London Observed - Doris Lessing

And this was the first book I read after we left the hospital with our baby daughter. 

It was ideal, London-based, touching and not dated at all despite being made up of stories published over a number of years (for that, I guess you have to thank London and it's ability to remain true to itself even in moments of dramatic change). 

A perfect read for a hectic time in my life, and one of the few collections of short stories to make it onto my bookshelf. 

Love, etc - Julian Barnes

A very solid 30p buy from the Barbican's library. Shame they only appear to have gigantic hardbacks on sale these days...

As a demonstration of the fact that I read (and buy) books more or less at random, I read LOVE, etc without having read its predecessor (Talking It Over). In spite of that, I really rather enjoyed it - the story is very easy to pick up (to be fair, Barnes does offer what I believe is a pretty substantial recap through the words of the three main characters), and the London setting is, as usual, very appealing to me. 

The biggest selling point for me was the decision to allow the characters to "speak for themselves" in an almost theatrical way, something that appears so smart and so simple, and something that surprisingly other authors (to my very limited knowledge!) haven't decided to imitate. 

The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler

In all honesty I was biased against this novel before even starting it: after reading quite a lot of Chandler, I had had enough of him and with how cool Marlowe finds himself, but I did like the movie (though many didn't!) and needed something reasonably long and reasonably light to carry with me to the hospital as my wife delivered baby numero dos. Yes, because that happened too...

Unsurprisingly, I didn't particularly like the book, but the setting remains one that I enjoy (though I'd pick an LA novel by Ellroy any day over this one!). The biggest surprises were in the differences with the movie, but I never really got into the plot, and that's partly due to the little time that I have for Marlowe and to the fact that I was quite on the sleep-deprived side of things those days!
 

All in all, though, it was oddly enough the perfect read for uncomfortable nights on uncomfortable hospital chairs!

A Long Way from Home - Peter Carey

Possibly the best book I've read this year (then again, I probably have a handful of books I can say the same for if I go through the list). I've read reviews saying that Carey was back to the level of Oscar and Lucinda, but I liked this book so much more. 

What I liked about it is its soft and subtle approach to issues of race and repression in Australia. He surely gets plenty of things wrong, but he appears to me one of those white men who at least make an effort, and obviously that's something that resonates with me. 

And, despite not being into any sort of motorsport, I have to say the idea of a car race across an almost uncharted Australia is absolutely fascinating. On top of that, the switch of focus from Irene to Willie works surprisingly well, as the reader grows truly fond of both of them.

Purity - Jonathan Franzen

 

And I actually liked it. I liked it better than Freedom, the book it displaced on my bookshelf. Granted, I might be biased as a big chunk of it is set in my wife's hometown (Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, is not exactly the most literarily visited of places, the only author I know that has written about it was Mario Vargas Llosa, but that doesn't count as he lived right next door!). 

I don't think anything will ever come close to The Corrections, but Purity has enough flashes of genius to remind the reader of how amazing a writer Franzen can be. Said flashes of genius (first among them Andreas Wolf's first TV interview outside the Stasi archives) are enough to make one overlook some unpredictable turns of events that are actually not so unpredictable. 

The penultimate chapter (The Killer) felt absolutely eternal, and I do think Franzen could have shaved a fair few pages from the 563 of the book, but it remained a great read to end 2019. Also, this book is so very reflective of his disdain and disregard for a number of contemporary developments and trends, and to me it appears clear that Tom Aberant is in the end his favourite character.