Your Top Ten books of 2019

Cafe Society
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Doesn’t matter when they were published, but you read 'em and loved 'em in 2019. And please tell us, in a sentence or two, why you liked 'em.

I’ll post my list later on New Year’s Day, since I’ll be on the road until then.

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In chronological order for when I read them:

  1. Lincoln, by David Herbert Donald. Masterful bio of the president’s life, recommended by EH.

  2. Book of Fire: William Tyndale, Thomas More and the Bloody Birth of the English Bible, by Brian Moynahan. Thorough and humorous telling of the life of Tyndale and the opposition to his work.

  3. 700 Nights, by Billy Crystal. From his stage show - Billy relates stories of his childhood and his father. If you like Billy, you’ll like this.

  4. The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in an Age of Lies, by Michael V. Hayden, former head of the C.I.A. A blistering critique of the president and the media in undermining the efforts of the Intelligence community.

  5. American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, by Tim Alberta. What happened to the Republican Party explained. Biased, of course, but still illuminating.

  6. 1920: The Year of Six Presidents: by David Petrusza. Clever retelling of the election of 1920 and the political in-fighting involved. Lots of quotes from Alice Roosevelt Longworth and H. L. Mencken, which always helps.

  7. The Eyre Affair: a Thursday Next novel, by Jasper Fforde. Highly imaginative and often hilarious whodunit that has enough fantastic elements for two novels. The other books in the series (I’m up to the third one) aren’t as innovative.

  8. The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell (the author of Cloud Atlas). A solid time travel/psychological thriller novel.

  9. 1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR, by David Petrusza. Not as masterful as 1920 (above), but presented in the same back-and-forth manner as the other. Mr. Petrusza is not a fan of FDR.

  10. American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century, by Howard Blum. I’ve never read a work of history that read so much like a mystery novel. The main players are Billy Burns (“the American Sherlock Holmes”), D. W. Griffith and Clarence Darrow. Blum gives a great sense of the characters of these men.

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In no particular order:

  1. Rebound by L.A. Witt, a m/m romance with hockey! Two of my favorite things! I’ve rereared it several times, her characters are great, humor is good and it just leaves me feeling warm and comfy.

  2. Only You by JD Chambers, another romance with a amab non binary and a man bouncing back from a nasty divorce. Mal is everything I wanted to be at age 20, now at age 50+ they inspire me to be more. The characters are genuine, likeable and I want to go biking with them.

  3. Not a Werewolf by Madeline Kirby, a m/m romance with a murder and a cat shifter! It was funny, silly but the action at the end was well scripted. I love the dynamic between the characters and Jake is just the sweetest thing.

  4. At the Corner of Rock Bottom & Nowhere by LA Witt. A m/m romance about a stripper who picks up a guy on the streets of Vegas. As usual I love her characters, they are likeable
    and charming. The story is so sweet it rots the teeth.

  5. The Killer Collective byBarry Eisler, all his characters together in one book! A wonderful closing book for most of his major characters, it’s half road movie and half getting-the-gang-together-for-one-last-heist… with the serious topic of child sex trafficking at the core. I adore John, even if he is an assassin, and spending time with him is always gold.

  6. Dr Wolf: Shockwave by Cheree Alsop. Urban fantasy in a hospital? It wasn’t the best written book I’ve read, but the characters were engaging and the humor quite well done.

  7. Mastering the Flames by SJ Himes, a m/m romance between a recovering alcohol fire mage and an ancient vampire. Better written, at least in the first 2/3s, than the prior books, it was sexy, scary and tense in all the right places. I love these characters, and the world she’s created for them in Boston.

  8. A Mersey Killing by Brian Porter, murder and missing young men in Liverpool, England. The book divides it’s narrative between past and present when a body is dredged up from a canal. The ending was a bit bollocks but I liked the character and the atmosphere.

  9. Assist by La Witt, sequel to Rebound, this deal with Asher’s team mates so more m/m and MORE hockey! How to make a m/m triad work in the face of no fraternization rules, homophobic parents and grueling schedules. I lve all three characters, though they are as sharply defined as in other books, the hockey scenes are great.

  10. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Gann. A very emotional book about a time when the richest people in the US were a small tribe of Southwest Native Americans… and the sysematic murfer of their members for the eir money. Well researched, the book pulls no punches with the racism or the horror the tribe lived throughas well as the scars left behind for the current generation to deal with.

