2019 Reading Challenge Summary

Total books read: 48

1. The Trees in My Forest by Bernd Heinrich
2. Brown: Poems by Kevin Young
3. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
4. Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides
5. The Last Town on Earth by Thomas Mullen
6. Gangsterland: A Novel by Tod Goldberg
7. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
8. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
9. 10:04 by Ben Lerner
10. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
11. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
12. Becoming by Michelle Obama
13. An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison
14. Patrimony by Philip Roth
15. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
16. White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg
17. Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to State Alone by Brene Brown
18. The Moons of Jupiter by Alice Munro
19. Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee
20. Miracle Creek by Angie Kim
21. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
22. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
23. Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women by Maya Angelou
24. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
25. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
26. Whitey Bulger: America’s Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice by Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy
27. Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates
28. Dear Life by Alice Munro
29. Birdie by Tracey Lindberg
30. Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
31. My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mary Hartnett and Wendy W. Williams contributing
32. All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
33. Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches by John Hodgman
34. Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell
35. Digest by Gregory Pardlo
36. When I was Puerto Rican by Esmerelda Santiago
37. Shadowlands by Anthony McCann
38. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
39. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara
40. Enough: Notes from a Woman Who Has Finally Found It by Shauna M. Ahern
41. My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education by Jennine Capo Crucet
42. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
43. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Tranforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brene Brown
44. Lazy B by Sandra Day O’Conner and H. Alan Day
45. Now Go Out There: and get curious by Mary Karr
46. Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World edited by Zahra Hankir with forward by Christiane Amapour
47. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
48. The White Album by Joan Didion

Gender: I read 29 books by women, 15 by men, and two books with coauthors, one woman and man each. I’m glad I switched early in the year to try to read equal numbers of books by women and men and then further altered the goal to reading more books by women.

Audiobooks: both the Brene Brown books were audio. She read them which did make for a more personal experience but I’m still not sold on the format. I’m changing my strategy for 2020.

Poetry: Three books: two by men, one by a woman. I enjoyed all three.

DNF: I know I set a few books aside this year mostly because I wasn’t in the mood for them and I don’t remember what they were. Everything in this post is something I finished. Next year I might keep track of the books I set aside and give reasons for it.

Overall favorites in no particular order:

• Stiff
• My Time Among the Whites
• Our Women on the Ground
• In the Heart of the Sea
• Vacationland
• Birdie
• Salvage the Bones
• I’ll be Gone in the Dark
• Gangsterland

Take-Away:

I enjoyed most of the books I read, though there were a few I struggled with for various reasons but read anyway (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Lazy B, Little Bird of Heaven, The Trees in My Forest, and The Last Town on Earth). Some of it was racism and some of it was writing style.

Most of the books I read were written by white Americans; not a satisfactory result. Next year I’ll include more diversity, percentage to be determined later.

I read four fewer books in 2019 than 2018, average page length was 324, read less in the summer and more in the fall and winter, tended to read two or more books while on each of my vacations, usually read one fiction and one nonfiction at a time, borrowed 54% of my reads from the library, 4% from Amazon, 4% from a friend, and owned the remaining books in various formats. And I created a spreadsheet for the first time this year which was great fun.

Brene Brown

Reading her books was not included in my goals but I wanted to know what the big deal was so hers were the audiobooks I chose. Verdict: it’s empowering therapy in a book, beneficial if it’s something you need to hear / work through.

I’m finalizing my 2020 goals, and of course will leave room to alter them later if I see a discrepancy. Let’s see what 2020 will bring!