Books Read in 2019
It’s been a little while since I’ve been bloggy, eh?
Here is the complete list of books I read in 2019. Or, more accurate, the complete list of books I read all the way through this year, ignoring the books I didn’t quite finish or only picked through. Throughout the year, I keep a running long on a Word document on my computer; I like to look back and try to remember how I moved from one book to the next, what logic (if any) I can retroactively apply to the decision to close one book and pick up the next one. I read several Elmore Leonard novels because I had the Library of America collections of his short books, and it was easy to move from the end of one to the beginning of the next.
I’m not sure this reveals anything particularly insightful about my reading this past year. I’m aware of the times where I read very little, bogged down by my own writing or reading manuscripts for Story, and didn’t make the effort to read books. It’s always interesting to recall which books have made a lasting imprint on me and which ones I think “oh, right, I read that”.
In alphabetical (hopefully) order, here ’tis:
Above All Men by Eric Shonkwiler
Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
Anagnorisis: Poems by Kyle Dargan
The Art of Dumpster Diving by Jennifer Moses
As Close to Us As Breathing by Elizabeth Poliner
The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself by Susan Bell
Blood Work by Michael Connelly
Boom Town: The Fantastic Saga of Oklahoma City, its Chaotic Founding… its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis by Sam Anderson
Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet by Claire L. Evans
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
The Desert Sky Before Us by Anne Valente
The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer
Fifty-Two Pickup by Elmore Leonard
Fire Sermon by Jamie Quatro
A Fortune for Your Disaster by Hanif Abdurraqib
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
Go Ahead in the Rain by Hanif Abdurraqib
Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery by Christine Aschwanden
The Hazards of Good Fortune by Seth Greenfield
Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh
Honeypot by Brenna Womer
How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones
If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home by Now: Why We Traded the Commuting Life for a Little House on the Prairie by Christopher Ingraham
Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by Nir Eyal
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
LeBron, Inc.: The Making of a Billion Dollar Athlete by Brian Windhorst
Maggie Boylan by Michael Henson
The Man They Wanted Me to Be by Jared Sexton
The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. by Evan Ratliff
The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo
My Father Left Me Ireland: An American Son’s Search for Home by Michael Brendan Dougherty
No-No Boy by John Okada
On Immunity: an Inoculation by Eula Biss
One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers by Gail Sher
The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
Rules for Visiting by Jessica Francis Kane
Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark by Cecelia Watson
61 Hours by Lee Child
The Story of STORY Magazine: A Memoir by Martha Foley
Sunburn by Laura Lippman
Swag by Elmore Leonard
That Time I Loved You: Stories by Carrianne Leung
The Switch by Elmore Leonard
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
The Taxidermist’s Catalog by James Brubaker
Unknown Man #89 by Elmore Leonard
The Vexations by Caitlin Horrocks
Virgin: Poems by Analicia Sotelo
Visible Empire by Hannah Pittard
When Rap Spoke to God by Erica Dawson
Women Talking by Miriam Toews
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