2019 - Five + One

My 2019 reading year highlights...

Top 5...

Best Biography - Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell - Simon Heffer
Best Fiction - The Lord of the Rings (r)
Best Non-Fiction - Atomic Habits - James Clear
Best Philosophy/Spiritual - The Desert fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks
Best Drama - King Lear - William Shakespeare (r)

One to forget...

Biggest disappointment - One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Nice topic! This was a year of going deeper into World War I...all Folios except for Philosophy/Spiritual

Top 5...

Best Biography - "Great Contemporaries" by Sir Winston Churchill
Best Fiction - "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
Best Non-Fiction - "The World Crisis" by Sir Winston Churchill
Best Philosophy/Spiritual - "Parochial and Plain Sermons" by St. John Henry Newman
Best Memoir (Didn't read any drama, so changed it to Memoir) - "Goodbye To All That" by Robert Graves

Biggest Disappointment - "In Parenthesis" by David Jones (I really, really wanted to like it)

One last comment in thinking of the past year - how much joy over the years I have found in the literary heritage of the UK - so to all our cousins across the Atlantic, a happy and prosperous new year to you!

>1 LesMiserables: I also bounced off One Hundred Years of Solitude. I think I struggle with magic realism as it's a bit like listening to a friend describe what happened in their dream. Not totally uninteresting, but as anything can happen, not all that gripping. It's OK if the writer has other great qualities like Rushdie or Murakami, but in general, I don't see what all the fuss is about.

My list, following your format, and assuming (r) denotes reread:

Best Biography - I, Asimov
Best Fiction - Excession - Ian M. Banks (r)
Best Non-Fiction - Meditations - Marcus Aurelius. (r)
Best Philosophy/Spiritual - Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse
Best Drama - N/A, so best wildcard book: The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon

Biggest disappointment: The Overstory - Richard Powers. Fresh, interesting book, but if this good enough to win a Pulitzer, writing standards have fallen.

>1 LesMiserables:

Cannot agree with your assessment of One Hundred Years of Solitude , thought it was a great read.

>2 vmb443:

Same here for fiction. I found East of Eden fantastic.

Best Biography - "Daughter of the Desert" by Georgina Howell (biog of Gertrude Bell)
Best Fiction - "Girl, Woman, Other" by Bernardine Evaristo - a rare occasion where I agree with fiction judges
Best Non-Fiction - "The Five" by Hallie Rubenheld
Best Classic - "The Way We Live Now" by Anthony Trollope
Best Discovery - George Mackay Brown

Biggest Disappointment - "The Old Curiosity Shop" by Charles Dickens - so weak compared to some of his other work. Little Nell? Who cares?

Best Biography - "Martin Luther" by Eric Metaxes
Best Fiction - "The Rook" By Daniel O'Malley
Best Non-Fiction - "Deep Work and Digital Minimalism" by Cal Newport
Best Classic - "Eugene Onegin" by Alexander Pushkin
Best Discovery - Larry Correia

Biggest Disappointment - "The Man of Numbers" by Kieth J Devlin - So very very boring. Could not get through it all not matter how I tried.

>7 Sorion: The Rook is a great choice!

Best Biography - nothing worth mentioning this year.
Best Fiction - The Paper Menagerie and other stories by Ken Liu
Best Non-Fiction - I've read a lot of great non fiction this year, hard to choose just one, but if I had to - The Five by Hallie Rubenhold
I don't read Spiritual literature or Drama, so nothing for me in both categories.

Biggest disappointment - The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy.

Best Fiction - Beloved/ The Sympathizer/ All the Light We Cannot See

Oddly enough, they all won the Pulitzer at some point in time.

There's the White Tiger too.

I haven't had major disappointments for this year.

>1 LesMiserables:
I'm quite surprised. I reread One Hundred Years of Solitude around August and reminded myself why I adored this book so much.

>4 N11284: >10 Kainzow:
I'm not sure if it magic realism or the substance of the novel, but I certainly struggled with it and agree with >3 HarpsichordKnight: on this.

This is the beauty of books in their diverse impressions left on the reader.

