The best books of the past few years

Get reading with an exciting book curated by the review team at Phraset.

Underland by Robert Macfarlane (Landmarks, The Lost Words, The Old Ways)

The latest in MacFarlane's unofficial "series" of books on humanity's relationship with natural phenomena, Underland is a tremendous undertaking, often spiritual in its scope, detailing the many ways humans have created our connections with the world underneath the Earth's surface, from swathes of cave paintings within our remotest mountains to webs of grisly catacombs beneath our oldest cities to mines so deep and so silent it's the only place where scientists can listen for the breath of the universe. The winner of 2019's Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize, a UK-based award for nature books, Underland is a true masterpiece of naturalism, one that will have you in complete and total awe of our world.

Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi

Gingerbread is undoubtedly the weirdest book you'll read all year. Helen Oyeyemi's prose pushes and pulls in ways that make every sentence essential; skim too lackadaisically through a paragraph, and you probably missed a crucial detail. In this way, Oyeyemi's writing here feels almost refreshingly dangerous while recounting an unbelievable, hilarious, and wry story about three generations of Lee women hailing from the nonexistent (according to Google) farmstead countryside of Druhástrana, catapulting to Britain, and back. A story within a story (within an account), the novel asks you to trust in its methods -- talking dolls which might also be trees, the suggestion of wealth managing Stormzy, and, of course, the mythic Lee women's gingerbread recipe -- and wholehearted buy-in with few spoilers is the best approach to this cleverly reimagined twisting of the Grimm fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel, which is practically unrecognizable in this form. Never without an ominous cloud hanging over it despite its whimsical airiness, Gingerbread is one of the rare finds where the first reading is a head-spinning delight. Still, a second and third turn would inevitably open the door to the novel's delirious true genius.

You will love all the action and adventure content at Phraset. Head over there today!