Best of the Best 2019 Part 1: Classics Corner

Best of the Best 2019 Part 1: Classics Corner




By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: It's that time again to discuss my favorite books that I read in 2019.

This year since I read so many in my main three categories, I am composing three separate lists.

The first list is for Classics Corner, those books that were published before 1999.

10. Jazz by Toni Morrison-A book that sounds as good as it reads. A love triangle between Violet Trace a mentally ill hairdresser, Joe, her salesman husband, and Dorcas, his 18-year-old mistress is written with repetitive phrases, call and answer sections, and rhythmic flow in writing much like the music of the title. Morrison's book also features three damaged people dealing with racism, death, parental abandonment, mental illness, and infidelity in forceful sometimes violent ways.

9. Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett-

If you are going to the Apocalypse take this funny book with you. An angel and demon duo decide to prevent the destruction of Earth and involve themselves in the lives of the Antichrist. There are Bikers of the Apocalypse, adorable hounds of hell, prophets who are spot on with their prophecies, and a tape deck playing the Best of Queen over and over. Plus this is all over seen by Aziraphale, an angel that runs a used book shop and Crowley, a Bentley driving demon. What's not to love?

8. Daisy Miller/Washington Square by Henry James- These two novellas feature James’s gift of prying into the female psyche and questioning the roles of women. Daisy features the title character, an American flirt shocking her fellow expatriates with her passionate romantic manner with the locals. Washington is about Catherine Sloper, a shy woman controlled by her rigid father and falling in love with a man who might be a fortune hunter. Both are strong character studies of women trapped by society's constraints and rebelling against them in the only ways that they can.

7. Matilda by Roald Dahl- The crown jewel/gold standard in Dahl's impressive literary repertoire. Matilda is every book lover's hero, a young girl who finds escape from her abusive parents and headmistress through books. When both she and Miss Honey, her favorite teacher, are threatened, Matilda uses her massive brain power to fight back in an epic and satisfactory manner.

6. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle- When people are asked to name their favorite YA novels, this Newbery Winner often comes up and deservedly so. The book is an epic fantasy in which Meg Murray, her brother, and friends including the mysterious Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Who travel through a tesseract in search of Meg’s captive father. The book is filled with fascinating worlds like the rigid conformist Cazmatoz and brilliant characters like the Happy Medium. Above all it carries a strong theme of maintaining one's individuality against conformity.

5. Fear of Flying by Erica Jong- This controversial book from the 1970’s tells a sharp biting but truthful story about a woman seeking sexual liberation. Isadora Wing, a dissatisfied writer longs to escape her unhappy marriage by having an unattached affair. The book covers her affair and her past which involves her miserable mother, her hypocritical sisters, and her unstable first marriage to give us the whole picture towards Isadora's life and the choices she makes as she searches for her independence and personal happiness.

4. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton- The best of Wharton's literary canon takes a savage look at the upperclass New York society in the late 19th and early 20th century from the people longing to get in. Lily Bart is a 29-year-old socialite running out of time to marry a wealthy man and little prospects to do anything else. The book explores how gossip, scandal, and wealth can destroy a person and leave them destitute and bereft of hope.

3. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray- The O.G. of British Literary Bad Girls is none other than Thackeray's Becky Sharp. This book explores Becky's involvement with the Sedley and Crawley families in her attempts to climb to the top of wealth and society. Becky is an intriguing character as she flirts, steals, thumbs her nose, connives, lies, and possibly murders to get her way.

2. Middlemarch by George Eliot-Eliot’s magnum opus begins where most books of the time end with marriage but gives us the unhappiness when couples are incompatible. Dorothea Brooke, an intelligent altruistic woman marries an elderly man to get what she hopes is intellectual satisfaction and a life of meaning and significance. Tertius Lydgate, an idealistic doctor committed to research and service, marries a woman of great wealth and society but who is also completely vapid and materialistic. Eliot explores in great detail the unhappiness that Dorothea and Tertius encounter in their marriages and how they compromise the ideals that they once held for themselves.

The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker-The best Classic book I read this year covers a lot of ground. Through her short stories, poems, essays, and reviews, particularly her Constant Reader book reviews for The New Yorker, Parker skewered everything and everybody. She looked at everything from unhappy marriages, the flapper lifestyle, racism, sexism, gossipy matrons, womanizing playboys, strict parents, Capitalism, Socialism, European politics, religion, literary and theater snobs, celebrity culture, mental illness, alcoholism, art and literary movements, and her fellow writers and artists with a sharp witty acid tongue. Dorothy Parker was a writer who strove for the last word and quite often got it.




Honorable Mention: Bleak House by Charles Dickens, Holes by Louis Sacher, The Complete Raffles Stories by E.W. Hornung, The World of Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, We Were The Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte, and The Great and Secret Show (The Art Trilogy) by Clive Barker