{"id":7755,"date":"2019-01-02T17:12:24","date_gmt":"2019-01-02T17:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/martinblack.com\/?p=7755"},"modified":"2019-01-02T19:21:54","modified_gmt":"2019-01-02T19:21:54","slug":"my-favourite-books-of-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/martinblack.com\/oldsite\/2019\/01\/my-favourite-books-of-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"My favourite books of 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to my Goodreads list<\/a> I devoured 50 books last year and abandoned three.\u00a0 Of these fifty, 24 were were non-fiction.<\/p>\n

I moved steadily away from e-books and purchased either via Toppings<\/a>, my excellent local bookshop, Ebay (a veritable buyers market these days) or various charity and second hand bookshops.<\/p>\n

In the last quarter of the year I discovered that archive.org<\/a> hosts a frightening number of interesting looking books available for loan. I also took out a subscription to the wonderful Slightly Foxed quarterly<\/a> which has furnished yet more books for my ‘to-read’ list.<\/p>\n

This year has been dominated by central and eastern Europe as will quickly become evident from a glance at the list below.\u00a0 I expect this trend to continue throughout 2019.<\/p>\n

Top five novels<\/h2>\n

\"LifeLife and Fate – Vasily Grossman<\/h3>\n

An astonishing work encompassing the Second World War, Stalingrad, Stalin’s purges and the people swept up in this most awful period of the twentieth century.\u00a0 The writing isn’t always beautiful (Grossman was primarily a journalist) but its power and breadth is breathtaking.\u00a0 A long, and not always easy read, but well worth your time.<\/p>\n

\"\"The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton<\/h3>\n

Published in 1905, the novel tells the story of\u00a0Lily Bart and her life as a member of New York City’s high society.\u00a0 The book is as an attack on the\u00a0hypocrisy of the American\u00a0upper class and the restricted roles assigned to woman in society at that time.\u00a0 Wharton writes beautifully.<\/p>\n

\"roth\"The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth<\/h3>\n

Roth charts the decline and fall of the Hapsburg empire through the life of three generations of the\u00a0Trotta family.\u00a0 A magnificent book that helped ignite my interest in Austro-Hungary and the Dual Monarchy.<\/p>\n

\"counted\"
\nThey Were Counted – B\u00e1nffy, Mikl\u00f3s<\/h3>\n

A sumptuous feast of a book. 600 pages (the first in a series of three books) set at the turn of last century following the lives of two young men in (what was then) the Transylvanian region of Hungary. I’m hungry for the next two in the series (pardon the pun).<\/p>\n

\"They<\/p>\n

The only downside is the book’s cover which I really dislike, the typeface is quite ugly.<\/p>\n

Compare the above to this alternative version of the cover which is understated, clean and pleasing to the eye.<\/p>\n

These things matter to me, book covers (just like album covers back in the day) are one of the joys of reading real books as opposed to e-books.<\/p>\n

\"\"Light Years – James Salter<\/h3>\n

Oh, James Salter writes so beautifully and this book is dreamy, so many perfect phrases and no padding at all, a fine novel.<\/p>\n

I also read a collection of his short stories which were not so hot and the dog chewed the cover off.<\/p>\n

I also enjoyed<\/h2>\n