Favorite Reads of 2019

Here we are at the end of another year, another decade in fact, and I'm still sharing my reading habits with you. When I'm feeling more sentimental I should probably go back over the last fifteen or twenty years to revisit my choices, see which books have stood the test of time for me and which ones were just fly by night. When I write for "Library Journal" I am reviewing for book buyers around the country and my criteria for what should be purchased often differs from my criteria for a favorite. This list reflects the top ten titles, out of the over one hundred books that I spent time with this year, that truly spoke to me, to my heart and to my gut. The first five, in no particular order are:

"The Disappearing Earth" by Julia Phillips. Here's what I had to say about this one which met all the criteria for me. It also landed on several other "best of"

lists this year. 

In her dazzlingly original debut novel, Phillips imagines a cold, desolate climate inhabited by characters who exude warmth and strength. This cinematic setting is the far eastern Russian peninsula, Kamchatka, where white Russians and indigenous tribes uneasily coexist. In the chilling opening chapter, two sisters vanish after a day at the beach, and though a witness describes seeing them with a man in a shiny black car, the authorities come up empty. Three years earlier in a village many hours further north, a Native girl also disappears, but she is dismissed as a runaway. Phillips cleverly weaves these two incidents through subsequent chapters that cover a year in the lives of her many vividly drawn characters, illustrating the subtle effects of racism on the investigation. Themes of dark and light pervade the narrative. Outsiders, those with darker skin or hair, are blamed for an uptick in crime. Prejudice blinds people to the truth until two grieving mothers, brought together by a photographer with a penchant for nosing into other people's business, manage to see past their differences to their shared loss and courage. 

"Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens. I fought reading this novel for

way too long for my own foolish reasons. Here's what I wrote about why it ultimately captivated me.

Delia Owens is a renowned naturalist and her knowledge of the environment informs every page of this lush, lyrical novel. Set in the marshes of the North Carolina coast, (which smelled and felt much like the mangrove swamps of southwest Florida), this is an exploration of extreme loneliness and disconnection. Owens gives readers something that's so hard to find any more - an original story, a novel that you simply can't put down. Combining poetry, mystery, character analysis, and enduring love amid horrifying abuse.





"Save Me the Plums" by Ruth Reichl. http://readaroundtheworld-sallyb.blogspot.com/2019/03/recalling-how-much-i-love-food-memoirs.html

"The Old Drift" by Namwali Serpell is a large, luscious, multi-generational, historical novel. This is a remarkable debut, one of those books that you can revel in, lost within the language, the characters, and never want to put down.

Set in Rhodesia at the time of those infamous explorers, Stanley and

Livingstone, the story is based upon the building of the first railroad over the great Zambezi River at Victoria Falls but the narrative ranges from the late 1800's to 2024. http://readaroundtheworld-sallyb.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-old-drift.html

And then the novel that helped me recuperate from surgery when I was feeling overwhelmed and vulnerable. Julie Orringer's "The Flight Portfolio," set in and around Marseilles, France, throughout 1940 and 1941, as the Nazis invade and install the pro-Fascist Vichy government. http://readaroundtheworld-sallyb.blogspot.com/2019/06/flight-portfolio-soars.html

My final five best for the year will be coming in a day or two. Stay tuned!