The Best Books I Read In 2019

My 2019 resolution was to read more books. To help, I managed to keep a record of every book I read this year as an highlight on my Instagram profile. Click here for the full list, or read on for the five best books I read this year.

1. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurty

I raced through all 1000 pages of this gripping, poignant and beautifully imagined depiction of the last days of the West. Click here.

2. English Passengers, Matthew Keale

Proper feat of literary ventriloquism, this. A blackly comic tale of hubristic Victorian colonialism and the Tasmanian genocide. Much, much funnier than that sounds. Click here.

3. True Grit, Charles Portis

A perfect novella with, in Mattie Ross, one of the best female voices in American literature. Click here.

4. The Inheritors, William Golding

I was left somewhat in awe at the discomfiting genius of this bleak fictional reimagining of the last days of the Neanderthals. Click here.

5. Augustus, John Williams

The author I most enjoyed discovering this year. Could easily have also chosen Butcher’s Crossing, but the technical brilliance of this retelling of the story of Augustus gave it the nod. Click here.