This wasn’t a bumper year for me, even if my count remains slightly above a book a week (56 to be precise). Too many distractions (think Netflix, Prime, Hotstar, Instagram!), too many hours at work, too many vapid books. It means my favourites list for the year is a pretty short one.
In fiction, Russia was a recurring theme. I loved Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow, a joyous book set in decidedly un-joyous times - Russia in the first half of the 20th century. Benioff’s City of Thieves brings alive the Siege of Leningrad with surprising humour and tenderness without making light of the horror. Anthony Marra’s The Tsar of Love and Techno is very David Mitchellesque - cleverly interconnected stories, going back and forth in geography and time, all intensely touching, laced with a humour so very black.
In non-Russia themed fiction, one of the notables was The Adivasi will not Dance, a set of remarkable short stories of life in the margins in tribal India - essential reading for upper class folks. Another was an old classic, Carson McCuller’s The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Stories - the title story hits you like a sledgehammer and you remain convinced no one can do quiet tragedy like the masters of the American deep south.
Non-fiction had my only two 5 starrers. Jane Hirschfield’s Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World is an incandescently lyrical exposition of how and why poetry works. It’s a keeper for all lovers of poetry. And in the same vein, Kathleen Jamie’s Findings is a gorgeous set of 10 essays - meditations on birds, landscapes, cityscapes, prayer, personal crises. Poetry in prose form, I would call it.
Other non-fiction note-worthies include Olivia Laing’s To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface - part travelogue, part memoir as Laing travels the length of the river Ouse (the one in which Virginia Woolf drowned herself); Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime, a breezy tale of his rags-to-riches story; Theroux’s The Old Patagonian Express, where he remains his curmudgeonly, judgemental self, as entertaining as ever; and last but definitely not the least, Tharoor’s Why I am a Hindu, a book that deeply echoed so much of what I feel about my religion.
And so onto 2019. Maybe this will be the year I finish War and Peace? I can keep hoping...
