Sunday, January 26, 2020

Top Books of 2019

Happy 2020! In 2019 I read 45 books, 29 of which were fiction. Here are my favorites for both fiction and not.

NONFICTION

I read a lot of great nonfiction this year. The one that I’ve recommended the most is Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. This book was about the science behind sleep – and what our bodies and brains are doing while we sleep. It covered everything from how memory is created and strengthened while we sleep to the impact sleep has on illnesses like heart disease and diabetes, all with scientific studies to back up the claims. More than anything, this book gave me license to sleep, and to think about it as equally important to diet and exercise.

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez was also excellent. It talked about how women are not included in most research studies in most fields, which impacts everything from civic decisions to healthcare to furniture design. While she occasionally drifted into a paragraph or two of sarcasm, overall this book was grounded in data and quite eye-opening, even for a well-read feminist.

The comprehensive Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson was recommended to me by someone years ago at synagogue and I finally got into it this year. It chronicled the Great Migration of African Americans to the North from roughly 1916 to 1970. The book both told the general history, as well as followed three specific individuals throughout their lives as they moved from the brutal familiarity of the South to the foreign opportunity of the North and West. While long, this book was not boring at any point – and made me really think about the impact this has had on American politics and race today.

Webster read The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston before I did, a rare occurrence. It was written by a journalist who accompanied a group of archeologists to Honduras to search for a mysterious and famous “lost city.” While it was fun to read along as they make some amazing discoveries, several of them also contract a sometimes-fatal disease, which becomes in and of itself a part of the narrative.

My last nonfiction highlight is a memoir by Steve Jobs’ daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs: Small Fry. Her relationship with Jobs is complex, to say the least, and she does a beautiful job depicting the truth around his behavior and their interactions, both good and bad. She’s honest without being vengeful, though as a reader I could have understood either choice.

Some others I enjoyed include Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge, based on her now-famous blog post of the same title, and memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou that I had shamefully missed until this year.

The Great Pretender by Susan Cahalan continued her personal story about misdiagnosis (chronicled in Brain on Fire) with an examination of a famous experiment where several people went undercover in mental hospitals to prove how poorly mental illness is diagnosed, with unexpected results. Michael Pollan’s How to Change your Mind was a thorough history and current state reporting of how LSD and other hallucinogens can be used to treat mental illness.

Perhaps the most unique book I read this year was On Finding by Andreas Eckstrom, a Swedish futurist who keynoted by company’s conference in 2019. It goes from the very public evisceration of big tech companies who control what information we get, to very personal concerns about his health, without being preachy or meandering. Finally, I enjoyed a predictable romp with Bitcoin Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, which posits that the Winklevoss brothers are headed towards redemption.

FICTION

My fiction game was strong too.

It’s hard to pick a favorite, but I really enjoyed Saints for All Occasions by Courtney Sullivan, which was about two sisters who leave Ireland for the US, and the story of how one becomes the matriarch of a large family while the other becomes a nun.  There were predictable turns of plot, but it was the writing and the characters who made it compelling.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles was charming and complex, despite its being about a man who is living in a hotel under house arrest, and the entire book occurring within its walls.  He befriends a young girl who is living there, and they create an entire universe within the hotel, full of games and tricks and secret hideouts.  It’s a sweet relationship, and one that takes center stage as other things occur in the hotel and in the world that could otherwise darken their lives.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens stood up to the hype. It was beautifully written, with a complex and tough heroine and rich setting, in the marshland of North Carolina. This is the kind of book that stayed with me more for how it made me feel while I was reading it than it did the plot, but certainly ranks as a favorite.

I don’t remember reading anything like Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson recently. This book is about a young woman who finds herself nannying for the eccentric step-children of her college roommate, who is living a storybook life with a beautiful home and blue-blooded politician husband. It had great pacing, and kept me reading, but the true value was in the depictions of who we love and how we love.

Decades, I might suggest, before Hulu made Gilead a household name, I read The Handmaid’s Tale and never forgot it. This year I was delighted to find that though the library queue for The Testaments by Margaret Atwood was hundreds of people long, 2018-me had pre-ordered it, and it arrived on its publication day. It did not disappoint. Taking place 15 years after the previous book, this one brings back several familiar characters, and adds some new ones.  While there are still open questions at the end of The Testaments, the reader’s understanding of the beginnings of Gilead, and the nuances behind the decisions people make, is far evolved.

The List by Martin Fletcher follows a boardinghouse full of refugees in London after WWII.  In particular, two Austrian Jews who are expecting a baby, and who wait daily to hear whether relatives of theirs survived or not. In the face of rising anti-Semitism and anti-refugee sentiment in London, they remain steadfast in their desire to continue building a new post-war life; the parallels are not lost on today’s reader.  Not only does this book tell the story of an individual family, it also tells the story of a generation, and of a universal human experience.

Not just a mystery, but also not just a dystopic novel, The Last by Hanna Jameson was a very imaginative book.  After a set of nuclear bombs destroy several major cities, a small remote resort hotel in Switzerland remains home to a disparate collection of people, some of whom decide to stay put, while others choose to venture out and see if they can return home. For those who stay, a new normal emerges, rationing food, collecting rainwater, and generally keeping busy, until a young girl’s body is found. While the main character seeks the truth about her death, he also struggles with his decision to stay at the hotel, rather than face the aftermath of returning to the real world.

We should all be reading more Native American fiction, and there’s no better book to start with than There, There by Tommy Orange.  In constructing a world where Indians from different walks of life are all descending on a convention-center-sized Powwow, Orange introduces us to several complex characters, who travel there for a host of different reasons.  While a powerful profile of individual Native Americans, the book also succeeds in being a plot-driven story with a worthwhile payoff.

The Atlas of Forgotten Places by Jenny D. Williams satisfied my unrealistic wanderlust. In it, a woman, long retired from aid work in Africa, is thrust back into the world she left as her niece disappears in Uganda, herself an aid worker. Exploring love, devotion, corruption, and the beautiful but complex setting of Africa, this book was a gorgeous read.

Ambitious yet digestible, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi follows a family hundreds of years from tribal life in Ghana to modern-day America. This novel tells the story of two half-sisters, one of whom marries the British Governor, and the other of whom is enslaved by the British. Each chapter follows one of the sister’s lines, and the ways in which they diverge, intersect, and contrast. Beautifully written, with unforgettable characters, this book held my attention strongly.

Some other novels I enjoyed were Peace Like a River by Leif Enger, The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett, and The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, all of which explored family and love; The Line that Held Us by David Job and The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner were strongly written novels about people living on the edge, one decision indelibly altering their lives.

The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende is quintessential Allende, rich in both plot and characters, this time about people living between cultures, while A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum did the same, but for Palestinians living in America.

Finally, as period pieces, Column of Fire by Ken Follett (part of the Pillars of the Earth trilogy) and Through a Glass Darkly by Karleen Koen (part of the Tamworth saga) helped fill the hole in my heart that Downton Abbey used to inhabit.


Enjoy 2020, my readers, and let me know what books you just can’t put down.

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