Litwit Lounge discussion

Here's our annual thread where we invite you to look back on the year just past, and single out a few of your top reads for special mention. Personally, I usually try to pick my top five, which is generally a challenge --and it was this year, too, because there were so many great reads to pick from! I do have my five picked out; but because of the lateness of the hour, I'll wait and post them tomorrow. :-)

Okay, without further ado, my top five favorite reads this year were:
1. Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton.
2. A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt.
3. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler.
4. Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott.
5. Shadow of the Lariat: A Treasury of the Frontier (ed. by Jon Tuska).

Hmmm! Since 4 of these favourites would be rereads, I'm sticking to my top 6 new reads:

Ghosts And Scholars: Ghost Stories In The Tradition Of M.R. James ed. Richard Dalby and Rosemary Pardoe - short supernatural stories by various authors, (English)

Dodger by Terry Pratchett -humorous novel based on real life Victorians and fictitious ones, (English)

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk - astonishing literary novel, (Polish)

Dickens and Mesmerism: The Hidden Springs of Fiction by Fred Kaplan - thought-provoking original lit crit plus bio.,

Eelie and the big cats by Billy Arjan Singh - ground-breaking study of animal behaviour (India)

The Test by Sylvain Neuvel - genre under spoiler (view spoiler)[social sci-fi (hide spoiler)] (Canadian).

Reads this year that stood out for me are:
My dip into The Complete Major Prose Plays. I read the complete twelve play cycle earlier, and this year revisited some of the highlights. Ibsen had an unflinching view of society and how it drives individuals in ways they can't control.
Two books I read as part of my investigation of Eastern religion and philosophy:
The Analects of Confucius, which is not religious in a Western sense since Confucius has nothing to say about the existence of God or the immortality of the soul. Instead this book is a guide to how people can live together in a society without laws or punishment.
And The Bhagavad Gita a New Verse Translation a deeply mystical poem that explores the nature of the soul.

I was lucky- read 16 books that I gave top ratings, including 1) Address Unknown (1938), 2) Sky Burial, 3) Reunion by Ulhman, 4) The Rent Collector, and 5) The Wizard of the Kremlin!

A book last year that stood out for me was Ulysses. I started reading it then switched to listening to the RTE radio production from 1982. Still digesting the experience!