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Can’t really think of a top ten as I’ve gone through a lot but the best I’ve read in 2019 is definitely An Astronomer’s Tale: A Bricklayer’s Guide to the Galaxy

Written by Gary Fildes and is part autobiography part astronomy guide. He chronicles his life growing up in a working class town in the North of England which was suffering as old-fashioned jobs like ship building and coal mining which served the area for generations were on death’s door, how football hooligan culture caught him in trouble, how he was drifting through life with only one clear passion that he kept a secret for so long, and how he ended up cultivating that passion to build a successful astronomical observatory in the area which has totally changed the local economy and UK astronomy for the better. As mentioned above he splits chapters about his own story with information to teach beginners about the basics of astronomy.

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In order of preference:

  1. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou - Brilliant memoir, outstanding writing which recreated her childhood.
  2. The Control of Nature, by John McPhee - Fascinating history and science (geology)
  3. Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik - Best fiction I read this year. A wonderful fantasy.
  4. The Library Book, by Susan Orlean - History and books in a perfect combination.
  5. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis - Actually interested me in math.
  6. Good Omens, or The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman - A lot of fun. Reminded me of Discworld books. (Unsurprisingly)
  7. Autonomous, by Annalee Newitz - Best SF I read this year.
  8. The Starship and the Canoe, by Kenneth Brower - I would call this the second best SF I read this year, except that it really happened.
  9. Bunch of Amateurs: Inside America’s Hidden World of Inventors, Tinkerers, and Job Creators, by Jack Hitt - Excellent essays. The one about the ivory-billed woodpecker was particularly worth reading.
  10. Early Riser, by Jasper Fforde - Best world-building in any work of fiction I read this year.
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Memo to self: NO making long descriptive posts upon first waking up in the morning. Go to the gym first, wake up, THEN try to write coherently. Sheesh :smiley:

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All right! Glad you liked it.

I read that in 2018, and I agree. Very good stuff.

I see from my book log that I read 68 books last year. My Top Ten, in no particular order:

The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey by Piers Bizony - Lavishly-illustrated arthouse book, including an interesting 1968 interview with Kubrick.

The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi - Second in an exciting sf trilogy, about the impending collapse of an interstellar empire, with many parallels to the current debate on global climate change.

Desolation Island by Patrick O’Brian - The fifth Aubrey-Maturin tale of Napoleonic naval adventure, as the hard-luck frigate HMS Leopard takes a beating in a storm and is nearly lost.

Calypso by David Sedaris - A very good, very funny essay collection, with some serious stuff mixed in (including a heartbreaking essay, “Now We Are Five,” about his sister’s suicide).

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived by Adam Rutherford - Brisk history of genetics (with lots of warnings about its limitations), and our often-mistaken conceptions of race, science and destiny.

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi - Re-read this military sf favorite of mine, about a very unusual interstellar war and the soldiers who fight it.

Simple Heraldry by Iain Moncreiffe and Don Pottinger - A charming, funny, very well-illustrated intro to heraldry.

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris - A great crime novel with Dr. Hannibal Lecter’s first appearance in print, as FBI agents race to stop another serial killer.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel - Survivors of a global pandemic struggle to both rebuild society and simply stay alive, decades later.

A Separate War and Other Stories by Joe Haldeman - Excellent collection of sf short stories, including the title story (a “sidequel” to the author’s classic The Forever War), “Giza,” about genetically-engineered orbital colonists who turn murderous, and “For White Hill,” an elegiac love story set on a distant-future Earth devastated by alien microphages.

