Q1 FAVOURITE READS

Looking out the window, it's difficult to believe it's April already and Q1 is already over.

What were your favourite reads for the quarter?

Did you discover any wonderful new to you authors?

Let your fellow readers know.

Been reading a lot of biographies lately. My favorites this year so far are Richard Ellman's Oscar Wilde, and Hillary Spurling's The Unknown Matisse and Matisse The Master.

In terms of fiction, I'd say Missing Person by Patrick Modiano. My second Modiano. Very interesting writer but also a bit frustrating.

Best non-fiction (and probably overall) was Laura Cumming's The Vanishing Man (The Vanishing Velasquez in the US), looking at the life of Velasquez through the lens of the history of a re-discovered but now missing painting of his. She's become one of my favourite non-fiction writers, consistently excellent.

Best fiction was Giorgio Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi-Contini, perhaps the best known of his The Novel of Ferrara sequence - which can be read as a standalone. Read this as a result of our visit to Ferrara in the autumn; it deserves its reputation as a twentieth-century classic.

>2 mejix:
I only discovered Patrick Modiano around a year ago - love what I've read so far, including Missing Person. Would be interested to know what you find frustrating about him. I've got Richard Ellman's Joyce biography to read - I was intrigued to find he is/was Lucy Ellman's father (Ducks, Newburyport)!

Q1 highlights

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf - best overall
Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts by Margaret Atwood - best contemporary book
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman - great surprise
The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch - the language...
The Director by Daniel Kehlmann - standout new novel

My favorite read was The Twice-Drowned Saint, I think.

Others I loved were:
Catspaw and Dreamfall by Joan D. Vinge
The Orb of Cairado by Katherine Addison
La Distinction - Librement inspiré du livre de Pierre Bourdieu(though to be honest I read most of it last year)
And my reread of Persuasion

>3 Willoyd:
The two books I've read have at their center enigmas that are never really solved. I understand the intention conceptually but I find that a bit frustrating as a reader. Clearly a superior writer though.

- Book of Lives : A Memoir of Sorts by Margaret Atwood - fully agree with >4 dchaikin:
- Los nombres de Feliza by Juan Gabriel Vásquez - best Colombian novel about a dead sculptor
- Dunkelblum by Eva Menasse - best novel about a fictional Austrian village
- The garden against time: in search of a common Paradise by Olivia Laing - best indefinable queer literary gardening book
- Guy Fawkes, or, The gunpowder treason : an historical romance by William Harrison Ainsworth - creakiest Victorian popular novel
- In corner B by Es'kia Mphahlele - best South African story collection

>4 dchaikin: Kehlmann on Bergman sounds like one to look for...

Best fiction:

I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé: a fictionalized account of the only woman of color who was convincted of sorcery during the Salem Witch Trials in the late 17th century

Queen by Birgitta Trotzig: a compelling novella of a family in a remote village in northern Sweden during the early and mid 20th century, which was led by an indomitable daughter who keeps her family together during rough stretches with no signficant support from her parents or brothers.

Best biography:

Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs: easily one of the best and most thorough biographies I've ever read, which provided great insight into the life, loves and inspirations of James Baldwin; this was definitely my favorite book of Q1.

Best memoirs:

Lovely One: A Memoir by Ketanji Brown Jackson: an excellent and inspirational account of the life of the most recently appointed Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy: This superb book combines the life of the author, whose 1997 novel The God of Small Things won the 1997 Booker Prize and who since then has distinguished herself by her brave activism in exposing the corruption and abuses in her native and beloved India, with the life of her mother Mary Roy, an equally powerful and headstrong woman who fought against the justice system for her own rights and for the children in the famous and influential school she led for most of her adult life, and the difficult relationship the author had with her mother, who she describes as "my shelter and my storm."

Best history:

We Slaves of Suriname by Anton de Kom: an eye-opening and deeply disturbing look into the former Dutch Guyana, a colony in South America whose imported slaves were unspeakably tortured and worked to death by their colonizers until it finally gained its complete independence from the Netherlands in 1975. The author was the descendant of former slaves, and after he was expelled from Dutch Guyana to the Netherlands for his political activity he joined the Dutch resistance movement during World War II, but he was arrested and sent to a German operated Dutch concentration camp, where he died from tuberculosis in 1945.

>7 thorold: Kehlmann on GW Pabst, not Bergman. And heavily fictionalized. But effectively so

>8 kidzdoc: yeah, that Baldwin biography calls.

gonna see if i can do this without losing the post

This was not a stellar quarter forr me only read 10 books completed and four that were uncompleted Part of it has to do with some healthy issues and part of it has to do with the gravity of the events in this country I am going try to Concentrate on books this quarter However the books that I did read we're really quite good I think this is the is the most 5 stars I've given to a list in a long time,read

These are not in any order

Guards guards guardes 4*

American daughters4*NF

solito5*NF

Wolf Hall Companion 5 _*NF

The Phoenix Crown* 3*

Unaccustomed Earth5*

Bellwether*5

Lamb in his bosom*4

Dodger*4

Tiger Moon5* TOP FICTION

Men at Arms*5

Eleanor: on the trail of englands lost queen4*NF

Shadow Queen4*NF TOP NONFICTION
WRONG TOUCHSTONE BOOK BY SARA COCKERVILLE

new authors to me were both Loxton and cockerville and will look for reading others

Connie Willis is not new to me but a reminder that i need to read other books of hers i havent read

ive read lots of livesley but need to check out those i havent read. i keep getting pleasantly surprised by them

>9 dchaikin: Oops — a rogue touchstone! But Pabst sounds good too!

>12 thorold: ah. That makes sense. Fixed now

I DNF'd 2 books, and finished 8. Of those, 2 were re-reads. I loved all six of the others, and can't pick the best. But if you are all going to pressure me, I'll list these:

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, Kate Beaton

There's No Such Thing As An Easy Job, Kikuko Tsumura

My Husband, Maud Ventura

The Town That Drowned, Riel Nason

All women authors, 2 Canadian novels, and one Japanese novel and one French

so nu which did you finish?

Favorite book: The river has roots by Amal El-Mohtar
Honorable mention fantasies: To ride a rising storm: the second book of Nampeshiweisit by Moniquill Blackgoose and The formidable Miss Cassidy by Meihan Boey

Longest book finished: America, América: A New History of the New World by Greg Grandin I had to mention this one, as it took me all quarter to read it. Good content, OK writing, needed editing/tightening

I gave three books a five-star rating in Q1: A Fine and Private Place by Peter Beagle, The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen, and Everyone in This Bank Is a Thief by Benjamin Stevenson.

My favorites so far this year:
5 stars:
Eleanore of Avignon
The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B

4 stars:
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

Q1 favorites for me (with a note that I only finished 9 books during the quarter):

Fiction
The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong with
Independent People by Halldor Laxness a close second.

Non-fiction (in this case, memoir)
How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South by Esau McCaulley

Coming to this thread a bit late, perhaps, but here are the books from Q1 that I rated 4.5 stars or higher:

The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H. G. Parry
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023 edited by R. F. Kuang
The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins and the Fight for Women in Science by Kate Zernike
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing

I maintain a running top five list and this is what I ended up with (out of 15 books read).

Bewilderment by Richard Powers
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
In The Margins by Gail Holmes
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky was a close sixth.

Since I didn't read a single book in March, my choices are few, but fortunately I read some good ones:

Best fiction: The Twilight Zone by Nona Fernández
Runner up: Clear by Carys Davies

Best nonfiction: A Fortunate Life by A. B. Facey

>21 rhian_of_oz: Bewilderment is so powerful. The mood that book left me in…