No philosophy/spiritual or drama this year for me, so I adjusted the categories

Best Biography - Eric Idle: A Sortabiography
Best Fiction - Good Omens - Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Best Non-Fiction - The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 - Rick Atkinson
Best Poetry - Rime of the Ancient Mariner and other Poems - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Best Graphic Novel - Watchmen - Alan Moore

Biggest Disappointment - Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir

Best Biography - Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations
Best Fiction - The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
Best Non-Fiction - The Confident Hope of a Miracle: The True History of the Spanish Armada
Best Philosophy/Spiritual - Fear and Trembling
Best Social History - The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment

Biggest Disappointment - Gargantua and Pantragruel. I laughed aloud only once. Not my type of humor.

As I see it, the "problem" with García Márquez is that he suffers from translation, not linguistic but cultural. Love his books.

I'm in awe with Latin American literature.
Julio Cortazar, Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Juan Rulfo, Isabel Allende. (I've yet to read Ernesto Sabato's, Mario Vargas Llosa's novels)...

What they write about is of great ingenuity and, more often than not, really dark. It's like they're completely ahead of their time!

Mario Vargas Llosa is often really impressive. Folio did a wonderful edition of The War of the End of the World, a great novel. His Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter is a joy to read.

Best fiction: The bestest (is that even a word, well, now it is. You read it here first) book of 2019, are definitely `East of Eden`(best antagonist award given)
Non - Fiction: `In cold blood` (FS edition) *The non-fiction part will always be debatable as it is true crime

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Biggest Challenge for Pellias : Wuthering Heights (FS) .. i stopped halfway through (life passed me by) and i will give it another chance some day - good practice on Victorian english, but at the wrong time

Best biography: Ivan Chistyakov, the day will pass away (lost diary of a gulag prison guard)
Best fiction: Stoner
Best nonfiction: Escape from freedom
Best short stories: light box KJ Orr

Worst: the man I became

Honourable mentions: Sabrina, the narrow corner, love and war in the apennines, the legs of izolda Morgan

Best Fiction: The Shadow of the Wind
Best History: The Idea of America
Best Science: A Brief History of Time
Most Pleasant Surprise: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Biggest Disappointment: Northanger Abbey

>19 Powderfinger69: By whom is The Idea Of America? Sounds interesting!

Best Fiction: 1984 - George Orwell
Best Fantasy: The Children of Húrin - J.R.R.Tolkien
Best History: De Bourgondiërs - Bart van Loo
Best Science: A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking

Worst: Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein

Honourable mentions: The City and the Stars (Arthur C. Clarke), Het Hout (Jeroen Brouwers)

Fun exercise.

Best Fiction: The Nickel Boys
Memoir: Heartland
Non-Fiction: Midnight in Chernobyl
History: Fault Lines
Folio: Nostromo or Empire of the Sun
Striking Shockingly Close to the Bone: Water & Power - picked up after reading a Granta story of a US submarine sailor being drunk and lost on a train to Yokosuka - whoo boy, hello Summer of 1996
Poetry: 1919

Biggest Disappointment: The Topeka School, set in my home town

>22 kcshankd: what interesting choices, I saw Lerner’s new book in foyles the other day and was tempted to pick it up - however I found hatred of poetry fairly mediocre. What didn’t you like about it?

Water & Power seems absolutely fascinating - I’ll earmark this one for later.

>7 Sorion: >8 jsg1976: Agreed on The Rook, also check out the sequel Stiletto.

>19 Powderfinger69: Loved Shadow of the Wind, don't forget to check out the other books from the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series.

>7 Sorion: >8 jsg1976: I have the sequel Stiletto but haven't been able to get past the first two chapters. I really don't like perspective changes in a series especially one I enjoyed as much as The Rook.

>26 Sorion: I agree the perspective of the new character isn't quite the same as Myfawny's but I enjoyed the world-building and learning more about the Grafters.

