21st Century Literature discussion

Let us know which books you ended 2018 with or are carrying over into 2019!

By luck of library holds becoming available, I'm finishing up Creative Quest by Questlove and Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Thankfully, I'm enjoying both quite a bit.

Wishing you all lots of great reads in 2019!

Closed already - my 147th and final book of 2018 was Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout. Starting 2019 with Saville by David Storey, my penultimate Booker winner...

I plan to close and open with the same book - as having read a Kindle version I want to revisit it in print. A rather overlooked gem Panthers and the Museum of Fire which, were it by a British author, would have been a certainty for the Goldsmith's shortlist. And while waiting for my print copy, reading a book that I had overlooked till now - Jesse Ball's wonderful Census.

Fun link between the two books - the magnificent Thomas Bernhard's Gargoyles.

I can’t believe I have spent part of New Year’s Eve reading a book about taxonomy! But I finished The Naming of the Shrew, which I read primarily because of its title. I will start 2019 with the next in my Richard Powers re-readathon - The Gold Bug Variations.

Tonight I finished The Overstory. What a brilliant and challenging read. I definitely hope to read another Richard Powers next year. Just not sure what. I’m probably going to begin 2019 with a classic. Far from the madding crowd. We watched the movie last night.

Everything Under by Daisy Johnson is the hottest of my current (12/31/18) reads. After a slightly slow, disorienting start, the story has really become most intriguing.

Bone White by Ronald Malfi is also here being read and enjoyed ... maybe a few too many "false alarms" for a book that is supposed to be genuinely frightening, but a good read nonetheless.

And slightly stalled with, but still reading Oola by Brittany Newell ... still accustoming myself to the sheer oddness of the narrator here. Odds are, not getting back to this one until 1/1/19, but anything can happen!

I'm ending the year with The Great Night - thanks to this group's upcoming group read. I'm only on page 20, but it's already hitting just the right spot for my current mood.

I am done for the year and off to drink some champagne. I will finish the upcoming wild card book in a day or 2. I will continue reading books in preparation for Mooskie Madness, but in the next week I will likely turn to some sci fi, as I have quite a bit on my Kindle, which will be my primary book source for the next few days.

I'm still reading The Mathematician's Shiva so it qualifies as my last book of 2018 and first book of 2019.

I ended the year with reading Dark Light by Jodi Taylor and finished by this my 2018 reading Challenge.

I am starting 2019 with reading Vernon Subutex by Virginie Despentes.

Just finished The Sellout by Paul Beatty. Really liked it.

I had 2 books that I thought I could finish in 2018 but am carrying over - Grapes of Wrath and an ARC of The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo.

I started Ransom last night, alerted to its existence by the recent nomination process. Last book finished was Gould's Book of Fish. Happy to see The Gold Bug Variations and Three Farmers in Their Way to a Dance on other lists - the first 2 books I read by Richard Powers, both when new.

Maggie wrote: "I started Ransom last night, alerted to its existence by the recent nomination process. Last book finished was Gould's Book of Fish. Happy to see The Gold Bug Variations and Three Farmers in Their ..."

I've had Gould's Book of Fish on my Kindle forever. How'd you like it, Maggie?

I'm ending the year with Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry and beginning it with Evening in Paradise by Lucia Berlin.

Nadine, if memory serves, Gould’s Book Of Fish contains several pictures (of fish, of course) so the Kindle version might not be the best way to experience it. I say this as a confirmed Kindle fan, by the way.

Gould's Book of Fish is very odd and surreal. From what I remember the pictures weren't essential. I got a copy of First Person for Christmas but it may take a while to get round to that...

I really liked Gould’s... and I also really liked First Person.

There are 2 books I was hoping to finish before the end of 2018 (which didn't happen). My first read books in 2019 will be Washington Black and Go, Went, Gone - both outstanding reads.

Neil wrote: "Nadine, if memory serves, Gould’s Book Of Fish contains several pictures (of fish, of course) so the Kindle version might not be the best way to experience it. I say this as a confirmed Kindle fan,..."

yes my physical copy had laminated plates of the fish. I think it's a great novel.

Yes - I wasn’t really saying you can’t read it on the Kindle, just that it is more pleasurable in physical form. With most books, I don’t care about format, but some are better on paper.

Going out of the old year and into the new with books that are both 21st Century choices. I'm about halfway through Who Fears Death, and today started the audiobook of The First Bad Man.

Glad to hear another rave for Washington Black, definitely on the list!

Neil wrote: "Yes - I wasn’t really saying you can’t read it on the Kindle, just that it is more pleasurable in physical form. With most books, I don’t care about format, but some are better on paper."

Some books absolutely do not travel well onto Kindle. For example, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is useless on Kindle because the formatting is lost. If this is so with Gould's... I'll just check it out of the library. I bought it as a Kindle Daily Deal, back before I realized just how much I prefer paper.

I closed out 2018 with Murder by Matchlight by Golden Age author, E.C.R. Lorac, and started 2019 with The Plotters by Un-su Kim.

Some books that don't work well on a Kindle will still work on an iPad, if you have one.

I was hoping to close out 2018 with Circe but my loan ran out and the library took it back for a hold! So I'll be making some progress with War and Peace while I wait!

War & Peace could keep you occupied for a bit...

I started the new year with some non-fiction, The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery. It's autobiographical, by a neuroscientist who developed brain tumors, with a range of symptoms of mental illness (schizophrenia, dementia, and others). After a few months immunotherapy worked, and she could think normally again, but she could also remember when she hadn't. It is an interesting book to read along side The Shock of the Fall.

I finished 2018 (with 45 minutes to spare!) with Simon Schama's Belonging: The Story of the Jews 1492–1900 and started 2019 with Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child.

Nadine, I really enjoyed listening to Gould's Book of Fish on Audible. The entire book is a narration of a reconstruction of a possibly real - well, you get the idea. Nothing like The Narrow Road to the Deep North, other than a great deal of suffering.

I bridged the year with my f2f book group's selection for January. Finished The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish on New Year's Day (1/1/19). Not bad, although not convinced it is worth the investment of time for its 500+ pages. Its greatest value to me was probably bringing forward the figures of Hobbes and Spinoza, two philosophers about whom I know little. Not that the book tells a lot about them, but it did send me to on-line videos. Still, I was impressed by Kadish's ability to create this two-layered parallel epic of 17th century England Jewish diaspora and current day academic rivalry.

This morning I enjoyed a bit of the Audible version of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. We shall see if it holds up for 15 hours of listening.

I am just finishing up The Human Stain by Philip Roth. I haven't read him in years... and now I'm remembering why I admire him so much. I realize he's not for everybody. Some people find his language too fancy and his subject matter too elitist. I find the language mesmerizing, drawing me deep inside the characters, and his subject matter as encompassing as life itself.

First read of the new year will be The Book Thief, which I have somehow never read.

Maggie wrote: "Nadine, I really enjoyed listening to Gould's Book of Fish on Audible. The entire book is a narration of a reconstruction of a possibly real - well, you get the idea. Nothing like The Narrow Road t..."

Good, this sounds like my cup of tea!

Marc wrote: "War & Peace could keep you occupied for a bit..."

Yes. I've been reading it since October. Just in bursts between other books. It's a great book but very long!

Jess wrote: "Yes. I've been reading it since October. Just in bursts between other books. It's a great book but very long!"

It's on my TBR list, but I don't think 2019 is its year. Glad you're enjoying it!