Yesterday, I shared my reactions to the books that the NY Times thought were notable this year. Today, I’m going to lift up some of the books I read this year that I liked the most (or had the biggest impact on me — not necessarily the same thing).
Prophet Song, by Paul Lynch. This won the Booker prize last year. It’s a lyrical book about a mother dealing with trying to take care of her family (four kids, an aging father) in the wake of her husband’s arrest by the secret police in an Ireland moving towards fascism and civil war. I loved this, but I hesitate to recommend it to people without a trigger warning, because it broke me a little. Near the end, there’s a passage that has haunted me since I read it:
“…the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news, an echo of events that has passed into folklore”
The Power Broker, Robert Caro. This is his biography of Robert Moses. It’s the 50th anniversary of its publishing and it’s a 1000 page plus book about NY politics and power and money and how they affect land use and roads and parks. If you think you’d hate this, you’re probably right, and if you think it sounds like fun, you’ve probably read it already. But if it sounds like fun, and you haven’t read it, I recommend it. I listened to the audiobook at 1.2x speed and it still took me most of the year to get through.
For a shorter investment of time, you could also just listen to the 99 percent invisible podcast read-along series, and get the gist. They’ve got great guests, from AOC and Pete Buttigieg to Brennan Lee Mulligan (who created a D&D campaign with undead Robert Moses as the main villain) and Shiloh Frederick (whose TikTok videos got NYC to remove the sculptures of monkeys in shackles from a Harlem playground). But if you skip the book, you’d miss out on Caro’s attention to the sound and rhythm of his sentences. (I also recommend Caro’s series on LBJ.)
We Were Illegal: Uncovering a Texas Family’s Mythmaking and Migration, by Jessica Godeau. This book examines American and Texas history and historical myths through the lens of the author’s own family, going back to before the American revolution. It covers tough topics, including slavery, genocide, police brutality, redlining and sexual abuse. But it somehow isn’t an overwhelmingly depressing book, as Godeau highlights the people who were brave enough to tell the truth, even when it was unpopular or dangerous.
Other favorites this year, in various genres (or combinations of genres) —
Science fiction: The Possibilities, by Yael Goldstein-Love.
Graphic novel: The Magic Fish, by Trung Le Nguyen
Romance: You should be so lucky, by Cat Sebastian
Fantasy: The scandalous confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch, by Melinda Taub.
Ghost story/historical novel: The Reformatory, by Tananarive Due
Mystery (and also a ghost story): Shutter, by Ramona Emerson
SF/Mystery/Romance: The Mars House, by Natasha Pulley
Fantasy/Noir/Romance: Even though I knew the end, by C.L Polk.
ELB Writes 
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