Q1 FAVOURITE READS

It's that time again - the end of a quarter What book(s) stood out and got you through the winter (or summer if you live in the southern hemisphere)? Did you make it through unscathed?

Were there any terrible books? You can warn your fellow readers against them here.

Q1 Favorites

1. Memoir: I Will Never See the World Again by Ahmet Altan
2. Fiction: An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine
3. Science Fiction: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
4. Graphic Novel: Dare to Disappoint: Growing Up in Turkey by Özge Samancı
5. Nonfiction: The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction by Martin Bunton

Thank you to Paul and the Asian Book Challenge for inspiring me to read so many new to me books and authors. Four ended up on my favorites list!

My year began with quite a few very good/memorable books. I'll select the top five here, I guess, though in no particular order:

Satan in Goray by Isaac Bashevis Singer
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution by David Quammen

Lots of good stuff in Q1 for me too. The ones that stand out (for now) are:

— The books of Jacob — a fabulously complicated historical novel about a subject completely new to me.
— catching up with Abdulrazak Gurnah for the Indian Ocean thread
— re-reading David Copperfield at last
— Footsteps : adventures of a romantic biographer — I must read more Richard Holmes
— getting to read Patrick Gale's new novel Mother's boy (and revisiting its subject, Charles Causley)
— discovering Henry de Monfreid
— Jan Swafford's Brahms biography
— and of course reading my first home-made hardback!

Film posters of the Russian avant-garde, Susan Pack

The night of Akhenaton : selected poems, Ágnes Nemes Nagy

Univers cachés: l'art outsider au Musée Dr Guislain

You got to burn to shine, John Giorno

One minute stories, István Örkény

1. Sweet Darusya: A Tale Of Two Villages by Maria Matios (Ukraine,2003, trans. 2019)
2. Absolution by Olaf Olafsson (1994, fiction)
3. Women and Other Animals: Stories by Bonnie Jo Campbell (1999, US)3.
4.Collected Poems by Carol Ann Duffy (UK, 2015)
5. Contemporary Fiction: A Very Short Introduction by Robert Eaglestone (UK, 2013)
6. She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity by Carl Zimmer (nonfiction, 2018, USA)

Comments
1. Novel in two related stories. I haven't reviewed this yet...
2. I will read anything Olafsson writes
3. Such an excellent author of short stories, I've read everything she's put out....
4. While poets are very different, and I think it is hard to compare one to another; Carol Duffy will always be a favorite.
5. Interesting way to look at what our reading is providing us
6. Fabulous, accessible science book on a fascinating subject (although it took me a long time to read it!)

1. Unprotected: a Memoir by Billy Porter 5 stars - memoir
2. A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny 4.5 stars - mystery
3. Eternity Road by Jack McDevitt 4 stars - scifi
4. Road Out of Winter by Alison Stine 4 stars - post apocalyptic
5. Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda 4 stars - Catalan Classic
6. Winterset Hollow by Edward Durham 4 stars - Fantasy

I’d love to talk to someone about #6. Please someone read it.

>7 dianeham: I read that McDevitt! (before the LT era...). I read 5 or 6 of his books before 2001, I don't remember a thing about them at this point except there were a relatively light, decent SF.

My only 5-star purple read so far this year has been Anxious People.
Second to that at 4.5 blue stars is The Vanishing Half.

Honorable mention to Wintering and The Book of Unknown Americans.

>8 avaland: I read that McDevitt before. I only remembered the ending.

Looking back, none of my books stand out especially . . .

The highest rated book was The Darkest Day by Hakan Nesser, which is not a 5 star book, but I had a 5 star experience reading it.

Some books I rated 4 - 4.5 stars and have already forgotten them; other books I rated 3.5 - 4 stars and remember them fondly. Since January, that would include:

The Gustav Sonata, Rose Tremain
The Testaments, Margaret Atwood (forgettable, but I had fun at the time)
Swiss Watching, Diccon Bewes
Happiness, Aminatta Forna
Rizzio, Denise Mina
Woefield Poultry Collective, Susan Juby

My favorites so far -

Beyond the Bright Sea. Wolk
School of Essential Ingredients. Bauermeister
Secrets of a Charmed Life. Meissner
All the Children Are Home. Francis
Small Things Like These. Keegan
Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto. Mazzeo

My favorites so far -

Beyond the Bright Sea by Wolk.
Winner of Scott O'Dell Award for historical fiction.

School of Essential Ingredients by Bauermeister.
Loved the theme of food as sensual and healing.

Secrets of a Charmed Life by Meissner.
WWII England; a great sister story.

All the Children Are Home by Francis.
Historical fiction; sad and wonderful.

Small Things Like These by Keegan.
Touching Christmas story by award-winning Irish author.

Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto by Mazzeo.
Amazing, gripping, true story of astonishing courage.

>13 nrmay: I'm happy to hear that School of Essential Ingredients is a good one. That's been at the top of my TBR but I can't seem to get to it.

The Wizard's Butler by Nathan Lowell (which was a BB on LibraryThing)--sci-fi/fantasy--my fave so far this year--5 stars--A military veteran becomes the butler to an elderly wizard (just be wary of the pixies and fairies).

The Fashion Orphans by R. S. Meyers and M.J. Rose--fiction--chick lit--another 5 star--Two sisters are tasked with sorting their mother's estate, finding out a lot of new things about their mom.

The Maid by Nita Prose--mystery/fiction--4 stars--An unusual hotel housekeeper witnesses a murder.

The Scarlet Imperial by Dorothy B. Hughes--noir/hardboiled mystery--4 stars--International jewel thievery, but who are the real bad guys??

Death of a Laird by M.C. Beaton--mystery/police procedural?--4 stars--A hunting lodge murder occurs during a huge rain storm, a "country house" mystery.

Naughty in Nice by Rhys Bowen--cozy mystery--4 stars-- A trip to Nice turns deadly for some folks.

Her Amish Springtime Miracle by Winnie Griggs--Amish fiction/romance--5 stars--Will the main character be forced to part with her foster baby daughter?

I rarely rate a book with 5 stars, but I had some great selections so far this year.

Sometimes I think I am just very easy to please, since these days I find basically all my reading material to be at least good and entertaining/enjoyable. Anyway, here are my favorites for the first quarter of 2022.

Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis
Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson
Wotakoi series by Fujita
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery (reread)
Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
The Sweet Rowan by Keira Dominguez
Jane of Lantern Hill by L. M. Montgomery
The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson
The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness by Joel ben Izzy
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Watercress by Andrea Wang & Jason Chin
The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson (reread)

>16 shadrach_anki: that list just sounds like a fun quarter.

The Decameron overshadowed everything else for me. Good thing I enjoyed it. Memento Mori made a good impression, as did The Fruit of the Tree.

And I abandoned a nonfiction book - The Dawn of Everything. I thought it was making a manipulative argument.

The first Quarter Stand-outs:

The Twilight Zone by Nona Fernadez
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
FantasticLand by Mike Bockoven
Severance by La Ming
The Test by Sylvain Neuvel

With the Twilight Zone, Caste, and the Test easily going to be favorites of the year.

Nothing mind-blowing, but I really enjoyed Le sang noir (Blood Dark) by Louis Guilloux and L’Échange (La tensión del umbral) by Eugenia Almeida. It was a good quarter for graphic novels and comics: Claire Bretécher's Cellulite omnibus (Les états d'âme de Cellulite - Salades de Saison - Les angoisses de Cellulite), Forget my Name by Zerocalcare and The Property by Rutu Modan were all very good. Nothing stood out on the non-fiction side.

Books I rated at least 4.5 stars this quarter:

Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight edited by Julie Swarstad Johnson and Christopher Cokinos
Oddball: A Sarah's Scribbles Collection by Sarah Andersen
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

Hmm. That doesn't seem like very much outstanding stuff, especially considering that one was just a short collection of cartoons.

The first quarter was a pretty good one in my world. Some of the highlights:

- Foregone by Russell Banks will possibly be the final novel by a favourite author
- David Copperfield by Charles Dickens a reread of a reread... for the 1st Victorian Quarter
- Unknown Soldiers by Vaino Linna I wish I could remember whose thread I saw this on a couple of years ago (possibly Hemlokgang's), but it was an excellent find

nonfiction: The Floating Brothel by Sian Rees discovered on rebeccanyc's 'hope to read soon' list

I've had a really good reading quarter with my list representing over a third of the books I read. If the rest of my year is as good I'm going to struggle to get it down to a top 10 for the year (which I do for my friends on FB).

• Cold Coast by Robyn Mundy


• Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss *


• The Innocents by Michael Crummey *


• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens *


• Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon *


• The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers


• The Hair-Carpet Weavers by Andreas Eschbach


• Exhalation by Ted Chiang *


• The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead *

* - BBs/group reads from CR

My favourite books of Q1 (all 5 star books):
Duck Feet by Ely Percy - written in Scots about going to high school in Renfrew
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee - classic book, which has been banned in several places, its definitely a must read
What Happened to You? by Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey - non-fiction about overcoming trauma
In the Days of Rain: A Daughter, A Father, A Cult by Rebecca Stott - about being in a cult and about adjusting to life afterwards
Calling Major Tom by David M Bennett - Thought provoking story about building relationships
A Game of Thrones by George R R Martin - First in a great series of books