This year, like last, was a year of much re-reading; and as I didn’t keep track of every single re-read on Goodreads or on paper, my final number of books read in 2019 is slightly fuzzy. My record book shows the highest number of 103, so we’ll go with that. The full list of everything I logged on Goodreads is here, if you’re interested in perusing it; meanwhile, here’s some of the highlights. (Titles that made it onto my top-ten list for the year are marked with an asterisk.*)
Some of the best books that I re-read were My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara, The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey, Saturday’s Child by Kathleen Thompson Norris, Letters to Julia by Meredith Allady (those two books have become some of the very closest to my heart of any I’ve ever read), The Warden and Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope, and The Trusty Knaves by Eugene Manlove Rhodes. Among others, I also revisited National Velvet by Enid Bagnold, Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott, Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and a couple of particularly dear old favorites from childhood, Heidi by Johanna Spyri and Hans Brinker: Or, the Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge.
Rather surprisingly, I didn’t read too many classics aside from those I’d read before. I did read three Shakespeare plays (mostly in pursuit of quotations for chapter epigraphs, I will admit); I liked Richard II but didn’t care much for Henry IV Part I and even less for Part II. Another work that probably also falls into the category of classic was Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s long narrative poem Aurora Leigh. The story of a woman poet and her complicated relationship with her cousin, an over-zealous social reformer who is initially disparaging of her work, it was sometimes melodramatic, always page-turning, and filled with many thought-provoking passages on art and the artist’s life, particularly as relates to women artists.
Highlights of historical nonfiction included The Huguenots: Their Settlements, Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland* by Samuel Smiles, They Saddled the West* by Lee M. Rice and Glenn R. Vernam; America Moved: Booth Tarkington’s Memoirs of Time and Place, 1869-1928, a compilation of Tarkington’s autobiographical writings, and Vanished Arizona by Martha Summerhayes, a memoir by a cavalry officer’s wife who went West for the first time as a new bride in 1874 and survived some amazingly rugged conditions and hair-raising experiences in her years on the frontier. In theology, there was The Things of Earth: Treasuring God by Enjoying His Gifts by Joe Rigney and The Olivet Discourse Made Easy by Kenneth L. Gentry; in general nonfiction, Newsletter Ninja* by Tammi Labrecque and Keep Going by Austin Kleon.
Western-wise, I finally read True Grit by Charles Portis, and…well, I liked it and I didn’t like it. It was clever, had a unique style, but my interest in it kind of flagged by the end. Maybe just a little too grim for my tastes. Meanwhile, Stepsons of Light* by Eugene Manlove Rhodes was entirely delightful—and going by my own criteria, I would call The Whistling Season* by Ivan Doig a Western, too, from its pre-WWI Montana setting.
Many, many mysteries read this year! I’ll just name a few of the standouts. A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs, The Piper On the Mountain* (from the Felse Investigations series), and Death Mask (non-series) by Ellis Peters; The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers; The Religious Body and Parting Breath (from the Calleshire Chronicles series) by Catherine Aird. Pecos Valley Diamond by Alice Duncan was a pretty cute and entertaining whodunit with a unique setting in 1920s New Mexico; The Right Sort of Man by Alison Montclair I liked in some ways and didn’t like in others; and I had kind of a soft spot for The Red Carnelian by Phyllis A. Whitney because of its stylish 1940s Chicago setting, even though it got rather overwrought in places as Whitney’s books all tend to do. I also read two more mysteries by Geraldine Bonner, The Black Eagle Mystery and Miss Maitland, Private Secretary, which were both follow-ups to the entertaining The Girl At Central which I enjoyed last year—both were pretty good, though I still like the first book best.
Having read all of Mary Stewart’s romantic-suspense novels, I’ve been filling in around the edges with a few of her lesser-known or formerly out-of-print titles. Neither Stormy Petrel nor Rose Cottage is quite up to the level of her other books, but as other reviewers have remarked, even lesser Stewart is still pretty good. It was also enjoyable to get some of her thoughts on the creative process with what I’m fairly sure must be a bit of self-portrait in her portrayal of the writer narrator to Stormy Petrel. I also read two other short works published in one ebook, The Wind Off the Small Isles and The Lost One, and the latter was my very favorite of these “odds and ends”—a compact delight of a short story very firmly in Stewart’s classic suspense mold.
I also read a couple more children’s books just ’cause I wanted to: The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright was just as charming as the previous Enright books I’ve read; and The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall surprised me by actually turning out to have been written in 2005—somehow I’d gotten the idea it was an older children’s classic. In many ways it was quite a worthy modern successor to books such as Enright’s, though different in some ways.
Worst book of the year? I’m afraid there were a handful that I could roast if I had the time and inclination for that sort of thing, but it’s a close race between The Alington Inheritance by Patricia Wentworth and Out of the Depths by Robert Ames Bennet—though I think Wentworth wins the dubious honor by a nose. I was also oddly aggravated by Dick Francis’ Rat Race, which had so much going for it in some respects but disappointed me so much in others that I couldn’t even decide on an accurate star rating.
(Oh, wait a minute, I just remembered. Waiting for Willa by Dorothy Eden was so bad I didn’t log it on Goodreads or my record book. Only the fact that as a library book it was someone else’s property preserved it from being shied across the room.)
Partly because of doing market research, and partly just by happenstance, I read rather more recently-published historical fiction than I’ve been wont to do—and while I didn’t like all of them, a couple surprised me by ending up among my favorites of the year: Girl Waits With Gun* by Amy Stewart and A Desperate Fortune* by Susanna Kearsley.
My “Christmas read” for this year also turned out to be perhaps the biggest surprise of the year: The Enchanted Sonata* by Heather Dixon Wallwork, a delightful fairytale-ish retelling of the Nutcracker. And to round things off, novels and short fiction in various genres: Children of the Desolate* by Suzannah Rowntree, The Main Chance by Meredith Nicholson, Fidelity by Wendell Berry, Arabella by Georgette Heyer, and The Comings of Cousin Ann by Emma Speed Sampson.
Previous years’ reading roundups: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012.
image: Sofia Iivarinen // Pixabay