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I have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions.

Monday, January 06, 2020


The Best Books of 2019

I finished 66 books this year (not too shabby for me) with just 1 (surprising) DNF. As usual I’ll split the Best’s between Fiction and Non-fiction with the Best of the Best in each category in BOLD. At the end of that I’ll do a summary and give my feelings on the year just gone.

Fiction: 

The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie
Replay by Ken Grimwood
The Watcher in the Shadows by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
House of the Hanged by Mark Mills
Destroying Angel by Richard Paul Russo
The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin

Non-Fiction:

The Shortest History of Germany by James Hawes
Peacemakers – Six Months that Changed the World by Margaret Macmillan
Why We Sleep – The New Science of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
A Higher Loyalty – Truth, Lies and Leadership by James Comey
Killers of the King – The Men who Dared to Execute Charles I by Charles Spencer
Chasing Che – A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend by Patrick Symes
Life 3.0 – Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark
The Vanquished – Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917-1923 by Robert Gerwarth
The New Silk Roads – The Present and Future of the World by Peter Frankopan
Suffragette – My Own Story by Emmeline Pankhurst
Voyages of Delusion – The Search for the Northwest Passage in the Age of Reason by Glyn Williams
Fractured Lands – How the Arab World came Apart by Scott Anderson
The Arab Uprisings – The People Want the Fall of the Regime by Jeremy Bowen
Secrecy and Privacy in the New Code War by Steven Levy
The Deluge – The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order (1916-1931) by Adam Tooze

So, not a great year for Fiction (at least numbers wise) but another really good one for Non-fiction and not just History this time (although as usual the list is History heavy). I am disappointed in the gender disparity but I’m working on that. I doubt if I’ll be restrictive to the extent of forcing a 50/50 split but I’ll try to increase the percentage of women authors. Saying that, two of the best books of the year (Silent Spring and Suffragette) are both by women and are excellent and influential in their own fields. I was pleased with the publication date spread this year – from 1914 to 2019 and not just at the two extremes but spread throughout the century with a few clumps in the 1950’s, 1970’s and around the Millennium. The other success of the year I think has been my imposition of Probabilistic Reading – meaning that whenever I finish a book I roll a dice (literally) to decide if I drop in a random read at that point. Only a couple made it into my Best List but I’ve had some nice surprises along the way. As mentioned previously with my upcoming Retirement I anticipate the numbers of read books to increase in 2020. I think that 75 should be a pretty safe bet at this point. Ultimately I’m aiming at 100 a year but that’ll take a bit of doing I think. So, here’s to a new year of reading!   

3 comments:

mudpuddle said...

some fine tomes, there... interesting choices

Stephen said...

Still a few in here I want to read, especially Fractured Lands!

CyberKitten said...

@ Mudpuddle: I like to keep things interest - especially to keep my butterfly mind happy.

@ Stephen: Oh, I have LOTS of Middle East reading coming up!