Reading is one of the greatest pleasures in my life, and this year I made a concerted effort to make room for more of it. As Gretchen Rubin advises in her book Better Than Before, the simple act of tracking something can make you more likely to do it — so I started tracking (and counting) the books I read each month. I didn’t have a particular number goal in mind (I feel like that would be counterproductive, since I simply want to add more reading pleasure to my life, not hit a certain target), I simply recorded the books I read, as I read them.
As I sit down to write this in mid-December, I have a good stack of books still in my future over the next several weeks (the holidays are one of my favorite times to read) but already I can see that tracking my reading has boosted the sheer amount I’ve read by quite a lot. In 2018, when I was writing down what I read but not numbering the list, I read 52 books, or roughly one a week. This year, I’ve read 81 so far, and had a great time doing it!
Winnowing down the list was a fun (but challenging) process — the titles that made the top 10 were all five-star reading experiences. So without further ado (and in no particular order) here are the 10 best books I read in 2019:
1. The Huntress by Kate Quinn
I read this on audio and the narration by Saskia Maarleveld made for an immersive and unputdownable listening experience. If you appreciate a good WWII story told from a less-often heard perspective, multiple timelines that weave together seamlessly, and female characters as tough as nails, this is the book for you.
2. Women Talking by Miriam Toews
This was my first Toews novel, and I now count myself a huge fan. Based on a real event that rocked a Mennonite community, this is a story that takes place over just a few days in the quiet of a barn loft — but the emotional terrain and layers of community history and cultural expectations covered in that sliver of time and space is vast.
3. Circe by Madeline Miller
I’ve been on a major classics kick ever since reading the Emily Wilson translation of The Odyssey (gorgeous!) and I loved Miller’s first novel, The Song of Achilles, so I’m not sure why it took me a year to get to Circe. Everything about this book is gorgeous, from the black and gold cover, to the deckle-edged paper, to the prose.
4. Normal People by Sally Rooney
I resisted reading this book because on the surface it didn’t seem like my cup of tea — I tend to steer away from contemporary fiction, literary or otherwise, unless it has a bit of a twist, like a nature adventure (see #5) or it’s a genre-bender (see #10). But surprisingly to me, as soon as I picked up this slender novel I absolutely could not put it down. I think I finished it in a single day, and I have Conversations With Friends all lined up to read next.
5. The River by Peter Heller
I love excellent nature writing, skillfully written thrillers and books that nudge you to dig a bit deeper or put a different lens to your life. The River accomplished all of these things for me, and as soon as I finished it I handed it to my husband…who loved it, too.
6. The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
With so much hype stemming from The Handmaid’s Tale adaptation on Hulu, there was a lot of pressure riding on this read. And while I did find myself often getting distracted while reading thinking about how the characters in the TV version would act, and wishing there was a bit more nuance and explanation at the end, this was, overall, still a top favorite of the year and well worth your reading time.
7. A Better Man by Louise Penny
Can Louise Penny do no wrong? That’s certainly what it seems like to me, since as far as I’m concerned her Inspector Gamache series simply keeps getting better and better. I think next year I’ll take a cue from Meredith of the Currently Reading podcast and set aside a whole day off to coincide with the book release…so I can curl up and read the next installment right away, with a big cup of tea by my side.
8. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
This book is a doorstopper by any definition, but well worth the commitment. Following the life and presidency of Abraham Lincoln, Goodwin focuses on Lincoln’s particular genius for welcoming competing opinions in order to move our country forward. I read this with a library copy, and found the motivation of a due date was exactly what I needed to get to the finish line!
9. Good Bones by Maggie Smith
Although the title poem from this collection by Maggie Smith is well known, I first heard of it from a piece on The Art of Simple by contributing writer Katherine Willis Pershey. I’ve never felt poetry that felt so true — her work is heartbreaking, beautiful, hopeful, and easily accessible, even for those of us who only dip our toes into the world of poetry. Next I’d love to get my hands on some of Smith’s earlier work, as well as this poetry collection also recommended by Pershey, by Irish poet Padraig O. Tuama.
10. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
This book helped me realize that something I really love is beautifully written literary fiction with just one surprising, genre-bending twist. As soon as I put down this Ishiguro novel, I wanted to 1) talk about it with someone, and 2) read everything else in his back catalog. The less you know about the plot, the better, so I recommend just diving in. You won’t regret it.
Well that’s it! It was hard to wrap up this list because as I type I’m staring at a stack of delicious books on my desk that I’m planning to read over Christmas, and I have a feeling one or more of them might have ended up contenders….but that’s what’s fun about the reading life — there is always more on the horizon.
I’m curious: Do you track your reading?
And if so, do you keep a paper book journal, a spreadsheet, use Goodreads or something else? I would like to start tracking a little more data about the books I read in 2020, but without going so far overboard that I get overwhelmed and ditch the whole system!
hugs, Laura
