For some reason, I had a harder time choosing my favorite novels this year than I usually have. After much thought resulting in some books being on the list, then off the list, then back on the list - and much shuffling between numbers one and ten - this is what I ended up with:
1. A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World - C.A. Fletcher - Almost the entire human race has lost the ability to reproduce, and now the Earth’s population has dropped from its peak of 7.5 billion down to less than 9,000 people. Think about that. 9,000 people spread over the Earth’s surface means that surviving families (those few people over the generations who have mysteriously retained the ability to reproduce) can go an entire lifetime only seeing a few people not part of their own family or small tribal group. When strangers do show up, it is not always a good thing for the ones being visited.
2. Unsheltered- Barbara Kingsolver - This is a brilliantly constructed novel of historical fiction that uses an old house to link characters from the 19th century to a group of them from the 21st. It all happens in Vineland, New Jersey, and involves a small group of real-life figures of whom very few readers will likely have heard. But that's part of the brilliance of Kingsolver's story - and it helps to make the author's fictional characters almost indistinguishable from those who lived and breathed in Vineland in the past. It's so easy to get lost in the 19th century setting that I was always a bit reluctant to return to 21st century Vineland.
3. Hunter's Moon - Philip Caputo - This one is a novel about Michigan's Upper Peninsula disguised as a collection of interrelated short stories that present a surprisingly violent view of life in that remote area of the country. A small group of characters appear in more than one of these stories examining the relationships over a number of years between parents and children, husbands and wives, and between longtime friends. Caputo's books set the bar really high a long time ago, but this is one of my all-time favorites of his.
4. Little: A Novel - Edward Carey - As read aloud by the remarkable Jayne Entwistle, Little is an incredible experience. The audiobook's first person narrator is Marie Grosholtz, a tiny seven-year-old who understands very little of the world around her. She does knows, though, that she has inherited her mother’s prominent nose and her father’s jutting lower jaw, a combination of physical characteristics that will forever keep her from being considered an attractive woman. On top of this, Marie is so tiny that it is only a matter of time before she is forced to start answering to the nickname “Little.” The little girl just may be the Forest Gump of historical fiction.
5. The Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead - Elwood Curtis, a young black boy growing up in Jim Crow era Tallahassee in the early 1960s, lives alone with his grandmother because a few years earlier his parents abandoned him like an old beat-up piece of furniture. With his grandmother’s guidance, Elwood has done so well that he is now a high school senior who will soon be attending college. But even hard work cannot always compensate for simple bad luck, and because of one innocent mistake, Elwood is sentenced to time in an infamous juvenile reformatory known as the Nickel Academy before he can make it to college.
6. The Girl in Red - Christina Henry - Red, much to the dismay of her Shakespeare-teaching mother, has grown up on dystopian novels and horror movies. And because she has treated those books and movies as an end-of-the-world instruction manual, she is better prepared than most to help her family survive the mysterious virus that is doing its best to wipe out the human race. She seems, though, to have forgotten the most instructive aspect of all those apocalypse books and movies she’s devoured over the years: surviving the initial life-changing catastrophic event is just the beginning. Now comes the hard part.
7. The Dutch House - Ann Patchett - Fans of multi-generational family sagas are going to love Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House. The story is told over a fifty-year period during which the Cyril Conroy family manages to go from poverty, to riches, back to poverty, and then back to riches again all without really trying very hard to make any of it happen or not happen. Passivity, in fact, seems to be a Conroy family trait – but going-along-to-get-along is not a great way to deal with a sociopathic gold-digger, a lesson Mr. Conroy won't live long enough to learn.
8. The New Iberia Blues- James Lee Burke - This one is proof that an author's advancing age does not necessarily mean that the quality of his work is on the decline. Burke is 82-years-old now, but you would never suspect that if this twenty-second Dave Robicheaux novel were your first experience with the man's books. Dave Robicheaux, the main character of the series, is Cajun, alcoholic, a cop, and a knight in shining armor to those he's sworn to protect from the more powerful. This is probably my favorite detective series of all time.
9. Chances Are... A Novel - Richard Russo - It’s September, and most of the tourists and summer residents have finally packed up and left Martha’s Vineyard for another year. But three sixty-six-year-old men, friends since they first met as college freshmen, have decided to spend a weekend on the island catching up and reminiscing about the experiences they shared in the crazy 1960s. The men are still close friends but have not been together for ten years, so they have a lot to talk about. The real question is how willing they are to share some of those secrets they’ve been hiding from each other.
10. Dark Sacred Night - Michael Connelly - This one is part of the immensely popular Harry Bosch series, but it is a little different in that it introduces a potentially new longterm partnership between Harry and female detective Renée Ballard. What starts out as a rocky relationship between the two cops morphs into one of mutual respect by the end of the book. Detective fiction fans who have not ready Harry Bosch yet have no idea what they are missing. Don't be one of those people. (The very recently released The Night Fire continues the Bosh/Ballard relationship.)
And there you have it, my favorite novels of 2019.
