Stacia Posted December 29, 2018 Share Posted December 29, 2018 (edited) Best fiction (in no particular order): Augustown by Kei Miller Shantytown by César Aira, trans. from the Spanish by Chris Andrews The Illustrious House of Ramires by Eça de Queirós, trans. from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa Comemadre by Roque Larraquy, trans. from the Spanish by Heather Cleary Sudden Death by Álvaro Enrigue, trans. from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer Runner-up (fiction): A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman, trans. from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen Non-fiction (in no particular order): Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America by Laura Wexler The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston Morning in Serra Mattu: A Nubian Ode by Arif Gamal Odd addendum: And on a completely different note, here's a book I read this year that actually mentioned meat trucks (or in this case, a meat bus). Figured it might be of interest since meat trucks are a topic of conversation here on the boards. 😉 (Caveat emptor: Probably only for fans of bizarro fiction.) The Convalescent by Jessica Anthony Edited December 29, 2018 by Stacia 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matryoshka Posted December 29, 2018 Share Posted December 29, 2018 Favorite Fiction: - Circe by Madeline Miller - The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa - Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfař - Beyond the Rice Fields by Naivo I also really loved the latest books by Philip Pullman (La Belle Sauvage) and Katherine Arden (The Girl in the Tower) and am looking forward to the next installments. I am also really enjoying a longer-term read-through of the behemoth Story of the Stone (aka Dream of the Red Chamber) by Cao Xueqin, but that's a bit off the beaten path. I'm two of five volumes in so far - to be continued next year. Favorite Non-Fiction: - Notes on a Foreign Country by Suzy Hansen - Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright - We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates Also really liked Killers of the Flower Moon that others have mentioned, and Dear America by Jose Antonio Vargas. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Violet Crown Posted December 30, 2018 Share Posted December 30, 2018 On 12/27/2018 at 3:04 PM, Stacia said: The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester I remember enjoying that when it came out. The best investment in my own education I ever made was my compact OED; but somehow it never occurred to me to think about the people who put it together. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ottakee Posted December 30, 2018 Share Posted December 30, 2018 I love these type threads as it helps me fill out my hold and wish list on Overdrive for my kindle and audio books. So many I never heard of before. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted December 30, 2018 Share Posted December 30, 2018 Best Fiction: Revolutionary Road, Cloud Atlas, Grapes of Wrath, Great Gatsby, Augustown, The Goblin Emperor, Circe, When the Emperor was Divine, Ghostwritten, The Bone Clocks, Sing Unburied Sing, and several Ursula Le Guin short story collections Best Nonfiction: On Tyranny, How Democracies Die, The Blood of Emmett Till, Conflict is Not Abuse, So You Want to Talk About Race, Notes on a Foreign Country, The Half that has Never Been Told, We Were Eight Years in Power. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-M- Posted December 31, 2018 Share Posted December 31, 2018 The most engrossing books I read this year (not including rereads): ■ Behold the Dreamers (Imbolo Mbue; 2016. Fiction.) ■ An American Marriage (Tayari Jones; 2018. Fiction.) ■ The Third Hotel (Laura van den Berg; 2018. Fiction.) ■ Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (John Carreyrou; 2018. Non-fiction.) ■ Euphoria (Lily King; 2014. Fiction.) Honorable mention: ■ Killers of the Flower Moon (Dan Grann; 2017. Non-fiction.) ■ An Abbreviated Life (Ariel Leve; 2016. Non-fiction.) ■ After the Eclipse (Sarah Perry; 2017. Non-fiction.) ■ The Hole (Hye-young Pyun; 2017. Fiction.) ■ Bel Canto (Ann Patchett; 2001. Fiction.) ■ Things We Lost in the Fire (Mariana Enriquez; 2017. Fiction.) Even better on rereading: ■ Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro; 2005. Fiction.) ■ Childhood’s End (Arthur C. Clarke; 1953. Fiction.) ■ Daytripper (Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá; 2011. Graphic fiction.) ■ Mrs. Caliban (Rachel Ingalls; 1983. Fiction.) Forgot how wonderful this writer is: ■ Memento Mori (Muriel Spark; 1959. Fiction.) For those who loved The Elementals (Michael McDowell; 1981): ■ The Reapers Are the Angels (Alden Bell; 2010. Fiction.) Fabulous story for a long car trip: ■ American Kingpin (Nick Bilton; 2017. Non-fiction.) Honorable mention: ■ The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet (Justin Peters; 2016. Non-fiction.) Cannot stop talking about the ideas in these books: ■ Janesville: An American Story (Amy Goldstein; 2016. Non-fiction.) ■ Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America (Alissa Quart; 2018. Non-fiction.) ■ Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century (Jessica Bruder; 2017. Non-fiction.) ■ Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth (Sarah Smarsh; 2018. Non-fiction.) Even better than War and Peace: ■ Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wreath (Sigrid Undset; 1920. (Trans. Tiina Nunnally; 1997.) Fiction.) ■ Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wife (Sigrid Undset; 1921. (Trans. Tiina Nunnally; 1999.) Fiction.) ■ Kristin Lavransdatter: The Cross (Sigrid Undset; 1922. (Trans. Tiina Nunnally; 2000.) Fiction.) Best graphic work I read this year: ■ The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt (Ken Krimstein; 2018. Graphic non-fiction.) 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happi duck Posted January 1, 2019 Share Posted January 1, 2019 I loved: You Don't Have to Say You Love Me a Memoir by Sherman Alexie. But right after I read it he was accused of wrong doing and it feels funny to recommend it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
