Category: Best books
Best Books Read in 2019
Overview:
In all, I read 102 books in 2019.
Forty-one (41) non-fiction, sixty-one (61) fiction and poetry.
I thought the ratio would’ve been more evenly split, closer to 50-50, but I was wrong.
Only one author placed two entries on my personal “Best of…” list, Ben H. Winters, and a big shout out to that man and his unique imagination.
Here’s my roster of favorite reads during 2019—how does it compare to yours?
Fiction:
Their Lips Talk of Mischief by Alan Warner
Infinite Detail by Tim Maugham
Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters
The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters
The Emerald Light in the Air (stories) by Donald Antrim
Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry
The Tropic of Kansas by Christopher Brown
Grand Opening by Jon Hassler
Benediction by Kent Haruf
Hystopia by David Means
Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
A Cosmology of Monsters by Shaun Hamill
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
Thin Air by Richard K. Morgan
Shadow Captain by Alastair Reynolds
Honorable Mentions:
The Steady Running of the Hour by Justin Go
Money by Martin Amis
The Other Side of Silence by Philip Kerr
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
The Masque of Mañana by Robert Sheckley
Worst novel read this year: Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky
Non-fiction:
Falter by Bill McKibben
Working by Robert Caro
Talking to My Daughter About the Economy by Yanis Varoufakis
Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism by Nadya Tolokonnikova
The Weird and the Eerie by Mark Fisher
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger
The Wayfinders by Wade Davis
How Fascism Works by David Stanley
Utopia For Realists by Rutger Bregman
Honorable Mentions:
The Destiny Thief (essays) by Richard Russo
The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, A Revolution in Hollywood by W.K. Stratton
Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
Worst non-fiction book read this year: Wolf At The Table by Augusten Burroughs
Best Books Read in 2018
My book count was down 40% in 2018.
Gad, that’s embarrassing.
For the first time in ages I read less than one hundred books last year—blame that on Netflix and podcasts, both of which have been stealing my time like a furtive thief.
Below, you’ll find my list of favorite reads, fiction and non-fiction.
How does it compare with your choices?
Fiction:
The World to Come (Stories) by Jim Shepard
Sweet Nothing (Stories) by Richard Lange
All For Nothing by Walter Kempowski (Translated by Anthea Bell)
Greeks Bearing Gifts by Philip Kerr
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
Nobody Move by Denis Johnson
Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson
The Implacable Hunter by Gerald Kersh
To Die in Spring by Ralf Rothmann (Translated by Shaun Whiteside)
Honorable Mentions:
The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem
Straight Cut by Madison Smartt Bell
American Rust by Philipp Meyer
Wait Until Spring, Bandini by John Fante
Neon Rain by James Lee Burke
Non-Fiction
Imaginary Cities by Darran Anderson
No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald
The Once and Future Liberal by Mark Lilla
Tunnel At the End of the Light (Essays) by Jim Shepard
Fighting Fascism by Clara Zetkin
Reporter, A Memoir by Seymour Hersh
Stanley: An Impossible Life by Tim Jeal
The Bending Cross (Life of Eugene Debs) by Ray Ginger
Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler
Space Odyssey (Making of 2001) by Michael Benson
A Cook’s Tour by Anthony Bourdain
Honorable Mentions:
St. Paul, The Apostle We Love to Hate by Karen Armstrong
The Killing of Osama Bin Laden by Seymour Hersh
Remember, Remember (Essays) by Charles Beaumont
The Nasty Bits by Anthony Bourdain
Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard
Note: You’ll find a list of my favorite films of 2018 over at Cinema Arete.
Ringing in the New Year
A bit late with my year end wrap up—we were away from home for the first Christmas in ages and I’m only now getting caught up.
A quick glance ahead at 2018 would seem to indicate a year of some promise. I have two books I am readying for release, the first a volume of poetry (The Algebra of Inequality & Other Poems), which will be out April-May. A compilation of my best poems in the past five years. I am currently in the process of culling and selecting from a roster of nearly a hundred and fifty; not an easy or pleasant task. In the fall, finances permitting, I’ll be publishing a collection of short stories, Electric Castles: A Book of Urban Legends. Two hundred plus pages of prose set in cities here, there and nowhere.
