The best of 2019
I’m sure you’re drowning in ‘best of’ lists, but I wanted to share a few favourites before 2019 ticks over into 2020.
Articles:
I read thousands of articles and ‘liked’ almost 500 of them on Instapaper. Choosing a top ten (err, 12) is obviously subjective and reductive. Yet, the below articles represent a decent snapshot of what has occupied a certain part of my brain over the last 12 months.
The Male Glance - how the male gaze infects culture
Damage - a harrowing piece about FGM
Intimate surveillance (PDF)
Rebecca Solnit’s entire archive. Cheating, I know but it’s all great. This is a great place to start.
And some humour because it’s hard to write funny:
Is There Anything Else I Can Help You with Today? Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche calls an airline helpdesk.
Books:
It’s been a great reading year. Of the 50+ books I read, more than a third of them were 5 star reads for me. I quit Goodreads this year, in an effort to take my data back from Amazon which owns the platform. Some highlights:
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino Tolentino’s book was everywhere this summer, but it’s the rare example of something that lives up to the hype. Her sharp insights on everything from late-stage capitalism, self-optimisation, reality tv and scam culture are well worth your time.
Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life by Darcey Steinke I read an excerpt of this before buying and devouring the book in one sitting. The author unfolds the experience of going through menopause with all its quirks, changes and small humiliations. It’s candid and graphic, in the best way. And as a person who exists inside a body that does whatever the fuck it wants a good portion of the time, this book rang viscerally true. What a gift! Also read Mary Rueffe’s great piece on menopause.
Sinead Gleeson’s Constellations was another great read on the body, illness etc. I’ve been so encouraged to see Irish writers embrace the essay form, and this is one of the best Irish collections I’ve read.
Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture edited by Roxane Gay I remember seeing the ‘call for submissions’ for this collection and wanting so much to be able to contribute. I never did but I’m so glad I made the time to read the completed book. It’s a collection of stories from people who’ve had to live within rape culture, the ways in which it harms them and how they’ve managed to survive. For me, this book was life giving
Mind on Fire: A Memoir of Madness and Recovery by Arnold Thomas Fanning This was on every ‘best books of 2018’ list I saw published in Ireland, so I was excited to pick it up earlier in the year. The author weaves a grand and sometimes heartbreaking story of trying to build a life while also battling some pretty significant mental health challenges. In my experience, Irish writing on mental health rarely gets beyond platitudes and public health messaging, though this is a rare exception.
It’d pair well with The Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Wejun Wang. I’ve been reading Esme’s writing for almost a decade and it’s been so great to see her work find the audience she so richly deserves. Everyone working in mental health services should read this book.
2019 was the year I really embraced poetry. I read a bunch of collections and made a habit of opening this great email more often. Poetry is to be read slowly, but it fits nicely into the small pockets of time when my brain can’t handle anything too long. My favourite collections were: Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong, There Are More Beautiful Things than Beyonce by Morgan Parker, Sunshine by Melissa Lee-Houghton and Three Poems by Hannah Sullivan.
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is a collection that Alexander Chee has been working on for many years. It shows in the final draft. The essays are so deftly written, rich with layers and complexity that I imagine has been laid down with each successive draft, each successive year passing adding fresh perspective and depth. It’s the kind of book where I had to pause a few times just to absorb how powerful the prose was. A true triumph.
I read only one GREAT novel this year and that was Ocean Vuong’s ‘On Earth, We’re Briefly Gorgeous’. It’s a beautiful, queer coming of age story, written in the form of a son’s letter to his mother who cannot read English. It manages to be both steeped in history and vibrantly modern, touching on the opioid crisis and what it is to try to build a life in a time of great upheaval. You could do a lot worse than spend a weekend in Vuong’s world.
Sally Rooney’s Mr Salary is very short and very good. As is Lorrie Morre’s Terrific Mother.
I didn’t expect to be moved by the story of a middle aged white woman befriending a hawk in the aftermath of her father’s death, but I was wrong. H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald whalloped me more than I was expecting, especially considering that I read it mostly on Dublin Bus.
Lori Gottlieb’s memoir of being a therapist seeing a therapist was laugh out loud funny and very moving.
Tara Westover’s Educated deserved the hype.
Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and the Art of Living by Krista Tippet made me think that maybe there was something for me in spirituality after all. It’s modern, smart and thought provoking in a way that I never thought a ‘religious’ book could be. (This is 100% my bias/baggage, btw.)
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland got me through a stressful week. It’s a thrilling re-telling of the Jean McConville case which reveals her murderer as well as elucidating a snapshot of the troubles through one family’s story.
The Uninhabitable Earth woke me up to what climate change will mean, in the way only an intellectually rigorous, fact-checked-to-the-hilt book can.
And I’m still thinking about An American Marriage and how a scene where a man strikes a tree trunk with an axe can be as horrific as Tayari Jones conveyed it.
Film/TV/Podcasts:
And because I've written close to 1,000 words on reading (#Classic), I'll be brief when it comes to film, TV, podcasts:
Films that I still think about the most, many months on:
Beautiful Boy, The Tale
Shows that provided a comforting distraction from real life and still made me think:
Succession, Big Little Lies (I should never have doubted you Meryl!), Killing Eve, Fleabag Season 2, Derry Girls.
Podcasts that (I hope) I haven't recommended a billion times before:
The Open Ears Project, 1916, After, How's Work