>27 davelin: >26 Sorion: I read Stiletto too. I liked it, but it wasn’t nearly as good as Rook

Best five of the year (3 memoirs, 1 fiction, 1 book of personal reminiscences and stories about neighborhoods/buildings/people/quirky characters):

A Late Education - Alan Moorehead (Slightly Foxed Edition)
Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman! - Richard P Feynman/Ralph Leighton (Folio)
Mango and Mimosa - Suzanne St Albans (Slightly Foxed)
Moscow and Muscovites - Vladimir Gilyarovsky (in Russian)
The Cynics - Anatoly Marienhof (in Russian)

Not the worst read of the year, but the most disappointing:

Once There Was a War - John Steinbeck (Folio)

While I understand it's a compilation of wartime dispatches for American newspapers with all that entails - i.e. what could and could not be expected of Steinbeck's articles - still, too often the voice of a great writer was lost and replaced by the same glossy, boring propaganda that was churned out by all warring nations. But it wasn't universally bad either, there were many humane, personal moments. It was just uneven, which was disappointing. But overall I'm still glad I read it. And it also prompted me to pick up the excellent Moorehead memoir. Which, in turn, placed Folio's edition of Moorehead's Desert War trilogy high on my wish list.

I started several books. Have yet to finish any of them but one.

Best biography: Peter the Great by Robert Massie. Excellent work.

>20 NLNils: Gordon Wood collected some of his published essays on Revolutionary America.
>25 davelin: I did read Angel's Game recently, and I intend to continue the series.

>23 Twas_Brillig:

It is autofiction by someone without much to say. It is a fine novel as far as it goes but I was hoping for more as it is set in my childhood milieu.

Best Biography - Churchill - Andrew Roberts
Best Fiction - Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead
Best Non-Fiction - The British Are Coming - Rick Atkinson
Best Book I was Overdue in Reading - The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Best Folio - Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban

Biggest disappointment - Gulliver's Travels. I try to reread a few classics every year. I really thought I'd enjoy this one more on reread. Not so much.

Best five, difficult as a good reading year:
• Daisy Jones and the Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid - just a blast for a seventies rock fan
• My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferrante - late to the party on this bestseller from some years ago
• Time Song: Searching for Doggerland - Julia Blackburn - this year’s discovery
• Circe - Madeline Miller - another fun read, retelling of Greek myths
• The Salt Path - Raynor Winn - harrowing, uplifting memoir, which just beats Educated, read earlier in the year

Honourable mentions:
• Something Wicked this way Comes - Ray Bradbury- a reread in a Folio Society edition (great illustrations, pity about the yellow cover)
• Heimat - Nora Krug - first graphic book
• Dispatches - Michael Herr

Disappointment was The World in 38 Chapters or Dr Johnson’s Guide to Life - Henry Hitchings

>29 elladan0891: I also really enjoyed A Late Education, which I read a couple of years ago in the delightful Slightly Foxed edition.

>34 CarltonC: The Salt Path was also a favourite for me and would take my non-fiction award, that for fiction would go to This Thing of Darkness.

Work and other commitments restricted reading time and I only managed to read twenty-four books over the year. Probably my overall favourite read was The Shepherd's Crown: a fitting farewell from Terry Pratchett who has given so much joy over so many years.

Most depressing would be a toss-up between The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells and Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright.

>35 HuxleyTheCat:
that for fiction would go to This Thing of Darkness.
So glad to see that mentioned. I read this some years ago, and absolutely loved it, but hardly ever see it commented on. Good to see I'm not alone in rating it so highly.

This was a hard task with 97 books completed in 2019. Mostly I try to choose wisely with some whismy thrown in. Waiting so long for retirement was almost worth it.

Fiction: Berlin Alexanderplatz, the book by Alfred Doblin plus the 13 part Fassbinder series
Spiritual of sorts: St. Paul: The Apostle We Love to Hate by Karen Armstrong or I could have just as easily chosen The God Delusion} by Richard Dawkins.
Non-Fiction: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Garden Keefe
History: Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland
Play: Hamlet the book plus the production with Benedict Cumberbatch

Best Fiction: Tim Pears -- West Country Trilogy
Best Non-fiction: In search of a Masterpiece -- LLoyd
Biography: Living on Paper... Iris Murdoch
History: 1493 -- Chas. C Mann
Disappointment: The Unconsoled -- Ishiguro