Best Books I Read in 2019:
This year I read 69 books. These are what I consider the best of the list (in the order I read the books).
1. Hello Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly (2017) Greenwillow Books
About
a group of young people. There is Virgil, referred to by his family as Turtle, which
he hates, the Tanaka sisters; Kaori and Gen, Kaori working as a psychic with
only two customers; Virgil and Valencia, who is deaf, but wears hearing
aids. Her family doesn’t get her
either. And then there is Bull, who is a
bully and thinks he knows everything, and none of it is necessarily good.
Virgil is in
a special education class with Valencia, whom he has a crush on, and Bull calls
him retard and calls Valencia deafo.
School is
out for the summer, but Virgil feels he has failed – at least at what he wanted
to do before he wouldn’t see Valencia for the next three months. So he
sets an appointment with Kaori who tells him to bring five special stones and
he sets out across the woods.
Valencia has
seen Karoi’s card on the bulletin board at the store and calls and sets her own
appointment.
While Virgil
is crossing the woods, Bull comes upon him and steals his backpack and throws
it down a well – the backpack contains Virgil’s pet guinea pig, Gulliver.
Virgil sees a ladder and tries to climb down to rescue Gulliver but falls from
the last rung and cannot reach it to climb out.
Virgil’s
lateness worries Kaori and when Valencia gets there, she and her sister figure
out that Valencia is who Virgil was wanting to say hello to. They all go
in search of the missing Virgil.
Well written
and deserving of the Newbery Medal.
2. Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman - illustrated by Brett Helquist (2009) HarperCollins
The
story of a boy in the days of the Vikings whose father is away on a raid. He tries to go to the woods with
his father’s axe and cut down a tree. But
the axe is too big for him and when the tree is felled, he cannot get out of
the way fast enough and his leg is shattered, rendering him not useful to his
neighbors. His mother is from Scotland
and was taken by his father in a raid because she was so beautiful. He did not even approach her about marriage until he
taught her enough of his own language to ask her. But he died on a later raid, saving a packhorse who had
swept overboard. When he returned, the
cold and wet had gone into his lungs and he died.
His mother
married another man who did not like his new stepson. So one day, Odd
took a salmon and set out to find his father’s wood cutting hut. He has
to use a staff as a crutch because of his leg, but he makes it to the hut, or
just in front of it, where he sees a fox who clearly wants him to follow.
So he does and comes upon a scene with an eagle sitting on top of a tree and a
bear stuck between two trees with it’s arm buried in a honeycomb. Odd
takes his axe and cuts down the tree behind the bear to free him, hoping the
bear won’t eat him. Instead, the bear, the fox and the eagle follow him
home.
In the night
he hears voices in a discussion and gets up and accuses the animals of
talking. They finally let him know that they are really Odin, Thor and
Loki and have been banished from Asgard by a Frost Giant. Odd agrees to
go with them to get rid of the Giant.
3. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (2008) Macmillan
The
story runs from the days of Henry the first to Henry the second and the
martyrdom of Thomas Beckett.
It follows the life of two little boys, whose father
and mother are killed by soldiers in front of them and rescued by an Abbot, who
raises them. Through their lives as a
Prior of a Monastery and a Priest in the service of royalty (a little bit of
John Jakes here). A stone mason, who
aspires to build a cathedral becomes the other force to move the story,
demonstrating the lofty goals of people who wish the period after Henry I did
not devolve into civil war between Stephen (Henry’s nephew) and the Empress
Maud (Henry’s daughter) known as the Anarchy. Follett
does an excellent job on the history, getting the players and events
correct. The pivotal event for the story
involves a plot to interrupt the succession in hopes for a weak king, the
barons conspired to kill his son, William II, at sea. However, there was a survivor, which they imprisoned to
keep him quiet, in fear that he knew enough to bring them to justice.
