What were the best books you read in 2019?

[holyzombiejesus]

I've got a list somewhere but will have to report back later as there are some shoeboxes cluttering up the stairs.

[buttgammon]

The best book I read all last year was Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann. It's fucking huge, but totally worthwhile. One of those books that really feels like it may define our time for future generations. I also loved Kudos by Rachel Cusk, which I think is her best novel to date, and Patience by Toby Litt.

[chveik]

probably Ulysses

[Inspector Norse]

The best book I read all last year was Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann. It's fucking huge, but totally worthwhile.

I'm interested in reading that one but after wading through that fucking William Gass one I think I need to spend a month or two reading nothing but picture books about cats and fairies first.

[buttgammon]

I'm interested in reading that one but after wading through that fucking William Gass one I think I need to spend a month or two reading nothing but picture books about cats and fairies first.

Fair's fair. It's arguably not as dense as Gass but still a heavyweight read in several ways.

[willpurry]

Lord Malquist and Mr Moon by Tom Stoppard.

[Captain Crunch]

Non-fiction

Raw Concrete – Barnabus Calder
Seinfeldia – Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
The Ministry of Truth – Dorian Lynskey

All of these are the same – interesting facts and opinions on a subject I like, presented well. 

I also enjoyed the Motorcycle Diaries and a book on Dugouts which looks like a novelty book but is really good, funny and sweet. 

Fiction

The Wayward Bus – John Steinbeck                   
The Bees – Laline Paull
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things – Jon McGregor

I love Steinbeck because if you get a run of boring or dull books and you just want something GOOD he's so reliable.  All the novels have their own style and quirks but they all have that beautiful vivid writing and laid-back quality.

The Bees is great because it's really about bees and Jon McGregor is a revelation; one of those books you have to keep pausing because it's so intense and then you feel sad when it's over. 

Worst

I couldn't finish Limbo by Bernard Wolfe and The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead.  Books by Sean Hughes and Milton Jones were also abysmal but sadly most books by comedians are shit.   

[holyzombiejesus]

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things – Jon McGregor

I love that. Not read since it came out but I remember it really affected me.

[holyzombiejesus]

I made a list this year although have a feeling that I've left a few off, especially towards the end of the year when I read a lot of (mostly rubbish) horror.

New books:

The Wall by John Lanchester, Doggerland by Ben Smith and Stillicide by Cynan Jones. All 3 set in some grim near future.The first in a world where a huge wall is built around every country and the young are forced to stand guard, the 2nd take place in a seemingly submerged world and focuses on a lad who has to live in and mend the turbines and I've started a thread about the third (which was the best thing I read in 2019.

I enjoyed two of those re-teling of Greek myth things that so many seem to do nowadays. The Pat Barker one was 2018 I think but so good, as was Mark Haddon's Porpoise. I also thought Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls was great in a trashy undemanding way.

Old books:

Started (and finished some) Cormac McCarthy. The Road was by far the best, Blood Meridian was tedious in parts but ok I guess and ATPH was the only other one I started that I bothered completing. Re-read A Kind Of Loving and that was brill. Also read a really ace little book called I Remember by Joe Brainard. It's basically a collage of memories, all the short lines beginning with "I remember". Probably the loveliest looking book I read last year.



Also re-read lots of David Berman's poetry. Might buy another copy of Actual Air just to give away.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

" Autumn" by Ali Smith, famously hated by the much missed Serge of this parish, but I do like a bit of All Smith, I must say.
" Machines Like Me" by Ian McEwan, not as good as " Nutshell", but late period McEwan is still blummin good stuff, I am compelled to say. Nice bit of political commentary in there, and you don't have to worry about reading about someone shagging their sister. I've got this terrible feeling that " The Cockroach" ain't all that, though.

One of the worst books I read in 2019 was " Normal People" by Sally Rooney. JD Salinger for the Instagram generation? Fuck Off. A veritable ITV drama in waiting of a book. David Nicholls may be a bit glib and overdo it on the similes, but he does that kind of stuff a lot better.

[Clatty McCutcheon]

The best contemporary novel I've read recently is The Shepherd's Hut by Tim Winton.  Not exactly a new name, with a near forty-year career behind him, but it's the best I've read of his.  The anti-hero is a 15 year old misfit on a personal quest in the vast salt lands of Western Australia, on the run from the scene of his father's violent death. It deals with coming-of-age, friendship, love and all the usual big themes but with real lightness of touch and beautiful, haunting prose.  It's stayed with me more than anything else I've read over the last year or so.