Q1 FAVOURITE READS

Yikes and apologies. I've been travelling and it wasn't until I saw Ardene's list of her favourite books of the first quarter that I realised I had missed starting this thread.

So... you know the drill.
What were your favourite reads of the first quarter? What was it about them that impressed you?
Conversely, are there books your fellow readers should avoid?

— Best 19th century Spanish novel of Q1: Los Pazos de Ulloa by Emilia Pardo Bazán
— Best post-Covid Polish gangster novel with a London setting: Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan
— Best non-Sci-Fi space novel: Orbital by Samantha Harvey
— Best East German teen road-novel: Die Reise nach Jaroslaw by Rolf Schneider
— Favourite Handel book by one of my old profs: Handel: the master musicians by Donald Burrows

And:
— least favourite Handel book of Q1: Every valley: the story of Handels Messiah by Charles King

Bonus:
— the winner in the “phew, I’ve finally got to the end of the saga” category, De dood van Maarten Koning, last part of Het Bureau by J J Voskuil

>2 thorold: Loved this!

My best read in 1Q, by a significant margin, was James. Next best was Orbital.

Q1 favourite reads:

Short stories: Anthony Veasna So - Afterparties (Ecco, 2021)
Nonfiction: Nandini Das - Courting India: Seventeenth-Century England, Mughal India, and the Origins of Empire (Simon & Schuster)
Fiction: Arkady Martine - A Memory Called Empire (Tor 2019)

I feel like I've read a lot of low quality fluff this quarter. Work has been busy and perhaps I'm not paying enough attention to what I'm choosing. If I had to make a list of books I didn't like it would be more than three. I hope to have a better Q2. It will be summer where I live, all the students gone home, and I look forward to grading, reading, and more reading.

Eurotrash. I only read 5 or 6 books in Q1 so it was an easy pick.
Impressed by its wit and skillful writing and how great Kracht is in putting down whole coutries. Highly recomended.

You can read mt revie - Road Trip to Africa

I'm surprised at how many books I have given 5 stars in the last three months. And this isn't all of them...
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store
Stone Blind - mythology retelling
The Lost Spells - poetry and art
Coyote Lost and Found - middle grade fiction
The Lady Flirts With Death - historical fiction
The Twilight Garden
Ciao, Carpaccio! - art, Venice
Gilead - literary fiction
The Charter - Wales, mystery/thriller

Best Novel : probably The Cold Millions by Jess Walter
Best Non-Fiction : The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks
Best Poetry : Forest of Noise by Mosab Abu Toha
Best Thriller : The Hunter by Tana French

>2 thorold:
— Best 19th century Spanish novel of Q1:
— Best post-Covid Polish gangster novel with a London setting:
— Best non-Sci-Fi space novel:
— Best East German teen road-novel:
— Favourite Handel book by one of my old profs: Handel:
And:
— least favourite Handel book of Q1: Every valley:
Bonus:
— the winner in the “phew, I’ve finally got to the end of the saga” category,


Talk about phew! How do I compete with that? I mean, I read a mediocre book that is post-Covid Polish gangster, but it was set in Manchester. That genre is getting a bit repetitive, don't you think? And sure, I read a pretty good East German teen novel, but I think it was more the "family holiday" genre than road novel.

Seriously, I have nothing

>9 Nickelini: LOL! I don’t think we have to be too dogmatic about genre boundaries…. :-)

My reading this past quarter has been pretty even. I didn’t take any risk and stuck to mostly tried and tested comfort stuff. As a result, nothing earth shattering but no big disappointment either. I guess my favorites would be:
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries and Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett
To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose
The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison, maybe more as a part of the Cemeteries of Amalo than on its own merits alone
Necessity’s Child, number 16 in the Liaden Universe series by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

I read 32 books in the 1st quarter.
Oddly, all my favorites were children/teen novels.

Finished 2 in the RANGER’S APPRENTICE series by J Flanagan. YA fantasy.

THE ONE AND ONLY FAMILY, last in the ONE AND ONLY series by K Applegate.

THEN in the ONCE series by M GLEITZMAN. YA hist fic, WWII.

MILKWEED by J Spinelli. YA hist fic, WWII

HARBOR ME by J Woodson.

>9 Nickelini: How many “post-Covid Polish gangster novel with a London setting” books did you read?

>13 kjuliff: None! :-D

But >2 thorold: might have more information. Although I thought the categories were tongue-in-cheek

My first quarter was marked by multiple books by the same author, not something that I usually do. My favorites were the audiobooks of all six Austen novels, but I also enjoyed the first three books in a quartet by Roy Jacobsen and two Zola novels. My beginning of the year fun reads were seven Suzanne Brockmann romantic suspense novels. That means exactly 50% of my first quarter reading was from these four series!

My favorite nonfiction was How to Say Babylon: A Memoir by the Jamaican poet Safiya Sinclair

My favorite short story was The Fall Risk by Abby Jimenez

I have no clear favorites from the 1st quarter and so, following thorold's lead:

Longest classic that was easier to read than expected: The Idiot
Classic that I wasn't sure if I had read before: The Odyssey (translated by Emily Wilson)
Most disturbing book containing a lethal mix of family tragedy, religion, poverty, and unhealthy sexual awaking (tied): The Discomfort of Evening and A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing
Best book showcasing white privilege that would have been charming in a different time: The Thinking Reed
Most quietly heartbreaking: Skylark
Most likely to inspire future museum-going: The Story of Art Without Men

well, between Dec 1, 2024 and Jan 1 2025 I read all 21 stories in Ellis Peters series of Cadfael and honestly there wasnt one that slipped to a 3. mostly 4s and 5s still I have myfvs

a morbid taste of bones
monks hood
devils novice
leper of st giles
rose rent
potters field
heretic apprentice
a rare benedictine

>17 cindydavid4: Well done! I need to reread them all some day...