In Follett’s story, this man is visited in his cell
by a woman who lives in the nearby forest. She is pregnant when they decide to kill him by hanging under a false
charge. A local knight’s son is a
ruffian whose family successfully accuses the local Earl of being against King
Stephen
4. Warlight by Michael Ondaatje (2018) Knopf
A
post World War II story, covering the life of an English boy whose parents went
to other parts of the world and left their teenage children in the care of
strangers. Even the
leave-taking was a lie, the father leaving for Singapore, the mother staying
until the children’s year in boarding schools could start. Almost at once, the Moth, whom she left in charge, starts
caring for them more like a father than a renter who agreed to watch over them
when home. Then they discover their
mother’s traveling trunk in the basement and know she did not leave to meet-up
with their father. The Moth has a lot of
friends over to their house in London and they get to know them by playing
hooky and running around with the Darter, one of the friends, and getting jobs
to earn money. The boy even has an
affair with a coworker, Agnes, from the restaurant where he works.
Halfway through the book, they are kidnapped, and the
Moth is killed and their mother suddenly appears with the friends and sweeps
the children off to her own ancestral home. But even boarding them in far-away places fails to solve
any problems and the son returns to live with her, learning nothing about when
she was away and the daughter insisting on a school too far away for
visiting. Once the boy graduates
college, he is recruited to work for the government, going through files to
make sure nothing is left that would be incriminating to England. There, he discovers traces of his mother as a spy for the
government with enemies searching for her or her children. The Moth, the Darter, others were watching over the
children to keep them safe from foreign vengeance. Finally, he finds the address of the Darter and visits the
man, to discover he has married and has a 13 year old daughter. On his way out, he sees a family photo, with the Darter and
Agnes and a small girl and realizes that his kidnapping happened just over 13
years ago. But he leaves the Darter in
peace.
5. The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey (2014) Orbit
A
post-apocalyptic science fiction story with a well-thought-out explanation of a
cause for the zombie-like devastation of the world. In Carey’s
explanation, a spore spreads through the human race that started in the Amazon
on the floor, attacking ants, who try to rub it off, but when infected will
climb the nearest tree, attach themselves to a leaf and when the filaments of
the maturing spore finish devouring their host, explode and spread their spores
further along the floor of the rain forest. In the humans, it travels the
nervous system to the brain, replacing the intelligence of the host but
controlling the motor functions. A bite will infect their target.
But what the scientists discovered is that there appear to be children running
around without being attacked but are obviously infected. They capture
some of these, take them to an airbase and then educate them.
This is the
story of how one of the little girls, Melanie, learns how the human race will
continue.
Every child
in the captured group, lives in a cell by themselves. An alarm rings in
the morning and they get dressed and sit in a wheelchair. The door opens
and two soldiers enter, one with a gun aimed at the child. The other soldier
ties the child into the chair and then wheels them into a classroom.
There, the teachers rotate each day, teaching different subjects. One
day, the base is attacked by Hungries (the zombies) herded by the Junkers
(people who are not infected but did not evacuate to the uninfected areas) and
the base falls. Melanie, her favorite teacher, a scientist who was about
to extract Melanie’s brain to inspect under the microscope, the Sergeant in
charge of the military at the base, and a private escape. But their way
from there is not easy.
The Junkers
pursue them. They try to hide but find themselves surrounded by the
Hungries. Melanie finds the Hungries do not see her. They discover
an abandoned mobile research vehicle and make their way inside, but it is
inoperable. The Sergeant works on restoring power and Melanie does recon,
where she discovers a group of children, but they are operating as a savage
tribe looking for protein (people) to eat. The private becomes their
first victim. The scientist traps one of the kids and starts examining
their brain tissue under the electron microscope and leaves the others behind
who were looking for the private. When she comes across a wall of the
fungus, she stops and finalizes notes about the difference in the second
generation of infected hungries, the kids, and realizes that all is lost.
Melanie tricks her into opening the door and then listens to her as the
scientist, knowing she is infected and dying, explains what she has found in
the kids.
6. Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson (2018) Nancy Paulson Books
Part
of a school year of six students passes in a special class in the fifth grade
in a school in Brooklyn. These students know they have been put into the class
because they have learning difficulties. But
it’s not a problem with their intelligence, it’s because they’re all trying to
deal with different events in their lives because of a kind of PTSD due to
things that happened to members of their family.
The story is
narrated by a red-headed, girl whose mother was black and the father is
Irish. They were in a car accident that killed her mother and when the
man went to get help, he returned to find the police already there and has been
imprisoned because he left the scene. Another is hyper-active because she
lost her father. Another is depressed because his father, from the
Dominican Republic, has been taken by the INS.
