What I enjoyed (and didn't enjoy) reading in 2019

In the peaceful times of 2015, the Motti Literary Awards was launched to a small number of passionate readers. It's just my opinion, I forewarned. I'm the supreme dictator of this award.

Little did I know I'd be starting an irreversible global trend and now the world is full of supreme dictators.

But let’s look on the bright side: 2019 was a big year for reading. Actually never read so much in a year, if you consider number of books + average page number. Here are some highlights:

• Initial goal was 36 books in the year. That goal was smashed.
• Another goal was to read six classics. That goal was met — it was great, as it forced me to read awesome and awesomely bad books.
• Another goal was to read one different magazine each month. I don't think I read one single magazine. Sorry not sorry.
• Lost my Kindle and didn't miss it. Found my new favourite bookshop (more below).

Because of all of the above, and also because I was bored, we're going to debut a brand new format, where I rank every book from worst to best and write a brief tweet-like review. Except for the very bad ones or the very good ones— then I can write how much I fucking want.

Also, I’ll be writing in English for the first time, instead of doing a horrible translation from Portuguese. I mean, 90% of the books are in English anyway.

Without further ado, welcome to the 5th Motti Literary Awards, written, directed, produced and presented by supreme dictator Ricardo Motti.

The 'Farenheit 451' Awards

Not only supreme dictatorship is back in fashion, but the inaugural Motti Literary Awards also unexpectedly reignited the trend of burning books. Here are the perfect books if you need to start a bonfire.

52. O Alquimista, Paulo Coelho (1988)
There are two types of Brazilians: people who love Paulo Coelho and people who think they're too smart for his books.

I didn't want to be in the second category. I really really really wanted to like this book. I tried really really really hard to find something to like. I really really really couldn't. Guess it wasn’t part of my Personal Legend. I shall forever live in shame, knowing I now identify as Too Smart for Paulo Coelho.

51. NW, Zadie Smith (2012)
Zadie Smith is a British national treasure and I’m risking deportation by burning her book. For artistic integrity, it’s a risk I have to take.

This is what happens when a writer thinks they write so well that they don’t need a story, just a collection of scenes. She makes it intentionally hard to understand what’s going on. Almost every paragraph means: look, I’m smarter than you, poor reader. Ugh.

50. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (1865)
Did we ever get around to cancelling Lewis Carroll for being a paedophile?

Anyway, I thought I would like this one. The characters are brilliant. The synopsis is genius. The book is confusing and unstructured as hell. Thanks, Disney, for sorting out this mess.

49. Elogio da Madrasta, Mario Vargas Llosa (1988)
I love Vargas Llosa, but this is porn. The worst kind of porn: intellectual porn, look-how-well-I-can-write porn. Let’s please stick to regular porn.

48. Fechado por Motivo de Futebol, Eduardo Galeano (2017)
“oi mate, write a book so we can make some cash”
“no need, here are some of my old articles”
“ah, this is only 150 pages long, it won’t sell”
“shit! add this interview and these three speeches”

The 'Neverending Story' Tier

Unless you're about to freeze to death, do not burn these books. Their only crime is boring me, but that's not a capital offence.

(For the record, Neverending Story was a great book. At least each of the 12 times or so I read it as a teenager.)

47. Kitchen, Banana Yoshimoto (1988)
It's a Japanese literature classic! It's a short book! I can plow through this in a couple of days! What could go wrong? Well…

46. Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, Max Porter (2015)
This is beautifully written, fusing prose and poetry. Probably a great book if you’re the type of person who cares about that sort of stuff.

45. London Lies Beneath, Stella Duffy (2016)
Historical fiction is not my thing, even when it's set exactly in the same block where I lived in Elephant & Castle (!). Unfortunately, it mostly felt as boring and miserable as living in South London in 1912.

44. Drive, James Sallis (2005)
The movie is way better than the book.

43. The Princess Diarist, Carrie Fisher (2016)
Oh Carrie, you wrote so well. You had such a rich life. Why did you think we wanted to spend 80 pages reading your diary from when you were 19 and another 60 pages with complaints about signing autographs…?

42. Walking Away, Simon Hermitage (2015)
This is about walking the South West Coastal Path. I read this while walking the South West Coastal Path. Just like walking the South West Coastal Path, there were great moments, but it was a lot of effort and I ended up very tired.