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  1. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel Meets World. Funniest book I read all year.
  2. Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik: of all the fairy tale reimaginings I’ve read, this one is the best. Absolutely gorgeous.
  3. The First Rule of Punk, by Celia Cruz: a really well-written kid’s novel about a girl with a professorial Mexican mom and a punk white dad, and how she navigates her identity.
  4. Black Leopard, Red Wolf: probably the best-written book of the year for me, but holy shit the violence.
  5. Sal and Gabi Break the Universe: another children’s book, about kids at an artsy middle school, one of whom has magical powers. Really funny, really warm.
  6. Six of Crows: a YA fantasy heist novel. Keeping to the best heist traditions, their plans are constantly getting shot to shit, and they have to replan on the fly.
  7. All the King’s Men: super racist, beautifully written, can’t figure out how to resolve the two.
  8. Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers: Chambers just keeps getting better. A novella about four astronauts exploring four planets in a far-off system.
  9. The Winter of the Witch: the third book in a wonderful trilogy about 18th (?) century Russia and the conflict between the church and the old gods.
  10. The Raven Tower: Ann Leckie continues to be super weird, in the best possible way. A fantasy about a world cursed with bizarre gods (a big rock, a swarm of mosquitoes, and so on).
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Thanks for the thread, Elendil’s Heir! I always look forward to this one. That said, I couldn’t come up with ten this year.
Number one with a bullet: The Hod King by Josiah Bancroft. It’s third in a fantasy series that I have been loving, about a man pursuing his lost wife through the levels of the Tower of Babel.
2. Full Throttle, a short story collection by Joe Hill. At this point in their respective careers, I would say (with all due respect) Joe is doing better work than his dad. Of course, he stands on the shoulders of giants!
3. The Road to Little Dribbling:Adventures of an American in Britain, by Bill Bryson. I love Bryson, I love the Brits, and so does he.
4. A Night In the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny. A must-read for lovers of horror fiction, although it’s not horror itself. It’s an enthralling mystery about a very important Game and its Players.
5. Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?: Big questions from tiny mortals about death, by Caitlyn Doughty. Everything you may have wanted to know about death, but didn’t have anyone to ask!
6 & 7. For We Are Many and All These Worlds by Dennis E. Taylor. Cheating a bit by linking to the full set instead of the individual books, yes! The Bobiverse books are about a man who dies and is brought back to life as an artificial intelligence piloting a drone to explore the universe. You won’t believe what happens next! :wink:

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As in past years, I’ve divided my list into top five fiction and top five nonfiction, since I read a good deal of both.

Fiction

  1. The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton – This one was just begging to be put on my list. I love dual timeline books, and Kate Morton is widely considered to be the queen of the genre. Moreover, I’ve read all six of Morton’s novels, and I think this one was her best one. An archivist discovers a leather satchel containing a photograph of a mysterious woman, and her quest to uncover the truth about the woman leads to a whole web of romance, murder, and deception.

  2. The Lavender Garden by Lucinda Riley – A young woman and heiress inherits her family fortune, and is approached by a man whose family is connected to hers. The book takes place partly during World War II, where the man’s grandmother was a spy in Germany, and partly in the present, where the man is acting suspiciously. Like I said, I love dual timeline books, and this has all the romance, backstabbing, and mystery of a good one.

  3. Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn – And now, to pivot sharply away from dual timeline novels, this is a book about a werewolf who’s a talk show host for a supernatural radio program. My expectations for this book were pretty low: it’s clearly a fantasy novel, and fantasy novels can sometimes be too nerdy for my taste, with too many sarcastic jokes and grand battles, and too little relationship building. But the author did a great job with this book, and while it’s still humorous and exciting, it also has enough character development to have crossover appeal for someone who’s not typically a big fan of fantasy (other than Neil Gaiman).

  4. Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell – Karen Russell’s third collection of short stories. The best way I can think of to describe Russell’s stories is that you feel like you’re reading a dream: the worlds she creates are so bizarre, and the characters inside the stories just accept the bizarreness as normal. And initially, her stories basically had the plot of a dream: you wander into the scene and experience it for a little while, and then get jolted back to wakefulness without any real conclusion to the story. But Russell’s latest collection showcases her growth as a writer, and her stories have all the strengths of her previous offerings, but with a stronger sense of plot to go with it (well, sometimes). (Side note: Russell has also written one novel, which in my personal opinion was awful. If you have read that book, please do not make the mistake of judging Russell’s ability as a writer from her attempt as a novel, as you will be missing out on some great short stories. If you have not yet read her novel, please do not make the mistake of reading it. If her writing sounds at all interesting to you, stick to her short stories. Those are actually good.)

  5. Turtles All the Way Down by John Green – This one earns a spot because of all the portions I highlighted. I don’t tend to do much highlighting when I read fiction books, because fiction is more about the story than anything. But some of the passages in here were so beautiful that I felt compelled to highlight them so that I could re-visit them later and swoon over their beauty.

Examples: “We always say that we are beneath the stars. We aren’t, of course—there is no up or down, and anyway the stars surround us. But we say we are beneath them, which is nice. So often English glorifies the human—we are whos, other animals are that’s—but English puts us beneath the stars, at least.”
“I felt like we went out to the meadow tonight, only we weren’t playing music. In the best conversations, you don’t even remember what you talked about, only how it felt. It was like we weren’t even there, lying together by the pool. It felt like we were in some place your body can’t visit, some place with no ceiling and no walls and no floor and no instruments.”
“And I knew I would remember that feeling, underneath the split-up sky, back before the machinery of fate ground us into one thing or another, back when we could still be everything.”

