Best and worst books of 2019

We missed the traditional end of year list of best and worst from the 1001 list! Please let the group know which were your favourites and opposite of favourites in 2019. This way, we can look forward to some great reads and steel ourselves for the less pleasant ones.

Favourites:
The Witness
After the quake
On the Black Hill
The talented Mr. Ripley
Do androids dream of electric sheep?

Opposite of favourites:
Catch-22

My favorites of 2019 were:

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
Legend by David Gemmell
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Least liked:

The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O'Connor

I read 18 books in 2019 from the list.

Favorites:
Quicksand by Nella Larsen
Pilgrimage by Dorothy Richardson (yes, ups and downs, but overall I loved it)
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

Least Favorites:
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (I have no idea why this is on the list. There are many, many recent books that are much better than this)
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (I'm sure this is an excellent book, but I didn't get it)

My favorites this year were

Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson
Cain by Jose Saramago
and Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan series, culminating in The Story of the Lost Child
Honorable mention to A Heart so White by Javier Marias

Least favorite:
Under the Skin (agony!)
The Blindness of the Heart
Black Dogs

I strongly share some of the above opinions, like The Witness and The Nine Tailors (both really great!) and A Gate at the Stairs (so mediocre). Just wanted to register that!

Of the ten I read my favourites were:
The Diviners by Margaret Laurence
In the First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

Least favourite
Justine by Lawrence Durrell

Favorites:

Foundation
The Shining

I don't really have any that I think deserve to be called least favorite from last year, since the other books I read had enough good points to balance out the bad ones. Really I just have mixed feelings about them as a result. I certainly would agree with putting Catch-22 on that list if I had read it this year, though! I started reading it a few years back and just gave up lol

Favourites:
Gone With The Wind
Breakfast At Tiffanys
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Quartet In Autumn
The Handmaid's Tale
The Hobbit

I reread quite a few old favourites this year and was happy to find they are still favourites!

Least favourite:
The Catcher In The Rye - sorry, just don't get the hype! I think I definitely needed to read it as a teenager.
Lady Chatterley's Lover - bit pompous and long-winded

I judge the best and worst depending on the star ratings I gave them. I read 16 books from the list, and this is how it shakes out:

*****:
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Three Musketeers
Oliver Twist
The Purloined Letter
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Fall of the House of Usher
A Christmas Carol
Martin Chuzzlewit
Nicholas Nickleby
Queen Margot
Jane Eyre

****:
Dead Souls

***:

**:
Agnes Grey

*:
Vanity Fair
Lost Illusions
The Charterhouse of Parma

>9 MartinBodek: you love em or hate em! I suspect a chart of all your ratings to date must be an inverse bell curve.

I read 127 list books for the year, three of which rated five stars:

Cry, The Beloved Country
The Things They Carried
The 13 Clocks

Six books rated two stars:

Doctor Faustus
Schooling
At Swim Two Birds
Marius the Epicurean
A Man Asleep
The Book of Disquiet

The worst book would have to be Pamela which I started in 2019 but will finish in 2020. Review to come shortly.

>9 MartinBodek: Your list made me realize that I've never read any other Dumas other than the Count of Monte Cristo and I should remedy that this year. Also I have Martin Chuzzlewit on the pile to read this year. It's the last Dickens from the list for me so I am delighted to see that you rated it highly.

Thanks for starting this thread.... I really enjoy seeing everyone's opinions here!

Favorites (Rated 5 or 4.5 stars)
War and Peace
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Invisible Man
The Double

Worst books (rated 1.5 stars)
The Labyrinth of Solitude
Great Apes
H is for Hawk

I read 112, with some being rereads.

Favourites:
Simon and the Oaks - a quiet book that suited the mood I was in when reading it.
A Tale of Love and Darkness
Another World - probably because I could connect with the setting and I do enjoy Barker's writing style
Museum of Unconditional Surrender - tough at times, but so raw and well-expressed
Hunger - bleak and sparsely written
The things they carried

Worst:
Great Apes - I still snort when I think about it
2019 cemented the fact that I am not a William S Burroughs fan, this time with the book Queer.
Inside Mr. Enderby - I think I saw someone describe it as one long fart joke.
Glamorama

I only finished 18 list books last year - about half my normal 1001 total.