41. On the Come Up, Angie Thomas (2019)
"I know this is Young Adult lit, but it’s about hip-hop and I want something easy to read." Obviously, not for me. Didn’t realise young adults were so lame. (And I’m the person who thinks 'Booksmart' was the movie of the decade.)

The 'Hard Times' Valley

I've read these authors before. I've enjoyed these authors before. They've disappointed me.

40. Adèle, Leïla Slimani (2014)
Couldn't believe Leïla regressed after the wonderfully dark The Perfect Nanny. Except she didn't: this is actually her first book, but just now published in English. She gets a pass.

39. The Men Who Stare at Goats, Jon Ronson (2004)
Distractedly broke my One-Book-Per-Author-Each-Year Rule and read two books by Jon Ronson. Can't say I recommend this one, it's a mess. Scroll down to #16 if you're desperate for a Jon Ronson fix.

38. Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer (1997)
Into Thin Air is one of my top 10 non-fiction books of all time—it basically shaped my reading taste. So Into the Wild was a major disappointment. I guess there are worse things in the world (like Eddie Vedder's soundtrack to the movie).

37. Basket Case, Carl Hiaasen (2002)
Randomly, I read a lot of Hiaasen when I was a teenager. I haven’t read anything by him in years. Apparently I haven't missed much. Still fun and shallow. Sometimes that's what's you need.

36. Raised in Captivity: Fictional Non-fiction, Chuck Klosterman (2019)
It’s a great premise: finding weird real news and building weird fictional short stories around them. Too bad it didn't work. There are funny bits but… there's a lot of boring too. Sorry, Chuck. Nobody's perfect.

35. McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld, Misha Glenny (2008)
I appreciate the herculean effort of investigating organised crime all over the world. But the book is waaaaaay too sprawling to be engaging. Don't get me wrong: there's a lot of interesting information. It's just not a great reading experience, like Nemesis was.

The Murakami Level

We're (mostly) done with the snark. These were the satisfying, unspectacular books that I enjoyed but didn't love. That's a snarky comment on Murakami, by the way.

34. Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All, Jonas Jonasson (2015)
I was trying to understand Swedish culture, not sure this helped. Mostly fun, funny at times. Weird plot and structure? Last 80 pages felt like an epilogue?[confused emoji]

33. The Reckoning, John Grisham (2018)
When I find myself in reading troubles, Mr. Grisham comes to me. Not his best one, but he's unbeatable when you're stuck in a rut and need a page-turner.

32. Berenice Detetive, João Carlos Marinho (1987)
A book I read countless times as a kid and the only re-read of the year, to honour the author's passing (R.I.P.). Like a good Pixar movie, there's lots of mature jokes that went over my head when I was 12.

31. My Sister, the Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite (2018)
It’s funny, it’s smart, it’s easy to read, it’s about killing people—so I can't understand why I felt lukewarm about it. Maybe it was the short chapters. Maybe I never connected with the characters. Still worth it.

30. Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland, Sarah Moss (2012)
Sort of a one-year travel book. Fun, easy to read, filled with interesting anecdotes—good prep before a trip to Iceland.

29. The Princess Bride, William Goldman (1973)
I’m about 45 years too late to read this. Well, it’s groundbreaking and influential: a twisted fairy tale. It has amazingly funny lines throughout. I have to admit I struggled sometimes. That said, a moment of silence for the passing of William Goldman, who was a ridiculous writer. R.I.P.

28. Kill ’Em All, John Niven (2018)
The recently-released sequel to Kill Your Friends, which I loved and taught me, a lot about the, uh, dog-eat-dog nature of the music industry. This one is fun and very appropriate for the Trump Era. Also very inappropriate for any other purpose.

27. The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside ‘The Room’, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made, Greg Sestero & Tim Bissell (2014)
Such a fun book that made me curious to watch a movie that, by all accounts, is painfully terrible.

26. The Force, Don Winslow (2017)
When you need a 500-page dirty-cop thriller, Don Winslow is your man.

25. Radical Candor: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean, Kim Scott (2017)
This is my apology to all co-workers about the amount of times I quoted this book in the last five months: sorry. Anyway, the title is self-help-ish, but it's actually super useful, even if it's not always a fun read.

A Musical Interlude

I've never read as much about music as this year, so some of the music-related books get their own special section.

