sid: A Highland Adventure ⭐️⭐️
“Very charming little book that often uses multiple panels per page (in the style of a comic or graphic novel) to show off the eponymous cat’s various names, personalities, and of course his meals.”
L’enfance d’Alan by Emmanuel Guibert & Alan Ingram Cope ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review
‘A beautiful story. Alan Cope’s memories made me think of my own youth in Southern California, even if he was born 50 years before I was.”
Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research by John Steinbeck & Edward F. Ricketts ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review
“The book is at turns charming, incisive, bizarre, rambling, and very much of its time.”
The Case of the Missing Men by Kris Bertin & Alexander Forbes ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review
“This book not only offers up a loving homage to a wide swath of detective fiction… but it also genuinely delivers the goods, with a complex and intriguing central mystery that keeps both the Junior Detectives Club and the reader guessing right up until the ending.”
A Little Hatred by Joe Abercrombie ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Review
“The shadow of earlier generations is quite long, and the would-be heroes of the “Age of Madness” have a ways to go before they emerge from it.”
Paul à la maison by Michel Rabagliati ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️