2019: A Year in Books

In 2019, I ended up finishing just forty-eight books for the year. 2019 was a revelation for my personal life and in many other ways, so there was a lot going on. Work was busy at my day job. Creatively, I focused on converting my novel to a novella, which then topped the shortlist honors for a book prize (and which I am now turning back into a full novel again). I traveled. I fell in love. I had failures and made terrible mistakes. I had successes and felt incredibly proud of myself. I moved into a new house. I got rid of half of my book collection. I broke and mended several times. It was a wild, wild year. Through it all, I was reading.

***2019***

1. Animal Bride by Sara Quinn Rivara

2. Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton

3. A Mind of Your Own by Dr. Kelly Brogan

4. Inland by Tea Obreht

5. Eating the Sun by Ella Frances Sanders

6. The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

7. The Electric Woman by Tessa Fontaine

8. The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell*

9. All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

10. The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo

11. Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith

12. The Waves by Virginia Woolf

13. Periodic Companions by Laynie Browne

14. Landline by Rainbow Rowell

15. Flash Count Diary by Darcey Steinke

16. The Skinned Bird by Chelsea Biondolillo

17. Witches, Sluts, Feminists by Kristen Sollee

18. Mating in Captivity by Ester Perel

19. I’m Happy Just to Be Here by Janelle Hanchett

20. Figuring by Maria Popova

21. Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

22. Ginger Bread by Helen Oyeyemi

23. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver*

24. The Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Weijun Wang

25. The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker

26. Bowlaway by Elizabeth McCracken

27. Girls Burn Brighter by Shobha Rao

28. The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

29. Census by Jesse Ball

30. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

31. All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

32. Women who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes*

33. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

34. Uprooted by Naomi Novik*

35. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

36. Just Kids* by Patti Smith

37. Among the Ten Thousand Things by Julia Pierpont

38. The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence*

39. Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman

40. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

41. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood*

42. The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

43. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson*

44. Alternate Side by Anna Quindlen

45. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott*

46. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

47. The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein

48. The Passion by Jeanette Winterson*

My Top Books of 2019 (in no particular order)

1. Flash Count Diary by Darcey Steinke

2. Figuring by Maria Popova

3. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

4. The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo

5. Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton

6. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

7. Animal Bride by Sara Quinn Rivara

8. The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker

9. The Skinned Bird by Chelsea Biondolillo

10. The Waves by Virginia Woolf

As always, the top ten list is a tough one to choose because my reading is so dependent on mood and this changes regularly. But, each of these stood out to me in very real ways. I like that my top ten were all women, but that wasn’t something I was conscious of as I chose them. Darcey Steinke was my writing advisor in my MFA program, but I loved the book for its brilliance, not for knowing her. I read and re-read Chelsea Biondolillo’s book at least three times and will likely read it again (ditto with Animal Bride by Sara Quinn Rivara—which is poetry), so use that information as you will.

I am already two books deep and on my third in this second full week of 2020, but I have a lot of very specific writing targets for my own book this year, so it might be another “shorter” reading list. As always, follow me on IG at @bookandbird if you want to see more about what I am reading and creating. I hope you all have a beautiful, bookish 2020!