Best Books of 2019

This list is in no particular order.

Breakfast on Pluto by Patrick McCabe: I’m sure many of you are familiar with the film version of this book. A transvestite’s quest for love, sometimes familial, and sometimes more, with a backdrop that includes war in Northern Ireland. I don’t think the film really captured the hilarious, and a little bit naughty, underbelly of the sorrow in this story. While written in a stream-of-consciousness style I found this to be a very enjoyable, and quick read. It definitely made me put Patrick McCabe on the list of authors I need to read more of.
Hot Milk by Deborah Levy: Surreal, sensual, and dream-like. A story of a manipulative hypochondriac and her daughter who has put her life on hold to travel to a doctor in Spain who has the potential to accurately treat her mother. The reader can fill in what gaps there are in the storyline on their own, but that’s not exactly the point in this novel. It’s not always about the end result, but the journey there. The narrator had a very rich inner life, which made for some heavy symbolism and open interpretation throughout the novel. I don’t think I had ever read a mother/daughter dynamic story quite like this before.
The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris: Ah, I do love a good work of scientific nonfiction where I not only learn a thing or two, but I’m entertained as well. Lindsey Fitzharris delightfully explains that we have Joseph Lister to thank for teaching those in the medical profession of Victorian England that germs really do exist, and they are a major problem. However, his antiseptic theories weren’t taken seriously at first. In a world where surgery was a last resort for most, doctors were admired for their quick handiwork with a scalpel and often moved directly from the autopsy to the operating table, ether was just beginning to be in use, and many thought infection came from the air which made it unavoidable, nobody believed in the threat of microscopic germs. While this made for a somewhat gruesome read in the descriptions of the medical practices and untreatable infections of the time, Fitzharris does a good job of keeping the reader informed and entertained despite the harshness of the subject matter.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh: I read Moshfegh’s Eileen a few years ago, and while I enjoyed it I wasn’t blown away. My Year of Rest and Relaxation did just the opposite for me. Moshfegh takes a very unconventional look at mental health. With her privileged, unlikable, and yet somehow very identifiable nameless narrator she fetishizes sleep. More accurately the sleep that’s often times desired when you’re suffering from depression. The nameless narrator wants just that. She concedes to sleep for a whole year, then things might finally be better, right? A sort of hibernation to activate a personal reset button. She finds a sketchy psychiatrist to dispense a number of pharmaceutical prescriptions to her, and floats through her daily life on high, and amid blackouts, often not remembering what’s happened until she comes to on the other side.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Certainly not the easiest read on this list, but so worth it. I’m not completely convinced that a good chunk of this novel didn’t go over my head, but boy did I enjoy the ride. I think that was the trick in getting through this novel. While you are provided with a family tree at the beginning of the book, I eventually gave up trying to fully differentiate between all of the characters who shared a name and just let the saga unfold as it would. Epic, circular, wonderful, perverse, magical, tragic. . .you name it. One Hundred Years of Solitude is all of those things and more.
Dracula by Bram Stoker: Mein Gott! I was not expecting to enjoy Bram Stoker’s classic as much as I did. Terror, excitement, a lunatic, an intelligent woman, sexual undertones, and even a cowboy! A thriller through and through.
Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins: Tom Robbins touches on the second coming of Christ with hilarity, drugs, a hot dog stand, a flea circus, a baboon, etc. While this had a little bit of a dated counterculture feel to it, I enjoyed that Robbins employed the idea that when it comes to religion, especially organized religion, we should open our minds to other possibilities. Especially the possibility of change.
Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders: Now, I’m a big fan of George Saunders, but it’s his more recent writing endeavors that grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and wouldn’t let me go even months after reading them. While I wouldn’t recommend this collection of short stories and a novella to someone who has never read Saunders before, I did enjoy this. It gave me a glimpse at what Saunders started with. He certainly has a style and voice of his own that he’s sculpted over the years.
The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor: Guilt, death, fear of god, an air of loneliness, and the resistance to a changing world are what I think of when I think of Flannery O’Connor. She’s also a little humorous too! While I had read my fair share of O’Connor short stories before I picked up this tome, it was a treat to revisit them and experience new (to me) ones. If you’re a fan of A Good Man is Hard to Find, please do yourself a favor and read the rest of O’Connor’s repertoire. You won’t be disappointed.
Little Weirds by Jenny Slate: I’ve fallen in love with Jenny Slate’s tweets like many others over the years. This short collection of essays (Although, I read somewhere that someone used the term micro-essays to described them. They are very trim reads after all.) proves that she’s a mighty writer on the page no matter the length or number of her sentences. Slate makes it beautiful and profound to be vulnerable. Beautiful and shameless to want to be loved. Her writing is poignant and funny with a little bit of magical realism thrown in.