I just realized I actually did review all I had read in Q1 so I can answer this one (almost) on time.

My top 5:
The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary by Ken Liu
The Naming Song by Jedediah Berry
Grandville Noël and Grandville Force Majeure (ok, this is a cheat but they are in the same series so...)
Highway Thirteen: Stories by Fiona McFarlane
The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

Honorable mentions (in no particular order):
Miss Kim Knows and Other Stories by Cho Nam-Joo
There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven: Stories by Ruben Reyes Jr.
Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions by Nalo Hopkinson
Good Girl by Aria Aber
Travelers by Helon Habila

And I can add a few more to the last list - I had a good reading Q1 apparently...

>19 AnnieMod: Ken Liu's book was the top of my list the year it came out. still haunts me

Enjoying these lists. These are my Q1 standouts. No clever categories, though.

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
- my 1st Woolf novel

The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
- a new favorite author for me

The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt
- a tremendous novel

A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr
- one of those sort of cult-gems. Terrific little novel.

The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
- nonfiction. This is focused on the science during the British Romantic era. As a follow up, just today I checked out ten library books on Romantic poetry.

>21 dchaikin: this is a fantastic list. What a good Q1 you've had for reading!

>21 dchaikin: Can’t argue with any of those!

>22 rasdhar: its felt like an oddball quarter. But many gems mixed in.

>23 thorold: 🙂

My top five:
Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata
Blindness by Jose Saramago
The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński
The Wren the Wren by Anne Enright
The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon

>25 kjuliff: ❤️ You’ve been working through great stuff

>21 dchaikin: What a great list. I've read the first 4 out of the 5 and loved them all. To The Lighthouse is a pretty brave choice for your first Virginia Woolf

>27 Nickelini: I didn’t know, just joined a group read. Such a rich novel. I need more Woolf

Best nonfiction: Cue the Sun, Emily Nussbaum
Best novel: Lessons in Magic and Disaster, Charlie Jane Anders
Best anthology: The Best of Uncanny, Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, eds.

Hello all,
Read 17 books from January to March. Here are the ones I rated as 4 stars or “4 starish”.

The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger
You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue
West with the Night by Beryl Markham
The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History by Isaiah Berlin
The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists by Naomi Klein
The Secret Painter by Joe Tucker
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
How to Focus by Thich Nhat Hanh
Mundo cruel by Luis Negrón
The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner

The Light Eaters in particular is highly recommended for plant people.

There were no 5 stars this quarter but read a definite 5 earlier this month.

west with the night was a 5* the year I read it; later read her short stories of Africa The Splendid Outcast: Beryl Markham's African Stories liked them very much

I tallied up my first quarter earlier today:

Fiction: Shadows in Bronze by Lindsey Davis - 4.5 stars - The second in the Marcus Didius Falco series - listened to the audio book narrated by Simon Preble. Lindsey Davis writes excellent historical fiction mysteries set in Ancient Rome during Vespasian's reign. This book barely edged out Persuasion by Jane Austen.
Nonfiction: The Radium Girls:The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore - 3.5 stars - I didn't read much non-fiction for the quarter, so this was the best. It's a well researched narrative of some of the women affected with radium poisoning from painting dials of watches and instruments with radium so they would glow in the dark.
Short Work: Selection (The Treasure of Wisdom) from Stories of Books and Libraries edited by Jane Holloway - 4 stars - Three short excerpts Stories of Books and Libraries. Two of the selections were non-fiction classical works about the importance of books and what treasures they are, the third is part of a chapter from The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.

Honorable mention: Cinder by Marissa Meyer. Interesting re-telling of Cinderella as a science fiction novel set on a dystopian future Earth, where the people who inhabit the Moon are evil.

Books I got sucked into and can't escape, but can't in all honesty recommend: Iron Flame and Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros.

>30 mejix: I’m intrigued by that Isaiah Berlin title

>31 cindydavid4:
Thanks for the tip. I was surprised by how good a writer she was given her background, and what a character!

>33 dchaikin:
That one was a bit too specialized for me but I was very impressed with how the argument was constructed. Always wanted to try something by Berlin and the cover was by David Levine. Couldn't resist.

Just realized I never posted my Q1 picks here! Well, here are the books I rated 4.5 or 5 stars in that period:

James by Percival Everett
Adulthood Is a Gift!: A Celebration of Sarah's Scribbles by Sarah Andersen
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Time's Arrow by Martin Amis
Is Math Real?: How Simple Questions Lead Us to Mathematics’ Deepest Truths by Eugenia Cheng

Not a bad list, that!

I read 21 books in Q1 and there's definitely a theme in my top five this quarter in that four of them are SFF:

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
Perhaps The Stars by Ada Palmer
How Long 'Til Black Future Month by N. K. Jemisin
Feersum Endjinn by Iain Banks
The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley

>19 AnnieMod: I finished The Paper Menagerie yesterday which contains The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary as the last story. I'll be highly surprised if this anthology isn't in my top five for Q2.

>36 bragan: I need to get back to Sarah's Scribbles. I think I read the first two books.

>36 bragan: three Booker listed books. 🙂

>38 WelshBookworm: All of them are good!

>39 dchaikin: I don't deliberately seek out Booker listed books, so I'm just going to say that clearly the Booker folks have good taste. :)