favorite books of 2019
A commenter observed (somewhat sardonically) that I must spend more time playing Nintendo games than reading now. Not true! I did play a lot of Nintendo games in 2019, but I also finished reading 111 different books last year.
Here were my favorite books of 2019, broken down by genre.
FANTASY:
A Dragon from the Desert & A Dragon in the Palace, by William King.
These books are set in Mr. King’s KORMAK universe, but while the Kormak books are about a wizard-hunter, the DRAGON series is about a teenage boy who comes into magical power and becomes an apprentice to the feared court wizard of a powerful noble. Excellent worldbuilding, interesting characters, and fascinating plots.
SCIENCE FICTION:
The Blood On The Stars series by Jay Allan.
This is a military SF series about the Confederation, a corrupt interstellar republic that finds itself pulled into the war with a Union, a totalitarian interstellar dictatorship. Both the Union and the Confederation are successor states to an interstellar empire that was far more technologically advanced, and which of course left various nasty and dangerous artifacts lying around. An excellent series with a broad and grand sweep.
Thrawn: Treason by Timothy Zahn.
Zahn’s books are the only Star Wars books I go out of my way to read, and THRAWN: TREASON does not disappoint. Thrawn makes for a great villain protagonist, and it’s fun to read as he tries to balance his duty to the Emperor with his loyalty to his people.
MYSTERY:
The Comoran Strike series, by Robert Galbraith (pen name of JK Rowling).
These are some really good mystery books, and I hope Rowling writes more of them. The setup is that private detective Cormoran Strike and his plucky assistant (and later partner) Robin solve crimes. Both face some nasty opponents, and both grow and evolve as characters, usually quite painfully. Rowling has the half-cynical, half-amused, and half-empathetic eye for human foibles that great writers do (I’m aware that’s three halves – great writers do things at 150 percent!), and I honestly think these are better than the Harry Potter books.
The Brother Cadfael series, by Ellis Peters.
I started reading this series back in 2011, but I finally finished it in 2019. Brother Cadfael is a monk in 12th century Shrewsbury, and despite being a cloistered brother, somehow winds up having to solve a great many mysteries. Peters has the same sort of eye for human observation as Rowling, and the books have great historical verisimilitude. Each one can be read as a stand-alone book, but if you read them in order, there is a sort of very loose overarching plot arc about the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Maud that consumed much of the 1130s and 1140s in England.
Night Prey, by John Sandford.
Sandford’s books are generally darker than I prefer, but this was really good. Lucas Davenport finds himself hunting a thief and a killer who develops an obsession with a woman. The killer is a fascinating and disturbing character – he is in many ways a profoundly stupid man, but he possess a great deal of cunning and practical knowledge, and has just enough self-awareness to realize that his obsession with the woman is going to get him killed, but he can’t make himself stop. All this leads to a nail-biting and suspenseful final third of the book.
NONFICTION:
Blood, Sweat & Pixels, by Jason Schreier.
This is a fascinating look at how 10 different major video games were produced – from big corporate projects like DIABLO III to indie games like SHOVEL KNIGHT and STARDEW VALLEY, which was literally created by one man working alone in his apartment for years. Video game development is a brutal, brutal business, and I’m glad I never got involved in it!
Loserthink, by Scott Adams.
In this book, Adams defines “loserthink” as modes of thought that lead to undesirable outcomes. Bad thinking leads to bad results, and LOSERTHINK offers advice on how to spot self-defeating and self-sabotaging patterns of thinking.
One of the downsides of the Internet is that there is a great deal of misinformation on both social media and traditional news media, because misinformation can create strong emotions, which in turns drives reader/viewer engagement, which generates more ad revenue. The most interesting sections of LOSERTHINK deal with how to spot slanted or emotionally exaggerated information on social media and the news. If you have a friend or relative who is constantly getting upset over something they just read on the Internet (and we all know people like that) this book might help them deal with things on a more even keel.
Help! My Facebook Ads Suck! by Mal Cooper & Jill Cooper.
As I reconsider my marketing strategies and tactics for 2020, this was an excellent primer on using Facebook ads. Definitely recommended if you want an understanding of Facebook advertising.
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That’s quite the eclectic range of books, isn’t it? Looking forward to reading more in 2020!
-JM