Non-fiction

  1. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky – To borrow a phrase from above, this book was just begging to be put on my list. My favorite nonfiction topic to read about is human behavior, and this just might be the most far-reaching and expansive book ever written on human behavior. Even though I’ve read a bunch of books on the subject, I still learned a lot from this book, and often things that I’ve learned in the book will be relevant to conversations I’m having. The chapter on Us vs. Them and the human instinct to group people into categories was particularly interesting to me; as was the information on how your upbringing can affect your body’s genetic expression.

  2. Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind by Alex Stone – A memoir of a man with a passion for stage magic. The synopsis of the book mentioned elements of psychology, neuroscience, physics, history, and even crime, which sounded interesting to me. But this book is so much better than a synopsis can explain. The true strength of this book was in the author’s writing abilities. The writer is so unapologetically nerdy that you get swept up in it yourself. When he launches into these explanations of how the mind works or how to fool people, he’s not at all self-conscious or trying to make things accessible or cool to the layperson. He just launches into talking about what he loves, and really, there’s no better way to engage the layperson than to display the passion you have. And then on top of that, he’s a gifted writer. I forget if he majored in English, or had a career in journalism, or what, but the man clearly knows how to write well.

  3. The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook by Bruce D. Perry and Maia Szalavitz – I was pleasantly surprised by this book. It’s billed as an exploration of childhood trauma, and I expected it to be a lot of stories. Don’t get me wrong, there were some stories, but this book was much more educational than I was expecting, citing a good deal of neuroscience and scientific research – and I loved that. The author talks about how the infant/child brain is designed to develop in reaction to external stimuli and interactions. If you do not receive appropriate sensory stimuli at a young age, if you are not properly exposed to human touch, human facial expressions, human tones of voice, etc., this can hinder a child’s ability to properly comprehend and interact with his or her environment. More fascinating still, was that the most effective way to treat trauma survivors was to – agh, I forget how the author put it. Basically, if you needed to receive human touch when you were a baby and you didn’t, the best way to treat the resulting neurological deficits is to introduce those behaviors as soon as you can. The book talked about a nine-year old boy who would run over and sit in his foster mother’s lap. While his teachers thought the boy was too old to be trying to sit in laps and ought to act his age, the foster mother recognized that the boy needed that experience of human connection to properly develop his grain.

  4. Hunger: A Memoir of My Body by Roxane Gay – A memoir written by a morbidly obese woman, specifically about her experiences with body image, overeating, and the way she is received in society as a fat woman. Also delves into the childhood trauma she experienced, which sent her down the road of overeating. The book has an honesty and vulnerability that one does not often encounter, and as a reader, it’s an incredible experience to feel that you’re allowed into someone else’s personal experience of shame and regret to the extent that you are. And given the way fat people are often ridiculed and treated as “less than” in today’s society, the book was a tremendous act of courage that I think gave the overweight community some of their voice back.

  5. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson – Ugh, I’m not thrilled about including this book on the list. I think the author can be a pain in the ass, but if you can look past the <i>way </i> he says things and just focus on <i>what</i> he says, there’s some good life advice in here. The gist of this book is that instead of “staying positive,” it’s okay to recognize suffering and struggling. When you recognize suffering, you recognize the things in your life that you want to change/improve. Struggling is simply an indication that you’re putting in the work you need to, to improve your life (as long as your struggling has a purpose). He talks about determining what in your life is worth struggling for, and making those things the priorities in your life. Since relentless positive thinking has never really done much for me, this new perspective, of seeing the value and significance in your miserable experiences, was a more helpful way for me to view my life.

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Let’s get this over:

  1. “Revolution”, Russell Brand (2014). If you know Brand only from “My Booky Wook”, he shows here a more serious side. Though not a solemn one; in fact, the author cites John Cleese to this effect: 'because people mistake solemnity for seriousness, that by being all stern and joyless their ideas are somehow levitated…" But Brand also conveys first-hand wisdom, to wit-- “I met (������������ ������������������������������������������������ ������������������������������������������������������������ ������ℎ������������������ ������������������������ ������’������������ ������������������ℎℎ������������������ ������������������������������������������ ������ ������������������’������ ������������������ℎ ������������ ������������������������������������ ������������������������������������������������ ������������������������ ������ℎ������ ������ℎ������������������������) and was surprised mostly by his daftness…He had no curiosity about consciousness, spirituality, interconnectivity, the micro or the macro, or anything, except in how it might relate to making money”.

