The rating system, based purely on what I personally got from each book rather than what others may think, is:
📖 📖 📖 📖 📖 Truly Special, exceptional.
📖 📖 📖 📖 Very Good and deeply rewarding.
📖 📖 📖 Middling to Good, competent and worthwhile but not special.
📖 📖 Poor and disappointing.
📖 Dreadful.
An (R) next to a title denotes a re-reading of a book.
January
The Illustrated Letters of Virginia Woolf - Frances Spalding (editor) 📖 📖 📖 📖
The Dawn Watch, Joseph Conrad in a Global World - Maya Jasanoff 📖 📖 📖 📖
Winter - Ali Smith 📖 📖 📖 📖
February
The Descent of Man - Grayson Perry 📖 📖 📖
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K Le Guin 📖 📖 📖 📖
The Ice Palace - Tarjei Vesaas 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖
Every single page of The Ice Palace fizzes with an extraordinary disturbing electricity - an astonishing read!
March
The Last London - Iain Sinclair 📖 📖 📖 📖
Carpe Diem Regained - Roman Krznaric 📖 📖 📖 (great cover though!)
Wind Resistance - Karine Polwart 📖 📖 📖 📖
April
The Waves - Virginia Woolf 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖
The Snow Leopard - Peter Matthiessen (R) 📖 📖 📖 📖
The Waves just reads like the ultimate, it's not easy to discern all the art on a first read but it is subtly phenomenal.
May
Eagle Country - Sean Lysaght 📖 📖 📖
Painter to the King - Amy Sackville 📖 📖 📖 📖
June
The Rider - Tim Krabbe 📖 📖 📖 📖
Modern Nature - Derek Jarman 📖 📖 📖 📖
The Return of the Soldier - Rebecca West 📖 📖 📖
July
The Beautiful Summer - Cesare Pavese 📖 📖 📖
The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead 📖 📖 📖 📖
Anquetil Alone - Paul Fournel 📖 📖 📖
August
Crudo - Olivia Laing 📖 📖 📖 📖
The Blue Flower - Penelope Fitzgerald 📖 📖 📖
First Light - Geoffrey Wellum 📖 📖 📖 📖
All Among the Barley - Melissa Harrison 📖 📖 📖 📖
September
Autumn - Melissa Harrison (editor) 📖 📖 📖
Normal People - Sally Rooney 📖 📖 📖 📖
Joss - Keith Richardson 📖 📖 📖
October
Lost Japan - Alex Kerr 📖 📖 📖 📖
Rosewater - Tade Thompson 📖 📖 📖
An Artist of the Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro 📖 📖 📖 📖
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K Dick 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖
Blade Runner is great film and I read Dick's book just to understand the source material better. I was totally unprepared for a tremendous book even greater than the film!
November
The Middle Parts of Fortune - Frederic Manning 📖 📖 📖 📖
Selected Poems - Wilfred Owen (with original engravings by Neil Bousfield) 📖 📖 📖 📖 📖
The Folio Society edition of Owen's poetry, released on the centenary of his death one week before the Armistice, is a complete work of art. The uncompromising poetry, the astonishing illustrations and the evocative binding combine three artist's work powerfully - a kind of publishing perfection.
December
Herma - MacDonald Harris 📖 📖 📖 📖
The Western Wind - Samantha Harvey 📖 📖 📖 📖
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner & Three Other Poems - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (with original engravings by Harry Brockway) 📖 📖 📖 📖
Here's to continued great reading in 2019.
See also: Another Year of Reading - In Pictures
