Welcome to my Annual Year-end Book List: A Retrospective on Reading! (Okay, I’ve never called it that before, but here we are.) Usually I post a few small smatterings of book reviews along with the list, but this year I actually reviewed ALL THE BOOKS every month. (Which I very highly doubt will happen in 2019 since I’ll be pregnanting and birthing and mothering and sleeping more than reading and definitely more than blogging.) So this may be a bit more boring since it will just be a list for the most part, but scroll to the bottom for the “retrospective” part.
KEY:
WJ = read aloud/listened with James
AB = audiobook
RR = re-read
BC = book club
REC = recommended to me
NF = nonfiction
F = fiction
- The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson: WJ, F
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson: AB, F
- Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, Gregory Boyle: BC, NF
- The Glass Eye, Jeannie Vanasco: REC, NF
- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, JK Rowling: F
- Book of a Thousand Days, Shannon Hale: AB, REC, F
- Words of Radiance, Brandon Sanderson: WJ, AB, F
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot: REC, BC, NF
- Britt-Marie Was Here, Fredrik Backman: AB, F
- Edgedancer, Brandon Sanderson: WJ, F
- Snow & Rose, Emily Winfield Martin: REC, F
- The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood: BC, F
- Salt to the Sea, Ruta Sepetys: BC, F
- Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin, Liesl Shurtliff: BC, F
- The Invention of the Kaleidoscope, Paisley Rekdal: Poetry
- Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher: AB, NF
- People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks: AB, F
- Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, Reni Eddo-Lodge: BC, NF
- Commonwealth, Ann Patchett: AB, F
- Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon Self-Control, and My Other Experiments in Everyday Life, Gretchen Rubin: AB, NF
- Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson: WJ, some AB, F
- The Polygamist’s Daughter, Anna LeBaron: AB, NF
- The Liars’ Club, Mary Karr: NF
- And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer, Fredrik Backman: AB, NF (novella)
- Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, Mary Roach: AB, REC, NF
- The Persian Pickle Club, Sandra Dallas: BC, F
- Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen: BC, F
- The Mighty Miss Malone, Christopher Paul Curtis: BC, F
- Heart Berries: A Memoir, Terese Marie Mailhot: BC, NF
- The Code of the Woosters, P.G. Wodehouse: WJ, F
- Lab Girl: A Story of Trees, Science, and Love, Hope Jahren: AB, REC, NF
- When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead: WJ, REC, F
- The Wonder, Emma Donoghue: AB, F
- Educated: A Memoir, Tara Westover: REC, NF
- Honolulu, Alan Brennert: REC, F
- A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman: AB, F
- Today Will Be Different, Maria Semple: AB, F
- Braving the Wilderness, Brene Brown: NF
- The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas: BC, F
- Watership Down, Richard Adams: AB, F
- The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison: BC, F
- The One and Only Ivan, Katherine Applegate: BC, F
- Code Girls, Liza Mundy: AB, REC, NF
- Creativity, Inc., Ed Catmull: AB, REC, NF
- Hillbilly Elegy, JD Vance: NF
- Mary Poppins, P.L. Travers: AB, F
- The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare: BC, F/Drama
- The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Kelly Barnhill: RR, WJ, F
- I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, Erika L. Sanchez: AB, F
- Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver: F
- Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain: AB, NF
- Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver: AB, NF
- The Art of Racing in the Rain, Garth Stein: REC, F
- O Pioneers, Willa Cather: AB, F
- Wolf Hollow, Lauren Wolk: REC, AB, F
- Bone Gap, Laura Ruby: REC, AB, F
- Warriors Don’t Cry, Melba Patillo Beals: AB, NF, REC
- Little House in the Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder: F, REC
- The One-in-a-Million Boy, Monica Wood: AB, F
- The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce: AB, F
- Born a Crime, Trevor Noah: BC, REC, NF
- Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, Anne Helen Petersen: BC, AB, NF
- Elephants Can Remember, Agatha Christie: AB, F
- Very Good, Jeeves!, P.G. Wodehouse: F, WJ
- A Pocket Full of Rye, Agatha Christie: AB, F
- The Rules of Magic, Alice Hoffman: REC, AB, F
- Bird Box, Josh Malerman: REC, AB, F
- A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness: F