Two books in one calendar year—that will be quite a stretch for my wee press but I think we can manage (crossing his fingers).
Looking back on 2017, I see it as a year where I managed to dabble in a little bit of everything: writing, photography, painting, music…
Is it good that I’m no longer so focussed on writing, that it isn’t my sole obsession these days? Am I right to believe that any form of expression belongs in my oeuvre, regardless of the media involved?
I feel such a tremendous sense of satisfaction when I see one of my books that also features cover art that I helped create or devise. That’s empowerment, I tell you. Watch for the cover of that aforementioned volume of poetry, come April; it’s one of mine as well.
I managed to achieve my target of reading one hundred books in 2017—actually, the final tally was 103. I also watched over a hundred movies last year and I’m be posting my favorites over at Cinema Arête in the coming hours.
Here’s my “Best of…” picks for the books I discovered and devoured in 2017. My reading, as ever, far-ranging and eclectic, about evenly divided between fiction and non-fiction.
Best Fiction of 2017
The Street of Crocodiles (Stories) by Bruno Schulz
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The Tsar of Love & Techno (Stories) by Anthony Maara
Moonglow by Michael Chabon
We The Animals by Justin Torres
Ill Will by Dan Chaon
Sleet (Selected Stories) by Stig Dagerman
Shadowbahn by Steve Erickson
The North Water by Ian McGuire
Honorable Mention:
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Trajectory (Stories) by Richard Russo
The World Made Straight by Ron Rash
Flings (Stories) by Justin Taylor
Revenger by Alastair Reynolds
Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds
Poetry:
The Collected Poems of Zbigniew Herbert by Zbigniew Herbert
War Primer by Bertolt Brecht
Flying at Night (Poems 1965-85) by Ted Kooser
Non-Fiction:
Scarcity: Why Having So Little means So Much by S. Maullainathan & E. Shafir
The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
Post-Capitalism: A Guide to Our Future by Paul Mason
The Dilemmas of Lenin by Tariq Ali
October by China Mieville
The Lost Amazon edited by Wade Davis
The Art of Space by Ron Miller
A Philosophy of Walking by Frederic Gros
Keep Watching the Skies! American SF Movies of the Fifties by Bill Warren
Honorable Mention:
A Spy Among Friends by Ben MacIntyre
Unknown Pleasures (Memoir) by Peter Hook
Footnotes in Gaza (Graphic Novel) by Joe Sacco
Trouble Boys (Biography of The Replacements) by Bob Mehr
Best Reads of 2016
Managed to read over a hundred books and view about the same number of movies in 2016.
You’ll find my list of favourite films over at my blog, Cinema Arete.
Read slightly more non-fiction than fiction last year, a bit of a worrying trend. I’ve really cut back on my genre fiction in the past while; I’ve found the suspension of disbelief rarely works for me any more. The last horror novel I read, by Peter Straub, struck me as completely implausible and I barely finished it.
More and more, I’m looking for quality reads, books that are innovative, literate and unique.
And, more and more, contemporary fiction just doesn’t meet that criteria.
* * * *
Best Books Read in 2016
Fiction:
Fortune Smiles (Stories) by Adam Johnson
The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson
The Execution by Hugo Wilcken
The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald
Everybody’s Fool by Richard Russo
The Heavenly Bible by Donald Ray Pollock
Today I Wrote Nothing (Stories) by Daniil Kharms
Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
The Reflection by Hugo Wilcken
The Adulterous Woman (Stories) by Albert Camus
Honorable Mention:
Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams
The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow
Poetry:
Without by Donald Hall
Felicity by Mary Oliver
Non-fiction:
Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life by James Hawes
Ghost Wars: Secret History of CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden by Steve Coll
Contrary Notions by Michael Parenti
When the Facts Change by Tony Judt
Disaster Capitalism by Antony Lowenstein
Young Orson: The Years of Luck & Genius by Patrick McGilligan
We Learn Nothing (Essays) by Tim Kreider
Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum
Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk
Honorable Mention:
The Idea of Communism by Tariq Ali
Goebbels: A Biography by Peter Longerich
My Life & Travels by Wilfred Thesiger
Hogs Wild (Essays) by Ian Frazier
Best of…2015
I was fortunate this year, hitting the century mark (100+) both in terms of the number of books read and movies watched.
