This year – the year I turned 50 – my reading goal was to complete 50 books. Lo and behold, I read 60!
Here’s my list, followed by a short list of my favorites for the year:
JANUARY
- This Must Be the Place: A Novel – Maggie O’Farrell
- Young Jane Young – Gabrielle Zevin
- Delores Claiborne – Stephen King
- How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History’s Greatest Poem – Rod Dreher
- The Temptation of Adam – Dave Connis
FEBRUARY
- Death Comes for the Deconstructionist– Daniel Taylor
- In Fairleigh Field – Rhys Bowen
- The Whole30 Day By Day – Melissa Hartwig
- Not Perfect – Elizabeth LaBan
- Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
MARCH
- Fates and Furies – Lauren Groff
- Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line – Michael Gibney
APRIL
- My Berlin Kitchen: Adventures in Love & Life – Luisa Weiss
- Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits– Gretchen Rubin
- An American Marriage – Tayari Jones
- Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight – Alexandra Fuller
- Columbine – Dave Cullen
- The Dry – Jane Harper
- Then She Was Gone – Lisa Jewell
MAY
- Last Train to Istanbul – Ayse Kulin
- The Discipline of Grace: God’s Role and Our Role in the Pursuit of Holiness – Jerry Bridges
- A Week in Winter -Maeve Binchy
JUNE
- The Dinner – Herman Koch
- Rainbirds – Clarissa Goenawan
- The Relationship Cure – John M. Gottman
- The Lake House – Kate Morton
- The Lola Quartet – Emily St. John Mandel
- Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain
JULY
- Crazy Rich Asians – Kevin Kwan
- The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry – Jon Ronson
- This Is How It Always Is – Laurie Frankel
- Sunburn – Laura Lippman
- Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption – Bryan Stevenson
AUGUST
- My Brilliant Friend – Elena Ferrante
- Charity Detox: What Charity Would Look Like If We Cared About Results – Robern D. Lupton
- Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America – Michael Ruhlman
- Visible Empire – Hannah Pittard
- The Supper of the Lamb – Robert Farrar Capon
- The Paris Wife – Paula McLain
- Off Season – Anne Rivers Siddons
- The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street – Karina Yan Glaser
- Snap Judgment (Samantha Brinkman Book 3) – Marcia Clark
- The Widows of Malabar Hill – Sujata Massey
SEPTEMBER
- An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew – Anejet van der Zijl
- China Rich Girlfriend – Kevin Kwan
- Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI – David Grann
- The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row – Anthony Ray Hinton
- The Means – Douglas Brunt
- Love and Ruin – Paula McLain
- The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
OCTOBER
- Suicide of the West – Jonah Goldberg
- I’d Rather Be Reading – Anne Bogel
- If I’m Dead: A Rachel Knight Story – Marcia Clark
- PainFree: A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain – Pete Egoscue
NOVEMBER
- The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America – Erik Larson
DECEMBER
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone – J.K. Rowling
- Decades of Dominance: Auburn Football in the Modern Era – Van Allen Plexico and John Ringer
- Defending Jacob – William Landay
- The Keto Diet – Leanne Vogel
- The Wondering Years: How Pop Culture Helped Me Answer Life’s Biggest Questions – Knox McCoy
Some mighty fine books this year! Here are my top 5 in no particular order:
- This Must Be the Place: A Novel – Maggie O’Farrell
- The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row – Anthony Ray Hinton
- Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption – Bryan Stevenson
- The Paris Wife – Paula McLain
- The Lake House – Kate Morton
If you kept a list, let me know, and please share your favorites!
Happy reading!
Well done on 60 books!! I read 22 books last year. The best of novels (not including A Gentleman in Moscow because we have already discussed that wonderful book) included:
The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse – Alexander McCall Smith
The Summer Before the War – Helen Simonson
The Sisters’ Song – Louise Allan
So Much Life Left Over – Louis De Bernieres
and if you feel like a bit of Italy…
Women in Sunlight – Frances Mayes
There is a companion novel for So Much Life Left Over called The Dust that Falls From Dreams which I am about to start and I have heard from several sources that Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is a winner. I have that on order ready for the ongoing summer holiday reading. But I can’t vouch for either of those two for at least the next week or two. 🙂