24. Ska’d for Life: A Personal Journey with The Specials, Horace Panter (2007)
Makes you realise being a rock star is not as easy as it seems. Easy, fun and not that deep. (Parental advisory: lots of cocaine.)

23. Chapter and Verse: New Order, Joy Division and Me, Bernard Sumner (2014)
First few chapters were a bit boring. But then I felt so extraordinary, something got a hold of me. (Parental advisory: lots of cocaine.)

22. Smash!: Green Day, the Offspring, Rancid, NOFX, and the ’90s Punk Explosion, Ian Winwood (2018)
Made me listen to so much early 90s pop-punk that my Spotify’s Discover Weekly was ruined for two months.

21. Me, Elton John (2019)
The book is better than the songs, lol. Fun read, if a bit disjointed at times, especially during the cocaine years. (Parental advisory: LOTS of cocaine.) The book gets way better when he's clean. There's a lesson here somewhere.

The 'Don Quixote' Division

Close but no cigar. These books won't add "Motti Winner 2019!" to the cover of their next edition. It's not an award we grant lightly. Still, they were great reads and are highly recommended.

20. Direto de Washington, Washington Olivetto (2018)
Washington is Brazil's Forrest Gump: he's been involved with an unbelievable amount of successful things. Super fun if you're into advertising, expensive restaurants and megalomania.

19. Casa de Caba, Edyr Augusto (2004)
The king of the Amazonian underworld! Another great book by Edyr Augusto: very fast, super well-written, fun to read, extremely violent. Almost a shame that it’s only about 100 pages long.

18. The Blueprint: LeBron James, Cleveland’s Deliverance, and the Making of the Modern NBA, Jason Lloyd (2017)
I didn't know it was possible, but this is proof that Kyrie Irving is even more annoying than I thought he was.

17. Uma Mulher no Escuro, Raphael Montes (2019)
The Brazilian Stephen King! Another great, disturbing and impossible-to-put-down book. It lacks the depth and subtleness of Perfect Days, but reprising that would be a tall task.

16. The Psycopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, Jon Ronson (2011)
Jon Ronson, right? Funny, chilling, well-written, moves fast. About psychopaths. So, duh: super recommended. It does dip a bit in the middle, when he veers off to chat about the “madness industry”, but then it’s back to psychopaths and wrapping up his own journey and all’s well again.

15. The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith (1955)
It feels like an Italian holiday, but the protagonist is an anti-hero psycopath. Wait, am I giving off the wrong vibe here? Are there too many books about psycopaths? Let's change the subject.

14. The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank (1947)
Believe. The. Hype. Very different than what I expected. Incredibly interesting as a historical document and very moving. Even has a ‘plot twist’ halfway through. Makes you feel guilty about reading it in a bubble bath, though.

13. My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh (2018)
It’s a book about a depressed girl who wants to sleep for a whole year. Right after I read it, I caught this horrible flu and couldn’t really sleep. One night I took a mouthful of Benadryls and NyQuils and thought please, little pills, knock me out.

After being disappointed by Eileen, I'm happy the Queen of Dark Humour managed to string all her hilarious one-liners and her ickiness into a coherent and engaging novel. Take a bow.

12. Creative Blindness (And How to Cure It), Dave Trott (2019)
A work book that doesn't feel like work. I decided to earmark the chapters that could be useful one day, and ended up marking about half of them. Recommended if you’re a creative or planner. Mandatory if you’re a brand manager. [snarky wink]

11. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis (1991)
Oops, I did it again. I wish I could say this is the last book about psycopaths on this list, but… it gets worse (scroll down to #1 if you're only here for the books on psycopaths). Anyway: comical and disturbing. Glad I read it and glad it’s over. Whew.

10. Pornopopéia, Reinaldo Moraes (2008)
Liked it. I think I liked it. Well, it's a 550-page book that I couldn’t stop reading. Weird book to read post-#metoo: it's either very dated or maybe the point is that the protagonist is behind the times. Yeah, liked it.

9. Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves, Frans de Waal (2018)
Fantastic anecdotes and great to understand apes and humans. At the very least, chapter 5 about how chimpanzees care about 'power' helped me understand a lot of things in work and life.