Subject to any last second surprise coming my way this year in the way of nonfiction titles, these are my favorite nonfiction books of 2019. I enjoyed, learned from, and admire each and every one of them:
1. Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee - Casey Cep - an account of the life and bizarre murders committed by the "Reverend" Willie Maxwell. But it is also an in-depth look at what was going on in Harper Lee's life after the success of To Kill a Mockingbird, and how, just when she was most desperate to produce a new book, she hoped to turn Maxwell's story into exactly that. In a number of different ways, this is a very sad book - but it explains a lot that Harper Lee fans have been wondering about for years.
2. Chasing Cosby: The Downfall of America's Dad - Nicole Weisensee Egan - Seldom has a book left me feeling more angry than this one did. It tells in disgusting detail exactly how one of the most despicable human beings in this country got away with rape and sexual abuse for decades because his victims were too afraid to go public and too many people in the know were making too much money off of him to expose Cosby's crimes. That the man still has defenders among his former enablers is astounding - and saddening.
3. The Beatles from A to Zed - Peter Asher - is a wonderfully comprehensive reminder of what made the Beatles such a unique and influential band, a book to be appreciated by younger and older fans alike. But this is a very special book for those fans who were there to buy the singles and albums as they were being delivered in what we then believed would be a string of never-ending hits. As it turned out, “never-ending” would only last from 1964 to 1970. Read this one while listening to the music.
4. The Man from the Train: Discovering America's Most Elusive Serial Killer - Bill James, Rachel McCarthy James -James had a hunch that an infamous family-slaughter that happened in Villisca, Iowa, in 1912 was not a one-time, random event. He felt that the murder was most likely “part of a series of similar events,” and he and his daughter set out to prove it. That they were actually able to name the killer and explain why he was so hard to catch, was as big a surprise to James as it was to anyone else.
5. The Case for Trump - Victor Davis Hanson - When it comes to politics, it all boils down to a question of whom to believe, much less to trust. It's a complicated subject, and it takes a certain kind of writer, one who can neatly slice through all the built-in baloney to reveal the truth in concise, understandable prose, to explain it. Victor Davis Hanson is that kind of writer. He is a California professor and military historian who has written a two dozen books on everything from the military history of ancient Greece to World War II history, and his calm, level-headed approach to today's warped politics is refreshing.
6. Wild Bill: The True Story of the American Frontier's First Gunfighter - Tom Clavin - By the time he was thirty years old Wild Bill Hickok was already a bigger legend to the people of his day than Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, or Kit Carson. And make no mistake about it, those three men were deservedly legendary to the American public. But barely two months past his thirty-ninth birthday, Wild Bill Hickok, whose eyesight was failing, was dead, proving just what a hazard poor eyesight could be for a gunfighter. Wild Bill was the first national celebrity to come along after the Civil War, and this is his remarkable story.
7. The Library Book - Susan Orlean - This one is especially for book and library lovers, a love letter to libraries if ever there was one. More importantly, however, it is a reminder of just how important libraries are to cities and communities all over the world. We would all be much poorer without them, and books like this one (about the fire that almost destroyed the massive Los Angeles library) remind us of how fragile they are and how easily they can be lost. Having lost my own local library to a hurricane just over two years ago, I found parts of this one difficult to read. You don't know what you have until you lose it.
8. On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Journey - Paul Theroux - Theroux has been in some tight spots before during his travels, but his almost foolhardy decision to travel alone into the heart of Mexico has to rank high somewhere among the most dangerous situations he has ever inserted himself into. And the best part about all of this? Theroux went where the roads took him, figuring all the while that it was best to keep moving no matter how bad or how deserted the next road he turned onto might prove to be. This is travel the way it is supposed to happen: no tour busses, no fellow travelers, and no fear.
9. Pat Conroy: Our Lifelong Friendship - Bernie Schein - When it came to exposing his personal life in print, Pat Conroy had little fear. He was so frank about himself and his upbringing that longtime readers could easily see that the man was still carrying emotional baggage from his childhood. Few outsiders, though, could know just how heavy that burden was. Bernie Schein, Pat’s lifetime best friend despite a fifteen-year interruption to their friendship, knew Pat Conroy as well as anyone can possibly know another human being. Here, he takes up where Pat left off.
10. The Point of It All: A Lifetime of Great Loves and Endeavors - Charles Krauthammer - This essay collection includes work from each decade of Krauthammer's work and covers politics, popular culture, history, and for perhaps the first time ever, essays touching on the author's personal life, family, and feelings about those he loved most. The book was completed by the author's son, Daniel, upon Mr. Krauthammer's death, and Daniel's love and admiration for his father is evident.
2019 is already half over so it's time for me to review my reading to this point in order to determine which of the 60 books I've read so far (not all sixty meet the year-published requirement) belong on my first pass of a Best of 2019 Fiction list. As in years past, I'm limiting the candidates to books published between October 1 of the preceding year and December 31 of the current year. That means that there is always the possibility that a book could end up as one of my top ten picks in successive years - but that is yet to actually happen.
