This is now the eighth year in which I’ve written up my favorite reading (see links below for previous installments), and every year it ends up being one of the things I most enjoy writing. 2019 is no exception: I have lots of good books to share. Since there isn’t a good way to rank books I like, the lists are in alphabetical order by author:

Nonfiction

• Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea. Though usually described as a memoir, this book could not be more different from the personal confessions that lately typify the genre. Instead, it is a lovely set of interconnected essays about nautical life, and more fundamentally about the joys of craft and profession. I also enjoyed another classic 19th-century nautical memoir, Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast, which has some amazing moments although also many longueurs.
• Fuschia Dunlop, Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking. I enjoyed Chinese food for years, but it was not until I ate at home with my Chinese family that I really got it. This book captures that delightful hidden culture: not just cooking techniques, but a whole way of eating and structuring meals. I did not know recipes could be beautifully written, but hers are: concise, precise, poetic. And every one has been a hit in my house.
• Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. The United States is not quite accurately named. The country is composed of states, but not only states: there are also various territories and possessions, and also, at one point, colonies. Immerwahr’s history of the US from the perspective of its margins is eye-opening, and includes not only lots of little-known information but much fascinating analysis of foreign policy, war, and even technology. A further appreciation is here.
• Timothy Larsen, The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith. As an undergraduate in anthropology, my intellectual heroes were the British social anthropologists of the mid-twentieth century. They combined deep immersion in empirical research with systematizing intellectual ambition in a way that few social scientists have since matched. Larsen’s lively intellectual history of the period brings their debates and ambitions to life, and his focus on religion is unusual and illuminating. I wrote more about this book in my post “Atheism and the objective understanding of society.”
• Charles C. Mann, The Wizard and the Prophet. An overstuffed masterpiece from the brilliant science writer. I couldn’t believe how ambitious Mann’s structure was, combining a dual biography with in-depth discussions of technical issues in agriculture, energy and climate change, but somehow he pulls it off.
• Oliver Sacks, The River of Consciousness and Everything in its Place: First Loves and Last Tales. My favorite parts of these posthumously-published essay collections are Sacks’ pieces on the history of science, which are some of the best I have ever read. Sacks beautifully conveys his deep and affectionate engagement with a tradition of intellectual inquiry stretching back to Freud, Darwin, Davy, and others. I wrote more here.
• Christina Thompson, Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia. How did humans come to settle all those tiny islands scattered across the Pacific? Just as interesting as the answer to this question is how the answer was arrived at. Thompson’s fascinating book is a great example of how effective it is to approach a question historically.

Fiction

• Ted Chiang, Exhalation. The second collection of mind-bending and heart-rending vignettes from the master of the science-fiction short story. Perhaps not quite at the exalted level of Stories of Your Life and Others, but still very good.
• Tom Franklin, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. A pitch-perfect evocation of growing up in the Deep South in the 1970s. That is where and when I grew up, and I can tell you that Franklin gets every detail exactly right. Oh, but technically it’s a murder mystery.
• W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden, or the British Agent. One of the very first portrayals of espionage in fiction (from 1929), and still one of the best. I pulled this one from Ethan Iverson’s amazing list of recommended crime, detective and spy fiction; another very good one from his list is Brian Garland’s Hopscotch.
• Daniel Mason, The Winter Soldier. A startlingly vivid portrayal of a young Polish doctor’s travails in the Great War, emotionally wrenching and free of cliché.
• Andrew Miller, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free. A dreamlike piece of historical fiction following a traumatized soldier’s search for normalcy after his return from the Napoleonic Wars.
• Guzel Yakhina, Zuleikha (translated by Lisa Hayden). The best novel I read this year: huge, engrossing, enthralling. Winner of multiple prizes in its Russian original, its appearance in English translation should also be a major literary event.

Previous lists: 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012