8. The Diary of a Bookseller, Shaun Bythell (2016)
A diary of a man who owns a second-hand book shop in rural Scotland should be boring. Well… I read it compulsively in 48 hours. It’s just fun, and funny, and lovely and easy. Perfect for a lazy winter weekend. And now I want to visit Wigtown and buy some books.

7. North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail, Scott Jurek (2018)
Let’s start with this: the last few pages made me cry on public transport. As adventure literature, this is as good as they come: entertaining, moving & inspiring. Non-fiction that works as a page-turning thriller and motivates me to run more = automatic five stars.

Bookshop of the Year Trophy

Honestly, I’ve never been a fan of second-hand bookshops. They’re smelly. They’re disorganised. They rarely ever have what I want.

So I was surprised to fall in love at first visit with Bookmongers in Brixton. But it makes sense: it’s medium-sized, it's well curated, it doesn’t smell much and it’s organised by sections — but that’s it, no alphabetical order. It has a nice owner who's just grumpy enough that he could have written The Diary of a Bookseller (see #8 above ). It has a cat that’s grumpier than the owner.

I got about 40% of the books I read this year there. Also, every two months I take an armful of books there and exchange for a couple more. If anything, thanks for saving me hundreds of pounds.

The 2019 Motti Award Winners

This is it. This is the moment you've been waiting (or scrolled down) for. Drum roll for the Motti Award winners of 2019.

6. Inner City Pressure: The Story of Grime, Dan Hancox (2018)
This book shaped my playlists, 70% of my runs, my Spotify Wrapped and my understanding of London. Very deep and thorough, it's not just a music book—it's basically the history of unprivileged youth in London for the last 20 years, through the prism of grime.

It's probably the cleverest music book I've ever read (shout out to The Sex Revolts, that was awesome too), even if it's so dense with information that you will feel tired at some point. It's worth it, though.

5. State of the Union: a Marriage in Ten Parts, Nick Hornby (2019)
Comeback of the year for Nick Hornby! Really fun and creative book, after a string of decent, readable, forgettable books. (I mean, I barely remember what Funny Girl was about.)

The structure is fantastic: a couple meets at the pub before going to their weekly couple therapy session. It's just that, just ten chapters of pub talk. Great dialogues, fun, emotional at times & super short — you’ll get through it in two hours tops.

4. Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know, Malcolm Gladwell (2019)
First five Malcolm Gladwell books: The world is interesting! Here’s some science in easy words and fun anecdotes!

This one: People can’t understand each other, society is doomed.

So of course I loved it. The title might give the idea that it's all about "we need to chat more to understand each other", but it's the other way around. It's about communication breakdown. Easy to read and enlightening.

3. Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway (1926)
Nothing pains me more than giving the Motti Fiction Silver Medal to a cliche and an author that needs no further praise… but I just loved this so much. Made me feel like I was 22.

I don't know if it's for everyone — read it for a book club, people did not like it. It felt like a very masculine point of view of the world, but I like things that portray that subtle male jealousy of being upstaged (Alexander Payne is the master of this, see 'Sideways'). Or be less silly and just read it as a Spanish travel book.

2. Conversations With Friends, Sally Rooney (2017)
Sally, Sally, Sally. Oh Sally. Another book that I should not like, in fact I should hate based on the synopsis in the back… but end up loving. She makes simple storylines feel like thrillers and banal dialogues feel claustrophobic. Impossible to put down.

This is her debut novel, released when she was 26. I might be even better than Normal People, that won a Motti Fiction Bronze Medal last year. There’s really no one writing like this. Hope her next one doesn’t take long.

1. Columbine, Dave Cullen (2009)
Ugh.

It’s so incredibly informative and chilling. Picked this up right after a school shooting in Brazil (and during the typical string of shootings in the US). These tragedies are really not as simple as we think they are.

I couldn’t stop reading this, and then I couldn't stop thinking about it. It's great. It will turn your stomach over throughout, but you have to read it. Everyone needs to read it. Society is doomed.

What about 2020? The goal is 36 books, again with six “classics”, no minimum page average (but I feel like cheating if I'm not at 300), and at least 18 books by female authors.

Finally, this is my yearly pitch for you to join Goodreads! It's the best thing if you promised to read more in 2020 . It’s fun! You set goals. You see what your friends are reading. And they even do a recap of your year.

If you're curious about last year's (horrible translation into English) awards, they're here. See you in January 2021. :)