The teacher
has given them an hour each week in a room by themselves to talk. This is
the story of what they talk about and how that changes their lives.
7. Between Shades of Grey by Ruta Sepetys (2011) Philomel Books
The story of
Lithuanians who, like other people from Estonia, Latvia and Finland, were
displaced by Stalin because they were educated, writers, or teachers, and sent
to Siberia in hopes they would provide slave labor and die. It is a
heartbreaking account from one girl’s perspective of how she lost her mother
and father. Her father was a professor and died in prison for the
crime of having an opinion that was counter to the invading
Soviets. Her mother died trying to keep her children
safe. The enduring strength of those who survived was met when they
finally were able to return home thirty years later only to find their property
and even their names stolen by strangers who threatened to turn them back to
the Soviets for further punishment on the charge of seeking the
truth. These stories are only coming to light in the last twenty
years as time capsules are found in construction sites.
8. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (2018) G.P. Putnam’s Sons (7/24)
Southern Fiction at its
best. This is the story of a little girl living in the Marsh of the North
Carolina coast. Her mother, then her siblings and finally, her
Father leave here to grow-up on her own. She attends school for a day but
runs away back to her home in the marsh, where she can avoid the truant
officers.
She finally makes a friend with a boy who
teaches her how to read. He provides only textbooks about biology and
science. She also reads the book of poetry that her mother left
behind. He leaves her too, goes away to college and does not return to
her. While he’s gone, the local jock woos her and promises marriage and a
new life. She gives him a shell necklace that she made, and he promises
to wear it for the rest of his life. But she finds he is engaged to marry
another girl from the town. So, she rejects him.
The college boy comes back and even though she
will not trust him, he sees her collections of shells and feathers from the
marsh and convinces her to write a book on the subject. She does and it
gets published. With this money, she pays back taxes on her 300+ acre
property inherited from her father.
The local jock, drunk, reminiscent of her
father, traps her in a local lagoon and tries to rape her. She fights
back and escapes but is noticed by some local fishermen.
She’s invited to go see her publisher at a
writer’s conference in Greensboro and takes the bus. Everyone notices
her, because she was dressed a little differently for the time. While
she’s gone, the jock dies, falling off a tower they’ve both been to
before. The mother, retrieving his personal effects, notices the shell
necklace is missing.
The marsh girl is accused of murdering the boy
and goes to trial. But in the end, the jury does not believe there is enough
evidence to convict and she is let free. She never returns to the town
where she was shunned and accused of murder. She does connect with the
college boy and they live a life of research and love. That is not the end of the
story.
9. The Good Lord Bird by James McBride (2013) Riverhead Books
The telling
of John Browns last few years from the point of view of a young negro boy
rescued/kidnapped and mistaken for a girl because of his size. It details
the lives of John Browns’ sons and their faith-free following of the man who
considered himself following God’s will. A feather from the Good Lord
Bird (an extra-large ivory billed woodpecker) is considered good luck, but the
bird does not save Fredrick Brown, who is a little slow, and ends-up dead from
another preacher.
10. Montparnasse by Thierry Sagnier (2019) Apprentice House (11/8)
Life for the artists and expatriates at the end
of The Great War, living and loving in Paris. The next time I visit Paris, I must go to
Montparnasse and see if I can drink up half as much atmosphere as abounds in
Thierry’s masterful rendition.
He paints a vivid portrait of how
amazing and complex a time it was to be in Paris. It was a new beginning for the country after
the war was over. And it was a terribly sad time, so many people faced terrible
losses of life and limb.
We see this through the eyes of
American’s who have chosen to stay; a strong woman who cajoles her husband into
staying, resulting in his becoming rich and possibly in each of them finding
their own way to live and love, and through the eyes of a serial killer, who
lures war widows for their money. And through the landscape of the artists who lived in
Montparnasse at the time.
This novel affects me both as a reader, drinking up the beautiful language and story, and as a writer. I’m encouraged to follow Thierry’s/M. Renoir’s advice and write every day, even if it to describe a lemon, in its myriad aspects.