Et cetera. In summary, there is far more of substance here than I found in Jerry Rubin’s “Do It!” (also among my 2019 reading), though the latter author seemed to be considered a more “political” figure.

  1. For my job, I read a lot about New York City, which may explain any seeming imbalance in my list. From “Improper Bohemians”, a look at Greenwich Village with a focus on the old (already by 1959) days, by Allen Churchill: ‘In an area once inhabited almost exclusively by young Bohemians, just enough remain so that unsympathetic tabloids like the Daily News can run articles stating that today’s Villagers are freaks, bobsters, cool cats, boys from Beatsville, and girls-who-like-girls.’

I, by the way, am not familiar with this “bobster” term, and I’m not sure I can trust the Urban Dictionary definition for 1959 applications, but the word might well be used to refer to NYU students, as their school library is known as the Bobst library (after a patron), which explains also why their sports teams mascot wears a bobcat costume (from their library’s BOBst CATalog), though the teams are of course called “the Violets”.

  1. “Loose Balls”, Terry Pluto (editor), 1990. Not to be confused with “Loose Balls” by former NBA good Jayson Williams published in 2000, where he talks (among other things) about fooling around with guns, years before his manslaughter conviction for accidentally shooting a limo driver. The former book is in the format of countless interviews with many people involved with the nine-seasons-lasting league in all sorts of capacities, e.g., Julius Erving, George Mikan, Hubie Brown, Bob Costas. A number of my favorite books follow just such a format; it really is hard to compete with the collected recollections of dozens of important players.

  2. “Supreme City”, a 2014 book by Donald Miller, about New York in the 1920s.

One of the best of many books I have read about the subject city. On Jimmy Walker: ‘And the mayor that some historians have lampooned as a publicity hound refused to have his name placed on buildings, parks, hospitals, or other public improvements he initiated. “The mayor of New York,” he said, “still believes himself to be a public servant and not a potentate.”’

But politics is but one of many angles the author covers. The sports section dealt much with the Dempsey-Tunney fights, or as the latter saw it: “a boxing match with Mr. Dempsey, not a fight…I am a boxing enthusiast, but I do not believe in fighting”. And this from the former, to a Brooklyn-raised Chicago furniture dealer, visiting his old hometown, who suggested rigging the rematch in Dempsey’s favor: “lay off and let the fight go on in true sportsmanship”. In their later relations, Dempsey and Tunney were sort of the Louis and Schmeling of two white guys.

  1. Hard to go wrong with Barbara Tuchman. This is from her “The March of Folly” (1984): ‘A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by government s of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any other human activity…Why does American business insist on ‘growth’ when it is demonstrably using up the three basics of life on this planet–land, water, and unpolluted air?’

And ‘The belief that government knows best was voiced just at this time by Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who said on resumption of the bombing, ‘We ought all to support the President. He is the man who has all the information and knowledge of what we are up against’. This is a comforting assumption that relieves people from taking a stand. It is usually invalid, especially in foreign affairs.’

  1. In Winston Churchill’s “The New World” (part of his “English-Speaking Peoples” tetralogy) the polymath polytician, writing of the Battle of Newburn in the Bishops’War, records a pre-echo of one of his own familiar speeches–"…one morning a Scottish horseman, watering his horse in the river, came too near the English outposts. Someone pulled a trigger; the shot went home; the imprudent rider was wounded; all the Scots cannon fired and all the English army fled. A contemporary wrote that “Never so many ran from so few with less ado”.
  2. The Playboy Interview: The Best of Three Decades 1962-1992.

Again, it’s easier to assemble a great book from pre-existing material than to write one from scratch. I had read just a couple of the interviews before (John Lennon and the SNL crew). I don’t have the book now but as I recall, Brando’s was kind of boring (he didn’t like to talk about things he knew) and too long; I liked Lee Iococca more than I expected to, Barbra Streisand really did have a crush on Bobby Fischer in high school (it’s not just something people say because it’s easy to say), Bill Cosby didn’t say anything in his interview that seemed chilling in retrospect but he is probably too smart for that. I do recall that both Beverly Johnson and Janice Dickinson wrote in their books of creepy behavior on his part, well short of rape but the sort of thing you probably wouldn’t mention at all unless there was something worse that you were afraid to report.

