Each year since I started tracking books read, I’ve read more books than the year before. This year is no exception. However, I don’t feel exactly braggy about this fact. On one hand, it implies that I perhaps failed in this year’s goal to read better rather than more, to savor and remember and not simply motor through as many volumes as possible. It is also unsustainable. At some point an upper limit exists and no one gives out “books read” prizes and, even if they did, I would lose within the grand colosseum of readers. Also, memento mori.

On the other hand, I may not have failed in my goal. I notice myself watching less and less television and movies (although I still watch my fair share) because, when it comes down to it, I’d usually rather be reading. That trend also continues year over year since I started tracking my books read. And that is a very encouraging thought.

Top 10 – 2019

• 10. The Apology, Eve Ensler – A hard, beautiful book wherein Ensler ventriloquizes her own abusive father and writes the apology she needs and will never receive.
• 9. The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson – Even when the adaptations are reasonably good—as with the Netflix series—none of them come close to the ooky, spooky brilliance of the novel.
• 8. Normal People, Sally Rooney – A portrait of not only young love but also the profound impacts young love can have on our developing selves.
• 7. The Library Book, Susan Orlean – A love letter to libraries and the complex, vital place they play in civic life.
• 6. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee – A beautiful collection of essays that also build on each other until the book feels like a constructed autobiography as well.
• 5. Sula, Toni Morrison – I appreciated this exploration of a complex female relationship and then the final lines punched me in the gut-heart and I found myself welling with tears. A good companion with Passing by Nella Larson, which I read around the same time.
• 4. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Cthulucene, Donna Haraway – A weird, heady call to re-imagine our place in the world, while there’s still time to do so.
• 3. Educated, Tara Westover – I read this early in the year, before I started this site, but Westover’s painful, powerful memoir has stuck with me all year and I highly recommend it.
• 2. Year of the Monkey, Patti Smith – If I sought a guru, I might nominate Patti Smith for the role.
• 1. Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler – “All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you.”

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Honorable Mentions

• Bunny, Mona Award – Probably the weirdest book I read this year, a novel that’s sort of a mash-up between Heathers and The Craft but set in an Ivy-league MFA program.
• Milkman, Anna Burns – Smart and interesting. I would love to spend more time with Middle Sister and the Wee Sisters. I expect that the oft-recommended Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe would be a strong companion
• Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming, McKenzie Funk – Fascinating and only semi-disheartening; a lot of food-for-thought about the world that we’re making by default.
• The Starless Sea, Erin Morgenstern – It’s about stories and how they shape us but also maybe climate change?
• Gods of Jade and Shadow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia – A Mexican Cinderella! Mayan gods! Jazz Age! Road trips to save the world!
• Uprooted, Naomi Novik – I simply love this book. In particular, I appreciate how it unpacks and rejects the “destroy it all!” ethic that usually accompanies the black-and-white, good vs. evil aesthetic of fantasy. Novik is doing something special and different in YA lit/fairy tale re-imaginings.
• A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool On a Warming Planet, Sarah Jacquette Ray – Forthcoming from California University Press, and I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek for a work project. Give this to your young people, give it to yourself.
• The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey – Everyone knows that Richard III killed his young nephews to seize power for himself. What this book pre-supposes is, maybe he didn’t? So fun!

The 2019 List

One star = I thought it was quite good; Two stars = I thought it was really good. Zero stars is not a value judgement beyond that, some I liked quite a bit, others not so much.

66 books read, 21,756 pages, 20 re-reads, 46 first timers.

	Title	Author	Re-read?	Stars
1 .	Station Eleven	Emily St. John Mandel	Yes	**
2 .	The Devil in the White City	Erik Larson	No
3 .	Another Country	James Baldwin	No
4.	Educated, a memoir	Tara Westover	No	**
5.	The Hidden Forest: The biography of an ecosystem	Jon R. Luoma	No
6.	The Miniaturist	Jessie Burton	No
7.	Golden State	Ben H. Winters	No
8.	Devotion	Patti Smith	No	*
9.	Lysistrata	Aristophanes	No
10.	The Book of Three	Lloyd Alexander	Yes
11.	The Witch Elm	Tana French	No
12.	The Black Cauldron	Lloyd Alexander	Yes
13.	The Girls	Emma Cline	No	*
14.	The Castle of Llyr	Lloyd Alexander	Yes
15.	Milkman	Anna Burns	No	*
16.	Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Cthulucene	Donna Haraway	No	*
17.	How to Write an Autobiographical Novel	Alexander Chee	No	**
18.	Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban	J. K. Rowling	Yes	*
19.	There There	Tommy Orange	No	*
20.	Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World	Cal Newport	No	*
21.	The Other Wind	Ursula K. Le Guin	No	*
22.	The Daughter of Time	Josephine Tey	No	**
23.	We Have Always Lived in the Castle	Shirley Jackson	No	*
24.	Taran Wanderer	Lloyd Alexander	Yes
25.	The Remains of the Day	Kazuo Ishiguro	No	*
26.	My Sister the Serial Killer	Oyinkan Braithwaite	No
27.	Lost and Wanted	Nell Freudenberger	No
28.	The High King	Lloyd Alexander	Yes
29.	The Library Book	Susan Orlean	No	*
30.	Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out	Ruth King	No	*
31.	The Haunting of Hill House	Shirley Jackson	Yes	*
32.	Reality is Not What it Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity	Carlo Rovelli	No	*
33.	My Life in France	Julia Child	No
34.	Mr. Fox	Helen Oyeyemi	No
35.	Heart Berries	Terese Marie Mailhot	No
36.	Celine	Peter Heller	No
37.	Under the Feet of Jesus	Helena Maria Varamontes	No	*
38.	Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love	Dani Shapiro	No	*
39.	Persuasion	Jane Austen	Yes	**
40.	The Reader: Book one of Sea of Ink and Gold	Traci Chee	No
41.	Gods of Jade and Shadow	Silvia Moreno-Garcia	No	*
42.	Emily of New Moon	L. M. Montgomery	Yes	*
43.	The Lathe of Heaven	Ursula LeGuin	No
44.	Bunny	Mona Awad	No
45.	The Apology	Eve Ensler	No	**
46.	Normal People	Sally Rooney	No	**
47.	Emily Climbs	L. M. Montgomery	Yes
48.	Sula	Toni Morrison	Yes	**
49.	Passing	Nella Larson	Yes	*
50.	The Testaments	Margaret Atwood	No
51.	Emily Climbs	L. M. Montgomery	Yes	*
52.	Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire	J. K. Rowling	Yes	*
53.	Year of the Monkey	Patti Smith	No	**
54.	The Turn of the Key	Ruth Ware	No
55.	Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix	J. K. Rowling	Yes
56.	Light Years	James Salter	No	*
57.	Unnamed Friend’s Book Draft	Mysterio	No
58.	Parable of the Talents	Octavia Butler	No	**
59.	Oryx and Crake	Margaret Atwood	Yes	*
60.	Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince	J. K. Rowling	Yes	*
61.	Trust Exercise	Susan Choi	No	*
62.	Uprooted	Naomi Novick	Yes	*
63.	The Starless Sea	Erin Morgenstern	No	*
64.	A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool On a Warming Planet	Sarah Jaquette Ray	No	*
65.	Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming	McKenzie Funk	No	*
66.	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows	J. K. Rowling	Yes