I’ve gone through my lists and compiled a roster of favourites–difficult, in many cases, to settle on a definitive order, impose a hierarchy of excellence. Every single selection brilliant in its own right and worthy of inclusion:
BEST BOOKS
Fiction:
Bleeding Edge (Thomas Pynchon)
Purity (Jonathan Franzen)
Stoner (John Williams)
Fat City (Leonard Gardner)
The Book of Aron (Jim Shepard)
Number9Dream (David Mitchell)
Something Rich and Strange (Ron Rash) Short Stories
Gaps (Bohumil Hrabal)
Young Skins (Colin Barrett) Short Stories
The Normals (David Gilbert)
Payback (Gert Ledig)
As Far as the Eye Can See (Robert Bausch)
Cain’s Book (Alexander Trocchi)
The Commissariate of Enlightenment (Ken Kalfus)
Strong Motion (Jonathan Franzen)
All That Outer Space Allows (Ian Sales)
Highrise (J.G. Ballard)
Three Men in a Boat * (Jerome K. Jerome)
Non-Fiction
The Price of Inequality (Joseph Stiglitz)
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Ilan Pappé)
Theodore Rex (Edmund Morris)
Colonel Roosevelt (Edmund Morris)
The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible (Charles Eisenstein)
Werner Herzog: Conversations (with Paul Cronin)
Orson Welles’ Last Movie: The Making of “The Other Side of the Wind” (Josh Karp)
Arms: The Culture and Credo of the Gun (A.J. Somerset)
My Father and Myself (J.R. Ackerley)
When in Disgrace (Budd Boetticher)
BEST FILMS:
“Hard to Be a God” (Directed by Aleksei German)
“Amores Perros” * (Dir. Alejandro Inarritu)
“Leviathan” (Dir. Andrey Zuyagintsev)
“Sightseers” (Dir. Ben Wheatley)
“Valerie and Her Week of Wonders” (Dir. Jaromil Jires)
“Blue Ruin” (Dir. Jeremy Saulnier)
“Winter Sleep” (Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
“Gomorrah” (Dir. Matteo Garrone)
“Amarcord” (Dir. Federico Fellini)
“Boyhood” (Dir. Richard Linklater)
“L’il QuinQuin” (Dir. Bruno Dumont)
“Time Crimes” (Dir. Nacho Vigalondo)
“The Devil’s Backbone” (Dir. Guillermo del Toro)
“The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser” (Dir. Werner Herzog)
“What We Do in the Shadows” (Dir. Taika Waititi; Jermaine Clement)
“Berberian Sound Studio” * (Dir. Peter Strickland)
“2001: A Space Odyssey” * (Dir. Stanley Kubrick)
“Chinatown” * (Dir. Roman Polanski)
Honorable Mention:
“Closely Watched Trains” (Dir. Jiri Menzel)
“Jodorowsky’s ‘Dune'” (Dir. Frank Pavich)
“Wild Tales” (Dir. Damian Szifron)
“Satyricon” (Dir. Federico Fellini)
“Ex Machina” (Dir. Alex Garland)
“Land of Silence and Darkness” (Dir. Werner Herzog)
“Stroszek” (Dir. Werner Herzog)
“Nightcrawler” (Dir. Dan Gilroy)
“Her” (Dir. Spike Jonze)
“Maps to the Stars” (Dir. David Cronenberg)
PLAYLIST (Musical Favourites)
Tom Morello “The Nightwatchman” (World Wide Protest Songs)
Ty Segall “Manipulator”
Porcupine Tree “Up the Down Staircase”
Pere Ubu “Raygun Suitcase”
The Stooges “Raw Power”
Paul Banks “The Base”
Merle Haggard “I Am What I Am”
J.D. Crowe and the New South “Lefty’s Old Guitar”
Best Comedy: Bill Hicks “Salvation: Live at Oxford”
TV
“Rick & Morty” (Seasons 1 & 2)
“True Detective” (Series 1)
“The Mighty Boosh” (Series 1-3)
- Denotes “Previously Read” or “Previously Viewed”