  1. Why Not me? Mindy Kaling, 2015. I’ve read two of her books now (more than I’ve read of Chelsea Handler, Tina Fey or Sarah Silverman), and I’ve never even seen “The Office”.

  2. My Invented Country: A memoir (2003), Isabel Allende. “Most of our lives are similar, and can be told in the tone used to read the telephone directory–unless we decide to give it a little oomph, a little color. In my case, I have tried to polish the details and create my own private legend, so that when I am in a nursing home awaiting death I will have something to entertain the other senile old folks with.” I’ll admit that part of the reason I picked it up was that it seemed a cheap introduction (cheap in terms of time, not much more than 200 pages. And she looked cute on the cover) to an important world author.

  3. 20th Century Boy: Notebooks of the Seventies, Duncan Hannah (published 2018!). I expected to hate this guy, who was essentially just an art student from Minnesota, but because he was good-looking and personable (I imagine), managed to insinuate himself effortlessly into every NYC scene in the 1970s. For instance, at CBGB, January 1975: " …it was like old times, all the glitter kids from the now defunct Max’s Kansas City…Blondie and the Banzai Babies, featuring the creamy former Playboy bunny Debbie Harry…Scrawny Patti Smith was boogalooing in the aisles during Television, pumping her fist, screaming, “Yah…yah!” But I didn’t, and the only reason I was rooting for the book to end toward the end was that I knew were were heading inexorably for a night in early December, outside the Dakota on West 72nd Street.

A couple of honorable mentions, which might have made the top ten had I composed these bits in a different order:

Beat Hotel, Barry Miles, 2001: Life at a class 13 (see Wikipedia) hotel in Paris in the late 1950s, visited by most of the familiar Beat types, with the exception of Jack Kerouac, who was already tending toward reclusion. I think I did list “When I was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School” a couple of years ago, though, so I can justify this omission in the name of diversity.

Cosell, by Howard Cosell, 1973. His first of several autobios. I really was not a great fan of his but I do think he was right about most of the important things (as not everybody was) and, really, about quite a lot of unimportant things too. For instance, on Dick Cavett, of whom I was (and am) a fan: “He always wants to come off as a wit. Thus he will inevitably take someone’s answer to a question and gently deride the answer of the person with what he regards as a delicious ������������������ ������������������. The net effect is to demean the interview and the interviewee.” Slightly overstated (Cavett doesn’t ������������������������������������������������������������ do it) but not far off.

And here he is talking about “things”, before things were a thing: ‘The half-time highlights (on ������������������) quickly became a “thing”’. Ego, yes, and did he change his name from “Cohen” to seem less Jewish? I don’t know, but he says the family name had originally been “Kosell” and became “Cohen” in one of those Ellis Island scenarios that these days are reported to have been largely mythical. Still, could he have made it as he did with ������������������ 2-syllable surname with the stress on the first? Miller, Davis? Again, I don’t know.

ETA: I see a weird formatting glitch with a blue smiley accompanied by a string of numbers in a couple of places. I think those are meant just to be closing parentheses, but I’m afraid if I try to fix it I’ll make it worse.

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Let’s get this over:

  1. “Revolution”, Russell Brand (2014). If you know Brand only from “My Booky Wook”, he shows here a more serious side. Though not a solemn one; in fact, the author cites John Cleese to this effect: 'because people mistake solemnity for seriousness, that by being all stern and joyless their ideas are somehow levitated…" But Brand also conveys first-hand wisdom, to wit-- “I met (𝑎𝑛 𝐴𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑤ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑛𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝐼’𝑙𝑙 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎℎ𝑜𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝐼 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑡𝑜 𝑖𝑛𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡 𝑝𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑠 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑒𝑎&#119889 and was surprised mostly by his daftness…He had no curiosity about consciousness, spirituality, interconnectivity, the micro or the macro, or anything, except in how it might relate to making money”.

Et cetera. In summary, there is far more of substance here than I found in Jerry Rubin’s “Do It!” (also among my 2019 reading), though the latter author seemed to be considered a more “political” figure.

  1. For my job, I read a lot about New York City, which may explain any seeming imbalance in my list. From “Improper Bohemians”, a look at Greenwich Village with a focus on the old (already by 1959) days, by Allen Churchill: ‘In an area once inhabited almost exclusively by young Bohemians, just enough remain so that unsympathetic tabloids like the Daily News can run articles stating that today’s Villagers are freaks, bobsters, cool cats, boys from Beatsville, and girls-who-like-girls.’

