This is a complete list of all the books I read during 2019. (And in one case attempted to read.) For more detail on some of the titles see my Reading Diary post: Looking back 2019.
In the list I’ve tried to link the authors to their professional English language home pages. If I’ve been unable to find one, I link to the equivalent on Wikipedia, Good Reads or elsewhere.
- Ama Ata Aidoo, The Dilemma of a Ghost & Anowa (2 plays)
- Madeline Albright, Fascism: A Warning
- Ayi Kwei Armah, Why Are We So Blest
- Kate Atkinson , Transcriptions
- Life After Life
- Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
- The Testaments
- Karin Bojs, My European Family
- Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister the Serial Killer
- Ann Cleeves, The Moth Catcher
- Wild Fire
- Nana Awere Damoah, Tales from Different Tales (short stories)
- Guillermo Del Toro & Daniel Kraus, The Shape of Water
- Danielle Dutton, Margaret the First
- Bernadine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other
- Jonas Gardell, En Komikers Uppväxt
- Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing
- Kazuo Ishiguro, The Unconsoled
- P D James, Sleep No More (short stories)
- Adam Key, This is Going to Hurt
- Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Pappaklausulen
- James Kirkup, The Only Child
- Sorrows, Passions and Alarms
- K P Kojo, Tales from Africa (short stories)
- Tété-Michel Kpomassie, An African in Greenland
- L T I Korea, Korean Literature: Stories and Poems in Translation (anthology)
Note: much as I would like to link somewhere for this anthology, every URL I find leads only to pages exclusively in Korean. - John Le Carré, The Constant Gardener
- Ursula K LeGuin, So Far So Good – Final Poems
- Steering the Craft
- A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (short stories)
- Henning Mankell, Kvicksand
- George R R Martin, A Dance with Dragons
- Ian McEwan, Machines Like Me
- The Children Act
- Robert McKee, Story
- China Mieville, Un Lun Dun
- Three Moments of an Explosion (short stories)
- Chris Mullins, A Very British Coup
- Eric Newby, The Last Grain Race
- Ian Rankin, The Hanging Garden
- Alex Reeve, The House at Half Moon Street
- Sally Rooney, Normal People
- J K Rowling, The Casual Vacancy
- Alex Schulman, Bränn alla mina brev
- Ali Smith, The First Person and Other Stories (short stories)
- How to be Both
- Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust
- Sara Stridsberg, Kärlekens Antarktis
- Anna Swärd, Vera
- Graham Swift, Mothering Sunday
- Waterland
- Yoko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear
- The Last Children of Tokyo
- The Fiction Desk, And Nothing Remains (short stories – anthology)
Hi John,
I just read your post about reading my book Tales from Different Tails, in 2019. Thanks a lot and with regards from Ghana.
Nana Awere Damoah
You’re welcome, Nana!
Your book was one I bought in Ghana while Mrs SC and I were there last year. Specifically Ghanaian literature isn’t that easy to come by outside of the country. Famous authors like Ayi Kwei Armah or Ama Ata Aidoo apart, it’s books by expatriate Ghanaians like Yaa Gyasi that one comes across. (And one has to look hard even to find these, though Gyasi has been very successful.) So we were keen to visit Ghanaian bookshops and see what was being published locally.
Turns out it’s not that easy to find specifically Ghanaian literature in Ghana either! Our guide book recommended a bookshop (called SyTris) in a mall near the airport in Accra as having “the best collection of contemporary novels in Ghana”. But that turned out to be non-Ghanaian literature for westerners! However the staff were very keen to help us and they did have a small selection of works by local authors – including your book. Perhaps we would have had better luck elsewhere in Accra, but after that we were only able to visit bookshops in Cape Coast.
Thanks for dropping by and saying hello.
Best wishes!