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If I only read one single book for this year (2019)
Peas
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What would you recommend
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Give me your personal favorite
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Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
it documents all the sinnin'
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My four (why four? who knows) favorite books that I read this year were The Song of Achilles, The Mere Wife, The Grip Of It, and What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours. Of those, The Grip Of It is probably the most approachable - it's an electric fast horror novel about a haunted house and/or a broken relationship. The Song of Achilles requires some knowledge of Greek mythology (mostly the Iliad), and The Mere Wife similarly works best if you've brushed up on Beowulf recently. Which, I mean, those are also very good books, you could read those. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is not tied to any specific mythology (unlike... everything else by Oyeyemi), as a short story collection themed around keys, but can still get a bit dense and weedy with its allusions at times.
Of course none of those came out this year, because I tend to take a few to get around to books. If you wanted that, I would recommend Mostly Dead Things, which might be the only book I read that was published this year but I swear that faint praise isn't intended as damnation.
My most anticipated are probably... Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson, which is a book with a title that is a portmanteau between Frankenstein and kiss and that might be one of the most laser targeted things I've ever seen aimed at me; Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi, because I've at least liked all of her other books and find the way that she works with fairy tales really exciting; and maybe Carmen Maria Machado's In The Dream House, a book I haven't decided if I'm going to read yet because I'm not normally into memoirs but I suspect that her version of a memoir might be a little bit different than what I am expecting.
You should read Guards! Guards!
Gotta say I saw the ending coming from a mile, also it's kinda hard to suspend my disbelief for the stuff which happens right before the end
edit:
I just googled the recommendations and I suppose using kindle would be the way to go for the books price and convenience wise? It also seems to have most of the stuff currently mentioned in this thread so far
edit: I am seeing a lot of Terry Pratchett, I guess he's pretty popular among you folks
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(but seriously, Don Quixote is surprisingly readable for a novel first published in 1605, and the Grossman translation is, in my opinion, the best way to read it in English)
I think when I learned that fact was when I first really thought about what the word "novel" meant
then I thought oh okay you have stories that are just like enumerations of things that happened and stories with an omniscient point of view narrator where you get to see the character's thoughts on top of their dialogue. A novel.
Also a bunch of the medieval romances are essentially novels - you see a lot of them written as being allegedly history (or even current events), but we're talking about a form of mythic history that calling even historical fiction would be generous at best
Meddling Kids is a good choice for that though.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/1JI9WWSRW1YJI
I'll buy Don Quixote as the first spanish novel, though.
Yeah, Tale of Genji would make sense.
There's some Greek history stuff that I think might be one of the biggest potential quibbles there, but that all has the whole "written as a history" problem. Like, the Alexander Romance is almost certainly ninety five percent fiction, but it alleges to be a history of Alexander the Great, so should we consider it a very bad attempt at history or an attempt at a novel in a world that didn't have the language to describe what a novel was yet?
yeah I've always thought it's a bit of a spurious and fuzzy definition, but it is fascinating to me that a world existed comparatively recently that didn't really have an exclusive concept for "long-form fictional narrative".
Characters in Victorian children's literature are always getting on people's cases for reading "novels" instead of like, Pilgrims Progress or whatever and I'm like how the FUCK do you make the distinction?
First of all, it's a great booster shot for your skills in information literacy and critical thinking. The lies are coming fast and quick these days, and the liars are getting better at it every day. This book has many pointers about how statistics are used and how best to interpret them on the fly.
Second, whatever else happens over the next few decades, it will involve a great deal of change. In times of flux, it is important to hold the gains we have already made firmly in mind, so we don't let the bastards tear them down while our attention is divided.
And third, the progress outlined in this book is real and present in the lives of billions of people, and if we don't take time to appreciate it we won't have the strength to carry on, or know what to fight for next.
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Depends on the book and how dedicated you are to finishing it in time. But it should be doable for sure.