Hey everyone! Happy New Year's! I majorly flopped on doing my monthly reading updates since the summer. Instead, I wanted to do a 2019 wrap-up with some of my favorite books and statistics for the year.
Since reading is my main hobby, I set a goal of 200 books and ended up reading 249, with 77 of those being graphic novels and the rest being novels. Graphic novels don't take that long for me to read, which does inflate my overall count some. I read most of my books on my phone through the Libby app and had a breakdown of 50 physical books, 197 eBooks, and 2 audiobooks. 173 of the books I read were fiction, while 76 were nonfiction. The last stat I track is the author's gender, with 147 books written by males and 101 written by females (1 extra one was written by a team from a news website). This isn't as evenly balanced as I'd like and is one thing I want to focus on improving in 2020. Across all of the books, I ended up reading 65,848 pages.
For this post, I wanted to talk about 10 of my favorite books I read in 2019. These all ended up getting 4 or 5 star reviews from me. My average rating this year was about 2.5 stars, so these 10 are all standouts that impressed me in some shape or form.
There were three books that I rated 5 stars this past year: Whiskey in a Teacup by Reese Witherspoon, American Predator by Maureen Callahan, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Whiskey in a Teacup is a lifestyle book that has an aesthetically pleasing mixture of recipes and home decor ideas, along with tidbits about Reese's life. I didn't expect to like it as much I did, but it was such a well-done book. American Predator is a true-crime novel that had me completely entranced. Maureen Callahan has a great writing style that's easy to read with a good flow. It uncovers the crimes of one of the "most meticulous" serial killers of this century. I had never heard about him before and think Callahan provided enough details without going overboard. I love true crime as you may know, and it's one of the best ones I've read in a while. Lastly, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo was another one I didn't expect to like as much as did. It's mostly focuses on the drama/romance of a fictional actress that wants a reporter to write a tell-all book about her life. Like Maureen Callahan, Taylor Jenkins Reid writes in such a way that makes you want to keep on reading. I liked the main character, Evelyn Hugo, more and more as I learned about her life.
Moving onto some of the 4 star books, the only graphic novel to make the cut was Nimona by Noelle Stevenson. It's a fantasy story that had fantastic art and an interesting plot. One other good true-crime novel I read was I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara. This book focuses on the Golden State Killer, who was actually caught in the past couple of years. McNamara unfortunately passed away before the book was published, so it didn't read as fluidly in parts since other people had to get it finalized. Still, I enjoyed it and liked learning about her investigation process. I've wanted to read more of Stephen King's works and was very impressed by Misery and 11/22/63. Misery is a weird book but had me rooting for the main character by the end of it. 11/22/63 is a neat time travel story about a teacher going back to stop the assassination of JFK. It was long, like most of Stephen King's books are, yet it felt warranted due to how crazy the plot became. Another book I read with a presidential theme was Fear by Bob Woodward. No matter what side of the political spectrum you're on, it's such a fascinating look into the past few years of Trump's presidency. It was well-written and had me engaged throughout, which I can't say about some of the other political non-fiction books I read. The final two books for this post are The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson and Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The Vanishing Stair is a sequel in a YA mystery series about a death and some odd happenings at a boarding school. A lot of YA can be badly written with cheesy dialogue, yet that wasn't the case for this one. I'm interested to see where the series goes and think the newest one comes out in a few weeks. Lastly, ending it off on another Taylor Jenkins Reid book, Daisy Jones & The Six. This follows a fictional band and their rise/eventual breakup. It tells their story through each of the band members and other people's perspectives. I didn't think I'd like that at first, but it was interesting to see how some of them had conflicting views on certain events. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a phenomenal writer and one that I'd like to read more of this year.
Those were just a few of the memorable books I read this past year. I should have another post up in the next few weeks about my 2020 reading goals if that interests you. I read a lot of great and not so great books this year. It's always fun to look back at these and see what sparked my interest at the time. I definitely recommend checking out any of these if you're looking for some new reads! Thanks for looking!
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