2019 Books

I read a record-setting 43 books in 2019. (One, Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, is not pictured because I lent it to my dad, and it now lives next to his recliner.)

Of those forty-three books, nine were rereads. Topping the reread pile were The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Middlesex might be in my top 5 books—ever.

Well, top 10 for sure.

Of the new books I read, Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens was a favorite, as were It’s Okay to Laugh (Crying is Cool Too) by Nora McInerny Purmort, After Her by Joyce Maynard, Still Writing by Dani Shapiro, Toil and Trouble by Augusten Burroughs, and Commander in Cheat by Rick Reilly—a bit random I know, but I was happy to confirm that Donald Trump is every bit as horrible as I suspected.

I read 6.5 books about writing. I attribute the half to Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert because even though she would tell you it’s about creativity in general, it’s about writing. Writing 21st Century Fiction by Donald Mass was probably the most thought provoking—based on the number of notes I made in the margins. The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman is also a good one.

Since I’m in the mindset of setting goals at the moment, I’m going to say I want to read thirty books in 2020.

Fewer, as opposed to more, because I want to finish the first draft of the novel I’m working on so someday I can maybe appear on someone’s year-end list.

I’m currently rereading Little Women (before I go see the movie)… and I’m pretty excited about the following books which are on my on-deck pile:

All that You Leave Behind by Erin Lee Carr
The Prospect of Magic by M.O. Walsh
1984 by George Orwell
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Inheritance by Dani Shapiro
Modern Love – True Stories of Love, Loss, and Redemption edited by Daniel Jones