hello welcome back to Codexly my name
is Lee and this is a channel all about
books
so last week I revealed the worst five
books that I read in 2019 and in truth
it was much easier to choose the five
worst books than it was to choose the
five best books and that's not because I
had too many bad books to choose from in
fact it was the opposite problem I read
a lot of good books in 2019 and it was
really difficult narrowing that down to
my top five so before we begin counting
down the top five here are some of the
honorary mentions the ones that didn't
quite make it into the that list but are
definitely worth a mention let's start
with the nonfiction titles and first and
foremost in that list is Heidi
Adrizzone's excellent biography of
Belle da Costa Greene which is called An
Illuminated Life if you haven't heared
of Belle da Costa Greene then I urge you
to track down this book and read about
this extraordinary woman of color who
pretty much single-handedly ran JP
Morgan's private library for about half
a century it really is an extraordinary
story albeit one that quotes a little
too liberally from love letters in Adrizzone's
telling of it for my liking
another nonfiction work that meant a lot
to me this year was The Year of Reading
Dangerously by Andy Miller his humorous
account of how he changed his
reading habits for the better
featuring an ingenious comparison of
Moby Dick and The Da Vinci Code now I've
given Stephen King a pretty hard time in
my five worst books that I read in 2019
by including not one but two of his
books in that list now I'm gonna talk
about King in my top five but I also
want to mention an early nonfiction work
that he wrote called Danse Macabre maybe
it's just me but there's nothing quite
like reading someone writing on a topic
about which they're both extremely
passionate and extremely knowledgeable
and if anyone qualifies on those two
counts when it comes to horror it's
Stephen King two nonfiction audiobooks
that I really enjoyed but didn't quite
make it to my top 5 were Invisible Women
by Caroline Criado Perez and Between the
World and Me by
Ta-Nehisi Coates read by their respective
authors there are many more books I
intend to read about the neverending
problems of sexism and racism in the
world but these are two at least that I
read in 2019 that I really enjoyed and I
highly recommend I have three works of
fiction that I want to include in my
honorary mentions and first up is Tuf
Voyaging by George R R Martin and I
highly recommend this if you like your
sci-fi novels with a dose of ecological
awareness whether or not you like
Martin's more famous books this is a
really interesting sci-fi with a very
unusual protagonist The Age of Innocence
by Edith Wharton nearly made my top 5
but not quite it's still an excellent
book this is probably the only classic
work of literature that I read in 2019
and I thoroughly enjoyed it it's a
poetic and melancholy work that I'll be
rereading just as soon as I get a chance
to do so
finally for my honorary mentions I have
to include a book that I've just
finished within the last few days and
that is Rufus Marigold by Ross Murray
Ross is a New Zealand based illustrator
who suffers from crippling social
anxiety and he channels the everyday
horrors of this into the primate at the
center of Rufus Marigold as someone with
a lifelong affliction of social anxiety
myself I related to many of the
feelings expressed in this work and it
was just refreshing to read something
that treats the condition with the right
balance of humor and seriousness
although it does go to some very dark
places indeed alright so that's the
honorary mentions out of the way so
let's get into the top 5
and at number five is Why We Get the
Wrong Politicians by Isabel Hardman I
could have included several of the books
that I've already mentioned at number
five in this list but I think that
Hardman's book is important I think to
understand the particular moment that
British politics has has now reached I
listened to this on Audible it's read by
Isabel Hardman and I think she
brilliantly conveys the strange mix of
pathos and absurdity that is life in
Westminster and it charts an MP's
existence if you will from the process
of being selected as a candidate to
standing for office right through to being
elected out of office and everything
in between her conclusion really is that
the process for selecting candidates is
deeply flawed that Westminster is a
toxic culture to work in and MPs are
wholly unprepared for life outside of
Westminster when they are quite often
booted out unexpectedly on election
night after three and a half years of
unceasing turmoil in British political
life that now seems to be taking a new
turn
with the recent Conservative landslide
you you really owe it to yourself to
read this book to gain an insider's
view of the people who make the laws in
the United Kingdom and the really broken
culture that they work in
At number 4 is Lovecraft Country by Matt
Ruff I recently looked at how the horror
genre can be used to explore race
relations in the United States and I
contrasted how that's achieved in
Lovecraft Country with how it is not
really achieved in Thinner Lovecraft
Country does it really well which is
