The Best Books I Read in 2019!
I didn’t finish anywhere near as many books in 2019 as I did in 2018, but there were still some really fantastic ones I wanted to recommend to you, my dear friend and reader.
Black Leopard, Red Wolf
By Marlon James
Brutal, gory, moving, hilarious, fresh-tasting, mind-expanding, thrumming, fantastic and fantastical novel. The Goodreads description summarizes it better than I can:
Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that's come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both.
I read this book in Death Valley this spring and it exploded my brain into tiny bloody fragments and I’m still trying to put those fragments back together.
Normal People
By Sally Rooney
I loved Sally Rooney’s second novel as much as I loved Conversations with Friends, which is to say: a lot. The dialogue is sharp, the emotional complexities are complex, the characters are AuThEnTic, it’s all funny and sad and easy to read and just fucking fantastic. You start out thinking it’s going to be just a high school love story and then it turns into a reflection on happiness and miscommunications and class struggle and the profound fucked-upedness of late-stage capitalism. Read it.
Wait Till You See Me Dance
By Deb Olin Unferth
Now, I’ve been eating the pretzels with my wife since we met in 1962 and I don’t think they are especially good. I certainly don’t think they are “thicker,” but she had been eating them far longer than I, and she insisted the formula had changed, or perhaps the machinery, and that as a result they were very slightly “thicker,” and she would no longer eat them and complained about them for months. She tried to call the manufacturer but got only recorded voice greetings. She wrote emails and even letters but nobody answered. My wife is not one to give up on a thing and I’d be hearing about it until I died. So one day I was looking at the package, while she complained behind me, and I said, “By God, we should drive to the factory and tell them in person.” We are retired now and have an RV.
Deb Olin Unferth is hilarious. I loved this collection. Actually I need to give it another read; she’s a master of the craft and there’s a lot to learn here, both about writing short stories and about living on this planet more generally.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
By Ocean Vuong
I’m sure this book is on everybody’s list, since it came out this year and everyone loved it, but here it is anyway. A short, dreamy novel with beautiful prose, centered on a Vietnamese-American family. A deft exploration of quiet tragedies and subtle victories involved in the immigrant experience in this country. This book was so profound and ethereally moving that even trying to describe it feels like I’m ruining it somehow. Pick up a copy, find a quiet place, and get ready to cry six different ways.
Other Books I Read This Year And Loved
Florida - Lauren Groff - Masterful, quietly strange short stories, many or most of which involve Florida, a very strange and funny place
The Half-Made World - Felix Gilman’s action-packed Weird Western, featuring big evil trains and gunslingers with demonic weaponry
Remainder - Tom McCarthy explores a guy’s descent into madness after he receives millions of dollars in a legal settlement
Books are great. Let’s all read more books in 2020!