Books of 2019: eclectic as usual

Boxing Day. Traditionally, this has been a day of curling up on the couch with a new Christmas book, but for the first time I can remember, I didn't receive a single one! I wonder if this is a trend among readers of this blog too. We don't buy or receive as many physical books, and maybe our friends and families are less likely to give them to us. I wonder, and, as a publisher, I worry. No matter -- trends haven't affected my reading patterns very much, except for the change to reading e-books borrowed from the Overdrive service at my library, or purchased on Kindle. I read almost exclusively on my phone, unless I've borrowed a physical book from the library. And though I did buy myself a couple of books about Greece that haven't arrived yet, I'm trying not to acquire too many these days -- the shelves are already overburdened. But read, I do.

I don't have a great deal to say about the books I read this year... there's a definite focus on Portuguese literature, because of traveling there and trying to write about it subsequently (a still-unfinished project). As usual, there are some classics from both ancient literature and the 19th and 20th centuries. After a debate with a friend about "the greatest novels" I decided to reread some of the candidates. Middlemarch was a first-timer for me, and I liked it. War and Peace was a re-reading, but while I had remembered the characters and basic plot, the book affected and impressed me much more now than when I read it before as a much younger person with so much less experience of life -- I think it deserves its status as one of the greatest novels ever written. I finally made it through Ulysses a few years ago, and don't plan to re-read The Brothers Karmazov, Anna Karenina, or Madame Bovary any time soon; other candidates are lined up for re-reading next year: The Magic Mountain, Moby Dick, The Sound and the Fury. But I find I'm more interested in continuing to read books in translation from world literatures that are less known to me. In addition to War and Peace, the "biggest read" was Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, about the city where my mother-in-law spent her youth after leaving Armenia -- a city whose history is virtually disappearing.

Particular favorites this year were Compass by Mathias Enard, and two books by friends: Immigrant, Montana, by Amitava Kumar, and Human Archipelago, by Fazal Skeikh and Teju Cole. Among the Lisbon books, I especially loved For Isabel: A Mandala, and Requiem: An Hallucination, both by Antonio Tabucchi, and A History of the Siege of Lisbon, by Jose Saramago. Helen Vendler's Seamus Heaney is brilliant and illuminating. I didn't think Pachinko was incredibly well-written, but it was such a great window into a diaspora I knew little about (Koreans living in Japan). Likewise, there's always a Murakami on my list: I liked Killing Commendatore a lot, but didn't think it was in the same league as, say, 1Q84. The Frolic of the Beasts, by Yukio Mishima, is an excellent, extremely disturbing novel by the great Japanese writer.

It might be worth mentioning (since I don't think I have before) that I also regularly read and highly recommend the Canadian (but international) literary magazine Brick. I'd love to have a piece in there someday -- I came close with one this year, according to a kind letter I received from one of their editors, and will try to submit something again in 2020.

Right now I've started Flights by Olga Tokarczuk -- original, unsettling and intriguing so far. I enjoyed Greek to Me, a love letter to Greece and the Greek language by New Yorker copy editor Mary Norris, especially because since our recent trip I've been studying modern Greek - half an hour each morning, along with half an hour of French in the afternoon. In her book, Norris mentions visiting the home of the late great travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor in Kardamyli, Greece, on the Mani peninsula. We were nearby and fascinated by the stoic ruggedness and remoteness of that region, so I've ordered a couple of Fermor's books -- one about the Mani, and the other about northern Greece -- so that will be how 2020 is likely to start out.

Finally, it was a great pleasure to hear and meet one of my literary heroes, Michael Ondaatje, this year at a reading he gave in Montreal.

What about you? Please share your favorites, or entire book list if you keep one, in the comments! I always love hearing from fellow readers at this time of year, and wish you all a happy year of reading ahead!