***** Posted January 2, 2019 Share Posted January 2, 2019 Adult biography/adventure: Red Sky in Mourning: A True Story of Love, Loss and Survival at Sea, Tami Oldham Ashcraft Nonfiction: Rethinking School, Susan Wise Bauer Juvenile: Snow Treasure, Marie McSwigan (WWII)-suspenseful Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NorthwestMom Posted January 2, 2019 Share Posted January 2, 2019 One of the best books I've read in years was The House of Broken Angels. The character development was just fantastic. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40603634-the-house-of-broken-angels?from_search=true 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NorthwestMom Posted January 2, 2019 Share Posted January 2, 2019 On 12/31/2018 at 8:37 PM, happi duck said: I loved: You Don't Have to Say You Love Me a Memoir by Sherman Alexie. But right after I read it he was accused of wrong doing and it feels funny to recommend it. I am/was a huge fan of Sherman Alexie, heard him discuss this book on NPR, and read the book as well. I guess it is another reminder that people are complex are capable of both good and bad acts. 😞 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonflower Posted January 2, 2019 Share Posted January 2, 2019 On 12/27/2018 at 1:40 PM, Patty Joanna said: I tend to binge-read an author or a topic. This year, two authors caught my attention. For some reason, there wasn't a lot of biography on the list this year, but my "holds" list at the library indicates that 2019 will amend that. It has typically been my wheelhouse. This year I read Tom Wolfe for fiction and cultural commentary. His book The Right Stuff is ... the right stuff. Such a wonderful book--history, biography, and a ripping good yarn with fantastic writing. I also very much liked and learned a lot from his cultural commentaries From Bauhaus to to Our House, and The Painted Word, which are commentaries on modernism in architecture and art. Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test still eludes me, and Bonfire of the Vanities has not held up over time--I read it a long time ago, and it was excellent in observation of the Roaring 80s, but ... just doesn't hold up. Something weak in the plot, I think, not the cultural observation. The Right Stuff put me on a binge of reading about the Space Program and that was interesting, but no one else's book measured up to Wolfe's. Believe it or not, the movie Apollo 13 tells that story better than 5 books put together. I didn't proceed past the Apollo program. Factoid: my former boss worked on the Apollo 8 program, writing the code that brought the capsule back through the atmosphere. Very dicey. He told me one time that the pocket calculator I had on my keychain was actually more capable than the rooms-and-rooms of computers they had at their disposal, and yet, they went to the moon. So I had an interest in reading about this from a personal angle. The other author was Rod Dreher, starting with The Benedict Option. It is often mis-cast as Chicken Littleism and a call to withdraw from the world, but that casting is by people who read the premise of the book and write a review without reading the book. it is *really* a call to people of faith (whether in God or in ecology or whatever) to *act* like you really believe what you say you believe. It's a good one to straighten and strengthen the spine. The other book, How Dante Can Save Your Life, is autobiographical, about finding his way through a lifetime of family dysfunction through Dante's Commedia--Inferno, Purgatoio, Paradiso. I am not a poetry reader (as he is not, either) and yet this book proved to be the way to healing for him, and he tells a good story, and I got some Dante instruction along th way, and some new ways of thinking about. my own life. The bolded, wow! I love the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon if by chance you haven't seen it. (but I'm sure you have, it's hard to miss). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonflower Posted January 2, 2019 Share Posted January 2, 2019 I had to go back and check my Amazon history to see if it was really all this year, but it is true - we have only read Agatha Christie this year. ! As far as I can tell I got the first one around the first of the year and we never looked back. We've read all the Poirots and most of the Marples. My favorites are the Tommy&Tuppence ones. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonflower Posted January 2, 2019 Share Posted January 2, 2019 10 minutes ago, Patty Joanna said: I had indeed missed it. Thank you for mentioning it! oh, lucky you 🙂 it is a treat. free on amazon prime! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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