I, by the way, am not familiar with this “bobster” term, and I’m not sure I can trust the Urban Dictionary definition for 1959 applications, but the word might well be used to refer to NYU students, as their school library is known as the Bobst library (after a patron), which explains also why their sports teams mascot wears a bobcat costume (from their library’s BOBst CATalog), though the teams are of course called “the Violets”.

  1. “Loose Balls”, Terry Pluto (editor), 1990. Not to be confused with “Loose Balls” by former NBA good Jayson Williams published in 2000, where he talks (among other things) about fooling around with guns, years before his manslaughter conviction for accidentally shooting a limo driver. The former book is in the format of countless interviews with many people involved with the nine-seasons-lasting league in all sorts of capacities, e.g., Julius Erving, George Mikan, Hubie Brown, Bob Costas. A number of my favorite books follow just such a format; it really is hard to compete with the collected recollections of dozens of important players.

  2. “Supreme City”, a 2014 book by Donald Miller, about New York in the 1920s.

One of the best of many books I have read about the subject city. On Jimmy Walker: ‘And the mayor that some historians have lampooned as a publicity hound refused to have his name placed on buildings, parks, hospitals, or other public improvements he initiated. “The mayor of New York,” he said, “still believes himself to be a public servant and not a potentate.”’

But politics is but one of many angles the author covers. The sports section dealt much with the Dempsey-Tunney fights, or as the latter saw it: “a boxing match with Mr. Dempsey, not a fight…I am a boxing enthusiast, but I do not believe in fighting”. And this from the former, to a Brooklyn-raised Chicago furniture dealer, visiting his old hometown, who suggested rigging the rematch in Dempsey’s favor: “lay off and let the fight go on in true sportsmanship”. In their later relations, Dempsey and Tunney were sort of the Louis and Schmeling of two white guys.

  1. Hard to go wrong with Barbara Tuchman. This is from her “The March of Folly” (1984): ‘A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by government s of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any other human activity…Why does American business insist on ‘growth’ when it is demonstrably using up the three basics of life on this planet–land, water, and unpolluted air?’

And ‘The belief that government knows best was voiced just at this time by Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who said on resumption of the bombing, ‘We ought all to support the President. He is the man who has all the information and knowledge of what we are up against’. This is a comforting assumption that relieves people from taking a stand. It is usually invalid, especially in foreign affairs.’

  1. In Winston Churchill’s “The New World” (part of his “English-Speaking Peoples” tetralogy) the polymath polytician, writing of the Battle of Newburn in the Bishops’War, records a pre-echo of one of his own familiar speeches–"…one morning a Scottish horseman, watering his horse in the river, came too near the English outposts. Someone pulled a trigger; the shot went home; the imprudent rider was wounded; all the Scots cannon fired and all the English army fled. A contemporary wrote that “Never so many ran from so few with less ado”.
  2. The Playboy Interview: The Best of Three Decades 1962-1992.

Again, it’s easier to assemble a great book from pre-existing material than to write one from scratch. I had read just a couple of the interviews before (John Lennon and the SNL crew). I don’t have the book now but as I recall, Brando’s was kind of boring (he didn’t like to talk about things he knew) and too long; I liked Lee Iococca more than I expected to, Barbra Streisand really did have a crush on Bobby Fischer in high school (it’s not just something people say because it’s easy to say), Bill Cosby didn’t say anything in his interview that seemed chilling in retrospect but he is probably too smart for that. I do recall that both Beverly Johnson and Janice Dickinson wrote in their books of creepy behavior on his part, well short of rape but the sort of thing you probably wouldn’t mention at all unless there was something worse that you were afraid to report.

  1. Why Not me? Mindy Kaling, 2015. I’ve read two of her books now (more than I’ve read of Chelsea Handler, Tina Fey or Sarah Silverman), and I’ve never even seen “The Office”.

  2. My Invented Country: A memoir (2003), Isabel Allende. “Most of our lives are similar, and can be told in the tone used to read the telephone directory–unless we decide to give it a little oomph, a little color. In my case, I have tried to polish the details and create my own private legend, so that when I am in a nursing home awaiting death I will have something to entertain the other senile old folks with.” I’ll admit that part of the reason I picked it up was that it seemed a cheap introduction (cheap in terms of time, not much more than 200 pages. And she looked cute on the cover) to an important world author.