probably unsurprising given this is one
of my favorite books of 2019 and I'm
really looking forward to the
forthcoming HBO adaptation of this book
it really brilliantly balances the
everyday horrors of racism in 1950s
America with the supernatural horrors of
the plot which go beyond the Lovecraftian
tropes that you'd expect based
on the title do yourself a favor and
read this book even if you're not really
into horror it's just a brilliant and very
clever piece of work
number three is Killers of the Flower
Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of
the FBI by David Grann this is another
nonfiction work that I listened to on
Audible it's read brilliantly by
Ann Marie Lee in the early sections
which focus on Mollie Burkhart
and the several mysterious deaths within
her immediate family and then it's read
by Will Patton in the middle section
which switches the narrative focus to
the former Texas Ranger turned FBI agent
Tom White as he investigates these
strange deaths and then finally by Danny
Campbell who stands in for the author as
he visits Osage County and learns from
the present-day
inhabitants and the terrible legacy that
they've inherited this is a book that I
kept thinking about especially after
seeing the Black Wall Street massacre as
portrayed in the opening sections of HBO's
brilliant adaptation of Watchmen and
realizing that this took place around
the same time and in practically the same
place that dozens of Native Americans
were being murdered for their oil-rich
land in Osage County if there are two
events that encapsulate the white
supremacist foundation
on which much of the US's power is
built those two events would be the
"Black Wall Street" massacre and the
Osage murders and if you'd like to
learn more about the latter then I
highly recommend David Grann's book at
number two is the Stephen King book that
I've been promising all along and that
is Firestarter and it really wasn't that
difficult choosing my favorite Stephen
King book of the twenty or so that I've
read so far as I've progressed through
them in chronological order Firestarter
has gripping action sequences squeamish
horror and a really unsettling
relationship between an emotionally
manipulative antagonist and a vulnerable
girl with apocalyptic powers in a way
Firestarter takes the question at the
center of Carey (ie
"what happens if an emotionally troubled
girl possessed with extraordinary
supernatural powers is pushed beyond her
breaking point?")
and he finds a new and I'd argue even
better answer to that question in this
book
Firestarter was everything that I wanted
from a Stephen King novel and I think
the format works really well you have
essentially an extended chase sequence
in the first section followed by the
psychological horror of the second half
and then a literally explosive finale I
think it's an example of a horror writer
working at the peak of his talents and
for me this is by far the best Stephen King
book that I've read so far
and finally we arrived at number one in
my list of the top five books I read in
2019 and because these are my rules I am
gonna cheat I'm gonna choose two books
for first place that's right it's like
the Booker Prize all over again and I'm
going to jointly award first place to The
Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
and We Are Here: An Atlas of Aotearoa
by Dr Chris McDowall and illustrated by
Tim Denee 2019 was the year that I moved
to New Zealand and these are both books
about New Zealand The Luminaries is a
fictionalized account of New Zealand's
past in which a series of intertwined
mysteries play out over the course of
around 800 pages written in a pastiche
of Victorian literature now it seems you
can't really talk about The Luminaries
without mentioning that it is Eleanor
Catton's debut novel it was published when
she was 28 years old and it won the
Booker Prize which is an astonishing
achievement but it fully earns all the
accolades
I really couldn't put this book down
it's it's brilliant I really recommend
it We Are Here on the other hand takes a
data-led look at New Zealand and it's
filled with beautiful maps and stunning
visualizations that look at this country
via 7 distinct angles: Water and Air, Living
Things,
Places, People and Government, Movement and
Energy, Heart and Memory, and Dr McDowall
give a lecture about the making of this
book a little while ago and I was
fortunate enough to attend and it really
made me appreciate just how much work
went into this book after several false
starts it took him five years to pull
this thing together in the end it's a
real labor of love and the end product
is an essential contribution to the
ongoing narrative about this country and
its people it's also just a gorgeous
work of art in its own right and I'm
really proud to own a copy so that's it
I've mentioned a whole bunch of books
today and the top five or technically
six I think are nicely balanced between
fiction and nonfiction. Have you read any
of these books? If so then please do let
me know in the comments below don't
forget to subscribe to my
channel and in the meantime I'd just like
to wish you a Happy New Year and I will
see you in 2020 for more bookish things see
you soon
