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Must Read: The Top 19 Books Of The Year
After a prolific reading year, I’ve reviewed them all and found the top 19 books that really stood out. Many of us avid readers come up with year-end books, and if you’re stuck on what to read or bored, here are my best book recommendations for what to read this year.
The Days Of Abandonment
Top 19 Books Author: Elena Ferrante
The Days Of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante is set in a stuffy Naples apartment in the days after being left by her husband. This novel sees our narrator teetering on the precipice of sanity. It’s creepy, uncomfortable, and claustrophobic, and the reading experience is a lesson in atmosphere by the genius Ferrante.
My Phantoms
Top 19 Books Author: Gwendoline Riley
My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley: I’ve read many books about mothers and daughters this year, but My Phantoms is the most heartbreaking. It depicts a strained and complicated relationship told through vignettes over many years. It is so viscerally realistic that it’s hard to look away from.
Lapvona
Top 19 Books Author: Otessa Moshfegh
Without a doubt, one of the strangest books of the year, Lapvona, reads almost like an upside-down fairy tale. Instead of true love and happy endings, this book deals only in disgust and horror – and yet, it’s as addictive as anything we know to be bad for us.
Department of Speculation
Top 19 Books Author: Jenny Offill
Jenny Offil’s distinctive writing style is often imitated but never quite duplicated. Department of Speculation is told through short, seemingly random blocks of text, which beautifully reflects the randomness and hyperactivity of thought as we experience, alongside our narrator, the breakdown of a relationship.
The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking
Top 19 Books Author: Olivia Laing
Olivia Laing’s nonfiction has been my wonderful discovery this year. This particular book, about why the most iconic American writers struggled with alcoholism, was a standout. The book perfectly balanced salacious storytelling with tender and sweet tributes to the men behind the literature.
Motherhood
Top 19 Books Author: Sheila Heti
While experimental writing can stumble into ‘annoying’ territory, Sheila Heti’s Motherhood managed to do something offbeat that didn’t seem overly pretentious. The book explores Heti’s musings on becoming a mother, told through a conversation with a flipping coin. It sounds weird, but it is wonderful.
Milk Teeth
Top 19 Books Author: Jessica Andrews
I remain a sucker for a book about a twenty-something girl struggling to figure out her life, and Jessica Andrews has created an exemplar of the genre in Milk Teeth. The novel explores eating disorders, loneliness, career fatigue, relationship drama, and much more, all with a wonderfully lyrical writing style.
Lord Jim at Home
Top 19 Books Author: Dinah Brooke
Reissued this year with Daunt Books, Lord Jim at Home was first published in 1973 to much furore, thanks to its brutal takedown of the upper classes. It’s a difficult read but a rewarding one.
The Employees
Top 19 Books Author: Olga Ravn
Having read over 365 books this year, I rarely find a book I can’t compare to anything else, but The Employees is just that. An incident on a spacecraft is regaled to management through a series of employee reports, and that’s just the start of the strangeness.
Tennis Lessons
Top 19 Books Author: Susannah Dickey
Sometimes, it’s important to remember that being a girl can be gross. Susannah Dickey portrays this perfectly in Tennis Lessons, allowing the foulness our narrator feels inside a place to be expressed to the world.
All’s Well
Top 19 Books Author: Mona Awad
Chronic illness meets Shakespeare in Mona Awad’s bizarre campus novel. We see a pained and sick narrator attempt to perform a production of All’s Well That Ends Well until a magical life swap disrupts everything into chaos.
I Have Some Questions For You
Top 19 Books Author: Rebecca Makkai
I’m always partial to a murder mystery, but the way Makkai subverts the true crime genre is masterful. You’re led by the nose through a series of false conclusions, leaving you wondering if there’s any morality in the search for truth.
Sorrow and Bliss
Top 19 Books Author: Meg Mason
Writing about mental illness is never easy and often falls into a sanitized and prettified trap. In one of the saddest but most beautiful books I’ve read this year, Mason depicts mental illness in all its horrific and heartbreaking glory.
Brainwyrms
Top 19 Books Author: Alison Rumfitt.
I’m partial to gross literature. However, one particular scene in Brainwyrms still gives me the creeps to this day. Rumfitt generously conflates real-life parasitic worms with the pernicious forces of transphobia for a horror novel that’ll stay with you – in all the worst ways.
Strong Female Character
Top 19 Books Author: Fern Brady
Brady’s memoir about growing up as an autistic woman genuinely feels like an important book. It is gentle, tender, relatable, and hilarious – as you’d expect from a talented comic.
Wet Paint
Top 19 Books Author: Chloe Ashby
Another depressed young woman book, this time dealing with loss and grief. The hedonism and lack of care the narrator feels are both recognizable and tragic yet still offer glimmers of hope.
Bellies
Top 19 Books Author: Nicola Dinan
Too often, love stories feel saccharine-sweet. Bellies depicts the darkness and tragedy of a first love with thought-provoking commentary on gender identity, privilege, and loss.
Penance
Top 19 Books Author: Eliza Clark
Penance is another book that beautifully subverts the tropes of true crime. Tumblr gore blogs, school shootings, town lore, and unscrupulous journalism are all picked apart with scepticism that leaves me questioning my enjoyment of the book.
Death Valley
Top 19 Books Author: Melissa Broder
I’m a Melissa Broder stan, and seeing her take on a more sentimental story with her typical inimitable wit and silliness was one of my highlights of the year. Who else would have her narrator confront her relationship with her dying father by becoming trapped inside a giant cactus?