 

Book List, 2019

Drink Time! In the Company of Patrick Leigh Fermor, Dolores Payás

Greek to Me, Mary Norris

Electric Light, Seamus Heaney

The History of the Siege of Lisbon, Jose Saramago

The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, Jose Saramago (rereading)

The Man Who Loved China, Simon Winchester (audiobook, dnf)

For Isabel: A Mandala, Antonio Tabucchi

The Lives of Things, Jose Saramago

Helen, Euripedes

The Women of Troy, Euripedes

Ion, Euripedes

Falling Upward, Richard Rohr

The Proper Study of Mankind, Isaiah Berlin (bits and pieces, mainly the essay on Tolstoy "The Hedgehog and the Fox")

War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy (rereading)

Human Archipelago, Fazal Skeikh and Teju Cole

Middlemarch, George Eliot

Pachinko, Min Jin Lee

The Frolic of the Beasts, Yukio Mishima

O Sing Unto the Lord: A History of English Church Music, Andrew Gant

4 3 2 1, Paul Auster (DNF)

Pereira Maintains, Antonio Tabucchi

Warlight, Michael Ondaatje (second reading, for book club)

Requiem: an Hallucination, Antonio Tabucchi

What is Not Yours is Not Yours, Helen Oyeyemi

The Tiny Journalist, Naomi Shihab Nye

The Lisbon Poets (anthology)

Five-Minute Sketching: Architecture, Liz Steel

The Book of the Red King, Marly Youmans

Seamus Heaney, Helen Vendler

The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell (3rd and 4th books, Mountolive, Clea)

Killing Commendatore, Haruki Murakami

The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell (First two books: Justine, Balthazar)

The Relic Master, Christopher Buckley (DNF)

Immigrant, Montana, Amitava Kumar

Compass, Mathias Enard

Comments

[Leslee]

Not much overlap, but I did read and very much enjoyed Warlight early this year. I also read Pachinko and found it interesting as I too knew little of that history. I just finished Elizabeth Strout's Olive, Again and thoroughly enjoyed it. Before that, Ann Patchett's The Dutch House, which was good, especially after a couple of false starts with other books I gave up on - I felt I could relax in the hands of a good writer and storyteller. Also a very pleasurable read was Penelope Lively's How It All Began - had never read her before.Also a couple of nice reads by the Southern writer Solar House. And finally got around to Kate Grenville"s historical novel o f the colonization of Australua, The Secret River. Peter Cunningham's The Trout set in Ireland, quite well written. So settings in London, Ireland, Korea and Japan, Maine, Kentucky, Florida, and Australia, to name a few!

[Leslee]

Silas House. Damn autocorrect. Although I suppose Solar House makes sense!

[Anthony]

I must read more Antonio Tabucchi, and reread Compass. These were the books that stood out for me this year:
1. Fanny Howe, The Wedding Dress
2. Hermann Broch, The Sleepwalkers (t. Willa and Edwin Muir)
3. Maria Gabriela Llansol, The Remaining Life (t. Audrey Young)
4. Maria Gabriela Llansol, In the House of July and August (t. Audrey Young
5. Ricardo Piglia, The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: Formative (t. Robert Croll)
6. Reading Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle end to end (t. Don Bartlett)
7. Moyra Davey, Moyra Davey
8. Roberto Bazlen, Notes Without a Text (t. Alex Andriesse)
9. Thomas Bernhard, The Loser (t. Jack Dawson)
10. Jon Fosse, An Angel Walks Through the Stage and Other Essays (t. May-Brit Akerholt)

[TheRustGeek]

No overlap between your reading and mine but a few I'll look up from your list and try to read in the new year, including the Teju Cole one :)

[John]

Am in transit in Vancouver at the moment off to see if Macleod's is open, so can’t access my books for my list yet. From your list am a fan of both Fermor and the poet Nye so those would be worth a look. Some other interesting looking books as well. Read a Saramago a few years ago but subsequently read somewhere he joined the communist party during the time of the crushing of Prague spring. I am afraid I can’t separate the literature from that act, particularly in remembrance of my visit to Prague in 1969.
An influential book for me in 2019 that I do remember is Don Winslow’s The Border, the last book of his Mexican cartel trilogy. The trilogy itself is powerful and impressive and The Border is a more than worthy conclusion. In fact the book made me look at the Mexico/ US immigration issue again more sympathetically .How often does a book make you re-examine your beliefs and cause you to see more clearly?. Books that should be treasured

[Huw Hitchin]

Dear Beth,

Thank you for sharing your always interesting reading list. There is great pleasure indeed in finding a theme and following its thread to see where it leads. What did you think of 'O Sing Unto the Lord' as it often calls to me when I'm browsing the shelves of Foyles at the RFH? I struggled with PLF's 'Mani' and 'Roumeli', failing to finish either, but the 'A Time of Gifts' trilogy (?) is a masterpiece, and 'A Time to Keep Silence' is often re-read at Easter. And on that theme, interesting to see you also read Rohr's 'Falling Upward'. I wasn't sure what to think of it - I feel there's probably much more to it, and him, than the book conveys. 