  3. 20th Century Boy: Notebooks of the Seventies, Duncan Hannah (published 2018!). I expected to hate this guy, who was essentially just an art student from Minnesota, but because he was good-looking and personable (I imagine), managed to insinuate himself effortlessly into every NYC scene in the 1970s. For instance, at CBGB, January 1975: " …it was like old times, all the glitter kids from the now defunct Max’s Kansas City…Blondie and the Banzai Babies, featuring the creamy former Playboy bunny Debbie Harry…Scrawny Patti Smith was boogalooing in the aisles during Television, pumping her fist, screaming, “Yah…yah!” But I didn’t, and the only reason I was rooting for the book to end toward the end was that I knew were were heading inexorably for a night in early December, outside the Dakota on West 72nd Street.

A couple of honorable mentions, which might have made the top ten had I composed these bits in a different order:

Beat Hotel, Barry Miles, 2001: Life at a class 13 (see Wikipedia) hotel in Paris in the late 1950s, visited by most of the familiar Beat types, with the exception of Jack Kerouac, who was already tending toward reclusion. I think I did list “When I was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School” a couple of years ago, though, so I can justify this omission in the name of diversity.

Cosell, by Howard Cosell, 1973. His first of several autobios. I really was not a great fan of his but I do think he was right about most of the important things (as not everybody was) and, really, about quite a lot of unimportant things too. For instance, on Dick Cavett, of whom I was (and am) a fan: “He always wants to come off as a wit. Thus he will inevitably take someone’s answer to a question and gently deride the answer of the person with what he regards as a delicious 𝑏𝑜𝑛 𝑚𝑜𝑡. The net effect is to demean the interview and the interviewee.” Slightly overstated (Cavett doesn’t 𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑦 do it) but not far off.

And here he is talking about “things”, before things were a thing: ‘The half-time highlights (on 𝑀𝑁&#119865 quickly became a “thing”’. Ego, yes, and did he change his name from “Cohen” to seem less Jewish? I don’t know, but he says the family name had originally been “Kosell” and became “Cohen” in one of those Ellis Island scenarios that these days are reported to have been largely mythical. Still, could he have made it as he did with 𝑎𝑛𝑦 2-syllable surname with the stress on the first? Miller, Davis? Again, I don’t know.

13

Now on my list. Can you recommend a couple more? At one point I was looking for a book about NYC from the beginning but it’s too big of a subject, it would thousands of pages. Maybe one covering 30s on and one 1800s to 20s. I have read The Power Broker.

14

[ul]
[li]Children of Blood and Bone (2018) Tomi Adeyemi[/li][li]Police at the Funeral (1931) Margery Allingham[/li][li]The Bear and the Nightingale (2017) Katherine Arden[/li][li]Servant of the Underworld (2010) Aliette de Bodard[/li][li]The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (2016) Becky Chambers[/li][li]Sorcerer to the Crown (2015) Zen Cho[/li][li]L.A. Requiem (1999) Robert Crais[/li][li]The Detective & the Pipe Girl (2014) Michael Craven[/li][li]Vendetta (1990) Michael Dibdin[/li][li]The Glass Highway (1983) Loren D Estleman[/li][li]The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter (2017) Theodora Goss[/li][li]Spoonbenders (2017) Daryl Gregory[/li][li]Bones and Silence (1990) Reginald Hill[/li][li]The Salt Roads (2003) Nalo Hopkinson[/li][li]Now You See It (2004) Stuart M Kaminsky[/li][li]The Poppy War (2018) R F Kuang[/li][li]Revenant Gun (2018) Yoon Ha Lee[/li][li]Nightmare in Pink (1964) John D MacDonald[/li][li]Daughter of the Forest (1999) Juliet Marillier[/li][li]Out on Blue Six (1989) Ian McDonald[/li][li]Beneath the Sugar Sky (2018) Seanan McGuire[/li][li]Blackfish City (2018) Sam J Miller[/li][li]Null States (2017) Malka Older[/li][li]The Toll (2019) Cherie Priest[/li][li]A Rival From the Grave (2018) Seabury Quinn[/li][li]Bannerless (2017) Carrie Vaughn[/li][li]Wanderers (2019) Chuck Wendig[/li][li]Alif the Unseen (2012) G Willow Wilson[/li][/ul]

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Please see the OP, Sassy, and tell us why you particularly liked ten of them. Thanks!