2019 Reads

I tend to read a lot, but I’ve never considered myself a fast reader, so I had no clue entering 2019 how many books I could read in a year. I joined Goodreads to keep track of the books I was reading and to leave reviews. To give you an idea of how clueless I was on how much I read every year, I started with a goal of reading 12 books for the year. That sounded reasonable, a book a month, something I could accomplish since I know sometimes I lose interest in a book and it takes a while for me to finish. I ended up bumping out that number throughout the year as I closed in on my goal, and I ended up reading 48 books last year.

In this post, I’m taking a look back at some of the books I read in 2019, and set some reading goals for the new year.

I’ll start with my very favorite books for 2019.

Recursion

I’ve been impressed with the last couple of books I’ve read by Blake Crouch, and while the first couple of books I read of his were somewhere between okay and good, the last two I’ve read (Dark Matter and Recursion) have suddenly put Blake on my list of favorite authors. Blake writes sci-fi novels and explores some really interesting scientific theories (like alternative universes and alternative timelines).

Over the years, I’ve found it harder to find books that compel you to stay up late to read, where you can hardly put the book down. I love intriguing storylines where I’m constantly pulled back into the book and Recursion is just that type of story.

Déjà Dead

I’ve been wanting to read Kathy Reichs for a while now, ever since I noticed that the TV show Bones was based on her novels. I managed to squeeze in four of her books last year, because I read one in 2018 (out of order) and was intrigued enough to know I wanted to read the rest of the series. In 2019, I started with her first book Déjà Dead with a bit of hesitancy because most of the time, an author’s first book is their weakest.

This book really took me by surprise as a result, because it was masterfully written. I even remember a scene where my heart was racing and I had to go back and reread the section to figure out how she did that so seamlessly without me noticing.

Forgive Yourself These Tiny Acts of Self-Destruction

Jared Singer was a poet who came onto my radar near the end of 2019, and I happened to slip his book onto my wish list near the end of the year and was given it as a gift. I also managed to read it before the end of the year, and have put it back onto my pile of poetry books to read in 2020, it was that good. I haven’t written a review for this book yet on Goodreads because I intend to do that after the second reading.

Jared is an interesting guy who has this engineering background, has dealt with surviving the suicide of a friend, and dealt with anti-Semitism. This book is personal, insightful, and very moving. Jared’s also worked his way onto my list of favorite poets.

Helium

I almost forgot to include this poetry book to the list because it was the first book I read and reviewed in 2019. I loved it so much I bought a copy for my sister who also gave this book a five-star rating.

Rudy Francisco is one of my favorite poets, and as I look back at the review I left last year, I see that I wanted to read it again because I read it so quickly and I wanted to read it once more to spend more time with the poems. I didn’t manage to do that, but I carried it around with me a lot last year and shared some of the poems with other people. Sometimes you love a poet’s work so much that you feel you have to introduce others to it.

In case you missed it, last week I wrote about all the books I read from local authors, and they were fantastic!

Overall, last year I managed to read eight poetry books, three books on the writing craft (all about poetry), nine books on religion, nine books by local authors, and a bunch of other genres. I list those four only because they’re categories in which I plan to read more of each type in the coming year. Let me be honest, I want to read books. All the books. I set my goal for the year to 50 books. Part of me says that’s too little since I hit 48 books this year. The other part of me says that’s too much, I hit 48 books last year, how much more could I ask of myself? And while I don’t have specific goals on how many books I want to read in each category, I view it as trying to beat the numbers from 2019.

As I’ve mentioned I’m now tracking my books on Goodreads, where you can find me and friend me. See all the different books I read, with the fact that I read multiple books at any given time. This is odd for me, I used to read only one book at a time, and I don’t know what happened when I became a full-time writer, but I’m currently reading seven books and I’ve finished reading my first three books for the year and managed to write a review for each one. I don’t write a review for each book I read, but I try to if the book was written by a local author, the book was fantastic, or I just have an opinion (that I assume no one will read) that I want to share.

What were you favorite books that you read in 2019? Were there any that you read that were at the top of my list? What books to you want to read this next year?