Of my list the highlights were the C.S. Lewis Cosmic trilogy which I'd never read before; the Thoreau biography was a great education about a slice of American history I knew little of; 'A Honeybee Heart has Five Openings' proved an unexpected delight; 'The Gift' was clever and marvellous and very Nabokov; 'The Garden Party' I think you might like, I loved it; and I'll read anything by Robert Hass who has such a wonderful voice: warm, erudite and interesting. I have 'The Idiot' awaiting me for the start of 2020!

Out of the Silent Planet, C.S. Lewis
At the Strangers’ Gate, Adam Gopnik
The Heart of Dart-ness, Ned Boulting
Now & Then, Robert Hass
The Art of Life Admin, Elizabeth Emens
Quarantine, Jim Crace
The Happy Runner, David & Megan Roche
Henry David Thoreau: A Life, Laura Dassow Walls
Perelandra, C.S. Lewis
Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport
My Year of Dirt and Water, Tracy Franz
Keep Going, Austin Kleon
In Pursuit of Spring, Edwards Thomas
The Return of the Soldier, Rebecca West
That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis
Talking to My Daughter, Yanis Varoufakis
Here is Where We Meet, John Berger
The 4 Pillar Plan, Rangan Chatterjee
A Honeybee Heart has Five Openings, Helen Jukes
Walking, Erling Kagge
Lost in the Cosmos, Walker Percy
My Midsummer Morning, Alastair Humphreys
The Writer’s Map, Huw Lewis-Jones
The Life and Rhymes of…, Benjamin Zephaniah
The Longest Journey, E.M. Forster
The Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson
Falling Upward, Richard Rohr
The Gift, Vladimir Nabakov
Time and How to Spend It, James Wallman
What Time is It?, John Berger & Selçuk Demirel
Commonwealth, Ann Patchett
Bluets, Maggie Nelson
Movement Matters, Katy Bowman
Cyclogeography, Jon Day
The Photographer at Sixteen, George Szirtes
Code Name Habbakuk, L.D. Cross
The Aviator, Eugene Vodolazkin
The Afterlife, Anthony Wilson
The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography, Alan Jacobs
White Mule, William Carlos Williams
Stealing With the Eyes, Will Buckingham
Farewell My Lovely, Polly Clark
Teach Your Children Well, Madeline Levine
The Garden Party, Grace Dane Mazur
What Light Can Do, Robert Hass
Advent for Everyone: A Journey Through Matthew, Tom Wright

[Beth]

Thank you to everyone who sent me their reading lists and thoughts about the past year in books, both here and by email. Such great lists! So much fun to read what you've been reading, and discover new authors and possibilities. Thank you!

[Roderick Robinson]

Oh dear, so little overlap between these elevated slopes and my unambitious cabbage patch. Middlemarch - ah yes. I first read it when feminism was beginning to flex its muscles in the UK and always felt this great novel should be held up, not in any sense as an instruction manual but as an exemplar of what an unrestrained woman - an unrestrained anyperson, in fact - could achieve. Yet Mary Ann was restrained and still triumphed. Were society's cruel exactions one of the reasons why Middlemarch is so satisfying, so whole?

W&P: I never understood why many readers struggled so. Durrell: He seemed so brilliant at the time, as the novels appeared, yet I've never dared go back. Heaney: A late discovery triggered by seeing him in gentle action at Hay; I received one of his slenderest collections ever as a table present at Christmas (Death of a Naturalist; 44 pages). Saved for the dank hopeless days of February.

What am I reading? May I mischievously proffer The New Science of Strong Materials, written by J.E.Gordon and published by Penguin (always a reliable list). It is about our world, both the physical entity and the intellectual construct. The world you see when you walk downtown. That tranquil skyline and the careful arguments which support its existence. Why it should not let you down. Yes there's a certain amount of maths, as there is in a Dowland score.

Be not afraid, say unto the cities of Judah: Behold, your God.