1. A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World by Scottish author C.A. Fletcher has so much going for it that I can't imagine it dropping far down the list in the next six months. Get this: it's a combination dystopian, coming-of-age, quest novel that (especially towards the end) throws one curve after another at the reader. You know it's going to be special when an author asks his readers right at the beginning to avoid spoiling the book for others by blabbing too much about it online.
2. Hunter's Moon by Philip Caputo is going to be published on August 6, so you'll have to snag an ARC to read it now. If you can't pull that off, just know that this one is well worth the wait. It's a novel about Michigan's Upper Peninsula disguised as a collection of interrelated short stories that present a surprisingly violent view of life in that rather remote area of the country. I have found that I can always count on enjoying anything new from Philip Caputo, and this is no exception.
3. The New Iberia Blues from James Lee Burke is proof that an author's advancing age does not have to lessen the quality of his work. Burke is 82-years-old now but you would never know that if this twenty-second Dave Robicheaux novel were your first experience with his writing. Dave Robicheaux is a Cajun, an alcoholic, a cop, and a knight in shining armor to those he's sworn to protect from the more powerful. This is probably my favorite fiction series of all time.
4. Speaking of favorite fiction series, Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series is very, very high on my list, too. Dark Sacred Night is part of the Bosch series, but it is a little different in that it introduces a potentially new longterm partner for Harry, one Renée Ballard. What starts out as a rocky relationship between the two cops, morphs into one of mutual respect by the end of the book. Detective fiction fans who have not ready Harry Bosch yet have no idea what they are missing. Don't be one of those people.
5. Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver is a brilliantly constructed novel of historical fiction that uses an old house to link characters from the 19th century to a group of them from the 21st. It all happens in Vineland, New Jersey, and involves a small group of historical figures of whom very few readers will likely have heard. But that's part of the brilliance of Kingsolver's story - and it helps to make the author's fictional characters almost indistinguishable from those who lived and breathed in Vineland in the past. It's so easy to get lost in the 19th century setting that I was always a bit reluctant to return to 21st century Vineland.
6. Louise Penny writes another of my favorite detective series, this one featuring Montreal's Inspector Gamache, and Kingdom of the Blind is the latest in the series. When Armand Gamache receives a letter inviting him to an abandoned farmhouse outside of Three Pines, the former head of the Sûreté du Québec discovers that an elderly stranger has named him as an executor of her will. Armand never heard of the woman, and the bequests are so wildly unlikely that he suspects the woman must have been delusional - until a body is found, and the terms of her bizarre will are suddenly more menacing than they are confusing.
7. Houston Noir, a collection of dark short stories from various writers, all of them set in Houston, is around the fifteenth such collection that I've read in this remarkable series from Akashic Books. Each of the books sets its stories in one particular city or region from around the world, so I've been waiting a long time for Houston to finally get its time in the spotlight - not that the stories themselves are at all flattering. No, these are exactly the kinds of stories a reader expects from any book with "Noir" in its title.
That's it for now, only seven titles. With another half of the year to go, I can't wait to see what books are added to the list, which ones drop off, and what the final order of the ultimate survivors will be. This list is sort of like baseball's mid-season All-Star Game.
2. Unsheltered- Barbara Kingsolver - This is a brilliantly constructed novel of historical fiction that uses an old house to link characters from the 19th century to a group of them from the 21st. It all happens in Vineland, New Jersey, and involves a small group of real-life figures of whom very few readers will likely have heard. But that's part of the brilliance of Kingsolver's story - and it helps to make the author's fictional characters almost indistinguishable from those who lived and breathed in Vineland in the past. It's so easy to get lost in the 19th century setting that I was always a bit reluctant to return to 21st century Vineland.
4. Little: A Novel - Edward Carey - As read aloud by the remarkable Jayne Entwistle, Little is an incredible experience. The audiobook's first person narrator is Marie Grosholtz, a tiny seven-year-old who understands very little of the world around her. She does knows, though, that she has inherited her mother’s prominent nose and her father’s jutting lower jaw, a combination of physical characteristics that will forever keep her from being considered an attractive woman. On top of this, Marie is so tiny that it is only a matter of time before she is forced to start answering to the nickname “Little.” The little girl just may be the Forest Gump of historical fiction.
5. The Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead - Elwood Curtis, a young black boy growing up in Jim Crow era Tallahassee in the early 1960s, lives alone with his grandmother because a few years earlier his parents abandoned him like an old beat-up piece of furniture. With his grandmother’s guidance, Elwood has done so well that he is now a high school senior who will soon be attending college. But even hard work cannot always compensate for simple bad luck, and because of one innocent mistake, Elwood is sentenced to time in an infamous juvenile reformatory known as the Nickel Academy before he can make it to college.
7. The Dutch House - Ann Patchett - Fans of multi-generational family sagas are going to love Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House. The story is told over a fifty-year period during which the Cyril Conroy family manages to go from poverty, to riches, back to poverty, and then back to riches again all without really trying very hard to make any of it happen or not happen. Passivity, in fact, seems to be a Conroy family trait – but going-along-to-get-along is not a great way to deal with a sociopathic gold-digger, a lesson Mr. Conroy won't live long enough to learn.
