The Best Books I Have Read This Year

When it comes to literature, I love to read it all. I'm not going to lie to you, I spend more hours reading than everything else. I spend a few hours in the morning, a few hours at night (and when I say a few I really mean a lot) and I enjoy whatever I'm reading. If I don't like it, I don't buy it. I really know what I like when it comes to literature and I binge read certain things that I want to read. For example: sometimes I like to binge on true crime, sometimes I want to read paperback horror and other times I love modern classics (which I'm binging on as we speak).

The Best Books I Have Read This Year

There are many books I have loved this year and I really wanted to make this list longer than twenty but I think this is good to produce a summary of literature that I have found the most profound and interesting. Be that as it may, you must also understand that this is going to be a list of varying books and that I'm not just going to include me re-reading "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and "Interview with the Vampire" over and over again. These are books that I read for the first time this year, not personal favourites over the last decade and a half.

Let us have a look at my list then. They are in no particular order:

20. When the World Spoke French by Marc Fumaroli

I loved this book. It was about how people communicated in French in order to discuss important topics like philosophy and literature. Including letters to and from Catherine the Great and Voltaire, this book offers so much to the reader in terms of how people wrote so formally to each other to how deeply in love they were with their crafts. The book is written perfectly with a great introduction provided to tell you about everything you would need to know.

19. James Baldwin: A Legacy by Quincy Troupe

Out of all the books other people have written about James Baldwin, this one has to be the very best I have read because it is just so many people remembering him just after he passed away. It is like they are all at his funeral discussing why he was so great and it is written through memory, through his works and through his personality - what he was known for and what he will be remembered for. There are so many different essays in this book I just could not pick a favourite (though, the one that is about my favourite Baldwin novel, "Just Above My Head" would probably be near the top).

18. Revenge by Yoko Ogawa

Short stories that are all inter-connected through tiny bits and pieces, through symbols and situations that are small and often seen to be meaningless until you see it again in another story. I think that this is possibly one of the smartest books I have read this year and honestly, I do believe that more people need to read it to appreciate how great it is.

17. The Wreck of the Mary Deare by Hammond Innes

This is not just a dark story about a ship in the middle of the ocean, this is also a criminal-level thriller in which there are bunches of missing information, needing to be pieced together throughout the text. I'm not going to lie, I was not going to even bother reading this book at first because the first page or so is not really that interesting, but as you become more involved with the other ship they discover and deeper into the story, you start to realise that there is a reason for all of this and you cannot get away.

16. The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld

Possibly one of the best books I have ever read about childhood trauma and really, I cannot express how upset I was after reading this book. It was just very saddening to see a young child go through so much in such a short time and then, you have to decide that what you have is closure or not at the end. It's a beautiful book.

15. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J Gaines

I cannot believe that I only read this book this year. I honestly waited far too long because it is wonderful. It is about a man wrongly convicted of a crime and sentenced to death and the fact that he has to come to terms with becoming a man before he does. Being taught by another man means that at least he will have someone to talk to and on the whole, there is a lot to be learnt simply from one person to another.

14. Chroma by Derek Jarman

I love Derek Jarman's books and I only read "Chroma" this year. It is about colours and how colours work and are associated throughout literature, film and other mediums. I think that Derek Jarman is one of the most articulate men in all of history alongside James Baldwin and Oscar Wilde. There is so much we could learn from him and just by reading his books, you enter his world.

13. The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov

A science experiment gone wrong, this funny and very strange in the sense that it is actually a parable and an extended metaphor for how the Russians were doing during Mikhail Bulgakov's time. I think that one of the best things about this book is the way in which Bulgakov writes about the woes of this Frankenstein-like experiment. I have to say that it is my favourite Bulgakov book - yes, Master and the Margarita is good but "Heart of a Dog" is better.

12. The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

I did a huge review on this one some time ago when I had spent a long time reading and annotating it. One thing I realised is that there were actually some pretty good works by David Foster Wallace as previously I was not overly interested in "Infinite Jest" or "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men". However, this unfinished text by David Foster Wallace, written just before he died was something far deeper than anything I have ever read by him.

11. Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman

Really like a modern day "War and Peace", Vasily Grossman's novels are pretty Tolstoy-esque but no more than this one - "Life and Fate". When I read this book, one thing I noticed more than anything were the funerary scenes. They were as intense as when I watched "Dr. Zhivago" and saw the woman buried in purple. It was both beautiful and yet tinged with sadness, tragedy and a melancholy mood that was embedded deep in the text.

10. Jar City by Arnaldur Indriðason

This was a series I was told to read by a friend and I ended up reading all of the books in about two weeks. I'm not going to lie, the first book was possibly the best. After I read this book though, I was pretty disturbed. I don't think I put it down for the whole time I was reading it and purposefully read it at a time when I knew I would not be disturbed. It is absolutely immersive.

9. Chasing the Light by Oliver Stone

I have a signed edition of this so you can be jealous. Oliver Stone's autobiography up to making "Platoon" is basically one of the best stories in Hollywood history. Oliver Stone comes back from Vietnam and then, like a disconnected man with slight PTSD, rambles around trying to do anything and everything throughout America. Finally, he tries to write a screenplay. And the rest is history.

8. American Fire by Monica Hesse

About an arsonist working across America, this non-fiction text is brutal and honest about the expulsion of the natural landscape by fire. The criminal behaviour is first and foremost in this text with absolutely nobody knowing who was committing these crimes, seemingly at random and hardly anyone was hurt. It was the principle though - their lives were being lost in a more metaphorical sense. Their homes were disappearing in the dead of night.

7. The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde

One of the things I love to read about is stories about people in difficulty. Now, this may sound strange but Audre Lorde's Cancer Journals are just a small section of the writings by her that explain her struggles as a Woman of Colour in America. Now working with cancer, she must come to terms with what this means in the context of her work and it is something extraordinary as a result.

6. A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir

About the slow deterioration and final death of her mother, Simone De Beauvoir seems to pour her heart out on the page and honestly, it is the most beautiful thing I have ever read by her. She has so much emotion and raw feeling in it that you cannot help but just cry at some points. This relationship is something important and full of endearment so you can understand each and every emotion however much you think it is exaggerated.

5. The Box Man by Kōbō Abe

About a literal man living in a box, this book deconstructs the modern world as it places us all in our own little cardboard boxes and hyper-analyses our behaviours. The box men in this book are often alone with one developing an adoration for a nurse. It is one of those books that simply makes you feel uncomfortable and unsettled. Just don't read it whilst eating.

4. The Flood by J.M.G Le Clezio

About a suicide and the communication of it, this is possibly Le Clezio's greatest I have read since Terra Amata. "The Flood" describes the suicide of a young woman and how this one death may come to either change the course of history or not change anything at all. I especially love the one passage about how this youth will be trapped in time, like you could not picture them any other way. It is a brilliantly written book.

3. Furious Hours by Casey Cep

This book is about the history of a small town in Alabama which would come to influence a resident by the name of Harper Lee to write "To Kill a Mockingbird". Filled with everyone from publishers to family to Truman Capote, this book really fills in all the contextual blanks and tells a heartbreaking and heartwarming story about a woman who wanted to express the history of her home in a way that everyone could relate to at the time.

2. The Late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello

This book is about a man who is pronounced dead who returns to reclaim and recreate his identity. I'm not going to lie but this book really surprised me because I didn't think I was going to like it. It was a brilliantly existential novel filled with mass amounts of identity crises and a character that enjoys talking to himself. Published by the NYRB, I hope more people read this underrated classic.

1. 2666 by Roberto Balaño

One of the best books I have read this year, there is a great connection made between the criminal and the liberated. I cannot express how confusing this book seems at first and honestly, when you really think through it, taking your time and putting everything into perspective, it makes perfect sense. About a murderer, reporters and many other characters, there is a great amount of puzzle to this book and that's what I absolutely love about it.