This has been a strange year, in many ways and it has affected my reading patterns profoundly. Although I have been reading voraciously, I have been reading way more newspapers and journals like the Atlantic or The Economist trying to keep up with the crazy, chaotic news cycles. This has distracted me from the books I usually read, so my count for this year is only 61, but I have made those books count!

In first place for this years best books are two books that I have found both profound and moving. The first is Warlight by Michael Ondaajte which is story about a man investigating his strange and rather traumatic childhood during WWII  and finding that his memory is less than reliable and the facts more troubling than he anticipated. Although the story line is intriguing and interesting it is Ondaajte’s lyrical writing that is compelling. This is a book to savor and enjoy.

The second, The Power  by Naomi Alderman, comes in as a close second with its intriguing feminist message in this Year of the Woman. This story about women who evolve a strange power, making them more powerful than men, imagines how profoundly that would change society and women themselves. Her exploration of this shift in power dynamics is both prescient and cautionary.

Two other books that I really enjoyed were News of the World and Exit West, both of which talk about that profound sense of loss you experience when you are uprooted from all you know.  In News of the World by Paulette Jiles, which is set in the post Civil War West, we follow the plight of a young girl who was taken by the Indians several years earlier and has now been “rescued” and must be returned to her relatives who live in south Texas.  A former soldier and now an itinerant news reader takes on the task of taking her back to her relatives. Their adventures and the unique bond which they form is the focus of the this wonderfully evocative story.

Exit West by Moshin Hamid explores what it means to leave your home, culture, religion and country. Set in a nameless country in the Mid-East where the government is slowly dissolving into chaos, two young people decide they must leave, but they must leave their families and all they know behind. The story follows these two and we see how they either flourish in the new and different world they move to, or search for the known comfort of what they have left behind.

Finally two fun books that I thoroughly enjoyed! The first is Hope Never Dies by Andrew Shafer, which is about Vice-President Joe Biden and former President Barak Obama who join together to solve a case involving a mysterious death on the Amtrak train line just outside of Wilmington, Delaware. This was one of those books where I kept giggling out loud and bugging my long suffering husband by reading excerpts that I thought were particularly funny.

The second is the Crazy Rich Asian trilogy by Kevin Kwan, which is a must read for many different reasons. First the descriptions of all the mouth watering food, then its delicious, snarky, gossipy writing style, and most importantly the wonderful complicated characters who seem to arrive fully formed onto the page. This was a wonderful, luscious surprise. Just a note of caution: you will crave Asian food while reading these books!

I hope you enjoy these and many other great books in this new year of 2019!