I read that one when it came out.
The Sir Gawaine part was excerpted in Playboy that year. Not surprising, considering Berger’s take on that tale.
I finished reading Six of Crows, a cracking fantasy heist novel. The author juggles a group of disparate ne’er-do-wells very adroitly, and it hits pretty much every heist beat it needs to hit. Tremendous fun. It’ll be a Netflix show at some point, using elements from this book and from a previous trilogy set in the same world.
My wife pressed this book into my hands, and now I’m anxiously waiting for her to finish its sequel so I can read it.
Finished The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe, by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, which was okay.
Now I’m reading Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy.
Ah, good.
Here’s the illustration Frank Frazetta painted to illustrate the story. This requires a two-click rule
[spoiler]Here it is:
Ahhh Frank Frazetta… your fetishes never fail to amuse. 
Indeed. Never saw that before - thanks, CalMeacham!
I finished the Joe Haldeman collection A Separate War and Other Stories (the best were the title story, a “sidequel” to The Forever War; “Giza,” about the genetically-engineered inhabitants of an asteroid colony who collectively turn murderous; and “For White Hill,” about which I wrote more upthread), and have returned to an old Haldeman favorite of mine, Tool of the Trade, about a Soviet deep-cover agent on the MIT faculty c. 1987 who invents a practical method of mind control. One of Haldeman’s all-time best IMHO.
Your Top Ten books of 2019?: https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=887688
Finished The Reckoning, by Sharon Kay Penman, and with that, also the author’s Welsh Princes trilogy of historical fiction – Here Be Dragons, Falls the Shadow and The Reckoning. Very good. The entire trilogy covers 100 years, from 1183-1283. At the end, the Welsh have been mightily defeated, subjugated under English rule forever. That’s hardly a spoiler, but it was very interesting to see the process and learn more about the fabled Welsh princes Llewelyn the Great and his grandson Llewelyn ap Gruffydd. It also touched on the horrors of medieval childbirth as well as the plight of the Jews in England at that time. (King Edward I kicks the Jews out of England at one point.) I am very glad I read this.
Next up is Napoleon: A Life, by Andrew Roberts.
New Year, New Thread: Here’s too the Twenties!