- The War that Saved My Life, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley: REC, AB, F
- An Everlasting Meal, Tamar Adler: REC, NF
- Are You Sleeping, Kathleen Barber: AB, F
- Ink and Bone, Lisa Unger: AB, REC, F
- The War I Finally Won, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley: AB, F
- The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Elizabeth George Speare: F
- Mooncop, Tom Gauld: F
- The Forty Rules of Love, Elif Shafak: F
- The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate–Discoveries from a Secret World, Peter Wohlleben: NF
- The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern: REC, AB, F
- What I Know for Sure, Oprah Winfrey: AB, NF
- Landline, Rainbow Rowell: AB, F
- Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman: AB, F
- Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares, Rachel Cohn: AB, F
- How to Stop Time, Matt Haig: AB, F
And breaking it down:
24 Nonfiction
1 Poetry
1 Drama
57 Fiction
60 Female authors
23 Recommended by others
1 Re-read
8 Read with James
16 Books read for a book club
43.5 Audiobooks
Well, wow! The break-down was interesting this year.
In the past I’ve set a goal for a number of books to read in the year, but in 2018 my goal was to read at least 20 books from others’ recommendation. And I met that goal! I thought I was miserably low in that department, but I hadn’t realized my goal was only 20 haha =) That wasn’t so hard!
Almost half-and-half between fiction and nonfiction, which was also a surprise. I love nonfiction (clearly, since that was my Master’s emphasis), but sometimes they take more concentration/absorption than I have bandwidth for (especially in audiobooks–which is funny, since I know plenty of people who much prefer nonfiction to fiction when book-listening). Anyway, huzzah for only a smidge fewer nonfictions!
And I read more with James than I thought. Probably because the first half of the year was great, but once I got pregnant all reading was hard, but reading aloud was especially hard. It definitely put me to sleep…and sometimes out of breath. Yikes. Babies, man.
If you’re wondering how to read more books in 2019, clearly my “secret” is audiobooks. I pretty much always have at least one checked out and listen all. the. time. Driving, house cleaning stuff, errands, whatev. It really adds up. A lot of people use that time for podcasts, which I definitely do, too. I just do lots of both =) And if you’re wondering how the heck I listened to 43.5 audiobooks, well, I got tired of reading one of the huge Brandon Sandersons aloud (James won’t take turns anymore since dyslexia makes reading aloud super rough for him, especially when he’s tired, and since we aren’t lounging around in the daytime feeding each other grapes from the vine and reading to each other, evening reading = tired eyes = ramped up dyslexia = I’m the only one reading aloud). So James got it on Audible and it was the best half of an audiobook I could have asked for.
I was planning on aiming for a goal related to female authors in 2019, but look at all the ones I read without even meaning to! Over 70%! So I’ll just keep on keeping on in that department.
Next year I really would love to read more physical books, but I think I’m going to decline making any sort of goals at all since I will be a MOTHER NEXT MONTH and I have no idea what I’m doing and no idea what that means the rest of my life will look like–including reading. So we’ll just settle for the goal to simply keep reading! I had a pretty big identity crisis once pregnancy made me conk out every time I tried to read which meant a significant drop in physical books read, and that’s never been my life. My life has always been books, books, books. So I’m reeeeeally hoping I can get through the newborn no-sleeping gig and then get back to my reading self. I do not expect to keep my count as high, but you moms out there would know better than I do. Well, that’s not necessarily the case. What is the case is…only time will tell =)
And, just for fun, here are my (probable) top 5 in fiction and nonfiction, in no particular order:
NONFICTION:
- Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
- Lab Girl
- Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
- Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion
- Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon Self-Control, and My Other Experiments
in Everyday Life
FICTION:
- Prodigal Summer
- The Rules of Magic
- The Night Circus
- Britt-Marie was Here
- A Man Called Ove
And that’s a wrap, 2018! See you in 2019, bookz!
Satisdiction 