Goods:
Zamyatin We
Duncker Hallucinating Foucault
Yoshimoto Kitchen
Perez-Reverte The Dumas Club
Oz Black Box

Quite a few average to good... and then:

Incredibly boring:
Lyly Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit

Utterly abhorrent:
Reage The Story of O

Interestingly a lot of my TBR are in peoples favourite lists - so that's at least a good sign :)

Only read 15 from the list this year, so rather a poor return (for which I wholly blame my newborn son). Here's my breakdown. I'm quite stingy with stars, and anything over 3.0 can probably be classed as a worthwhile read.

5.0
n/a

4.5
Francoise Sagan - Bonjour Tristesse

4.0
Jonathan Coe - What A Carve Up!
Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D'urbervilles
John Wyndham - The Midwich Cuckoos
Giorgio Bassini - The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
Voltaire - Candide

3.5
Stefan Zweig - Amok
Jeffrey Eugenides - The Virgin Suicides

3.0
Astrid Lindgren - Pippi Longstocking
Apostolos Doxiadis - Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture
Robert Louis Stephenson - The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

2.5
Bernhard Schlink - The Reader
Patrick Suskind - The Pigeon

2.0
Marguerite Duras - The Lover

1.5
n/a

1.0
Peter Manson - Adjunct: An Undigest

(There's that bell curve that @puckers was talking about!)

@sometimeunderwater: Jealous you managed to find a copy of Adjunt: An Undigest... been searching for one for years! I've never put so much effort into finding something that I expect to be terrible.

>16 amerynth: Great Apes will be like that for me! Based on the not so flattering reviews here, I cannot justify the high secondhand prices. It must be rare because everyone threw their copies in the bin!

>16 amerynth: I was thinking exactly the same thing!

Hi @amerynth - I work next to the British Library, so I was able to read it there.

However, you can find a long extract of it on the author's website here: https://petermanson.wordpress.com/adjunct/. It may even be the complete text, I didn't compare it to the hard copy at the time, but it looks about the same length. The Norwegian translation on that page is the same as the extract, and the website seems to indicate that it's the full version.

However, even if it is only an extract, I would honestly feel very comfortable ticking it off the list from reading that alone. It's a procedural poem, which means that once you've "appreciated" its method and style, you have appreciated the essential purpose of the book. I know that may not scratch everyone's collector itch!

It isn't an enjoyable read, nor is it intended to be - but even within the limits of its genre, I think it's a poor example. Totally misplaced on the 1001 list. You can see my full review on the work page: Adjunct: An Undigest.

>19 sometimeunderwater: Thanks for the link and your review. Had a scan and suspect that this could be an early leader in the ‘worst list book of 2020’ list. I’m increasingly of the view that there is a good reason that some list books are hard to find; in the immortal words of Sybil Fawlty “because they’re no bloody good”!

I took my girls (5 and 7) to the Treasures Room at British Library at New Year. Marvellous to see the original manuscripts of some of the classics, but the girls were unimpressed; how do you explain Magna Carta to a 5 year old? I left them to do some colouring in!

>20 puckers: A major exception to the "only the worst 1001 books are hard to find" rule is The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by Brazilian writer Joao Guimaraes Rosa. One of the best books I've read from the list. There is actually a website dedicated to fans of this book and pleas to somebody to republish it. After reading the library copy, I paid a ridiculous amount of money for a rather battered copy on ebay because it was such a great book that I couldn't bear not to own it.

I think I read this for the challenge that every book on the list should be read by at least one person in this group -- nobody had ever read it -- but if you can find a copy in a library somewhere, it's fabulous.

>21 annamorphic: By amazing coincidence I am currently reading The Devil to Pay in the Backlands for my 900th milestone book. Some kind soul in this group sent it to me as a .pdf which is not the easiest way to read but certainly better than nothing. It's interesting that it is so hard to find given the high ratings but presumably the publishing rights are lost in obscurity somewhere.

>20 puckers: >21 annamorphic: Wow! Prices on Abe Books are crazy - up to $1300! I will definitely have to put that book in the inventory in my mind for when I am looking at secondhand shops.

>21 annamorphic: It is wonderful isn't it! It has some fabulous lines in it;

I speak with twisted words. I narrate my life, which I did not understand.

My top reads were Love in a Cold Climate, The Pursuit of Love, Lord of the Flies and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

The one I least liked was The Turn of the Screw.

Thank you so much for the link @sometimeunderwater!!!

No worries! Not sure I've done you a favour though, if it means you now actually have to read it...