TOP 25 FAVORITE BOOKS READ IN 2020

 I had a year of great reading. I had set a lower goal than usual to give myself time to read some LONG books and I did do that. 

I read 122 books with an average length of 366 pages.

I read 44674 pages with an average of 122 pages a day. I think this is my most satisfying statistic since I always hope to read 100 pages a day. It looks like I nailed that one!

This year I decided to determine my top favorites by listing out all the books I noted as 5 star books on Goodreads. I got 46! It would seem either I am getting better at choosing books or books are getting better overall. Win-win, I would say.

I narrowed it down to 25 but added a few more at the bottom. For once I managed to get all of these reviewed on the blog and that is perhaps my best achievement. After all my wingeing last January, I figured out how to keep the blog going plus work on my writing. Of course, I was stuck at home for 9 months of the year so I should not brag.

In alphabetical order by title here are my favorites:

August Is A Wicked Month, Edna O'Brien

Barn 8, Deb Olin Unferth

Bellefleur, Joyce Carol Oates

Cantoras, Carolina De Robertis

The Glass Hotel, Emily St John Mandel

Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell

How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee

In the Country of Women, Susan Straight

The Keepers of the House, Shirley Anne Grau

Lilith's Brood Trilogy (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago), Octavia E Butler

A Long Petal of the Sea, Isabel Allende

Night Boat to Tangier, Kevin Barry

Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars, Joyce Carol Oates

The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich

Piranesi, Susannah Clarke

The Reckless Oath We Made, Bryn Greenwood

Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison

The Sweetest Fruits, Monique Truong

Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi

Unseen City, Amy Shearn

Unsheltered, Barbara Kingsolver

The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett

The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Women of Copper Country, Mary Doria Russell

Your House Will Pay, Steph Cha

Extras:

One of my goals for the year was to get caught up on all Neal Stephenson books I had not yet read. I still have one to go but I loved the ones I read 5 stars worth.

Quicksilver, The Confusion, System of the World, Anathem, and Reamde.

I cannot leave out The Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Sadly we lost him this year so I add this one in his honor.

I have enjoyed reading all the year end lists from the bloggers I follow. We are mighty readers!

A huge thank you to all who follow me here with extra thanks for all who comment. Due to my reading groups on Zoom and all of you, I never felt too lonely this year. 

Happy New Year! Happy Reading! Happy Blogging Days Ahead!

TOP 25 BOOKS READ IN 2019

Once again, it was hard to choose only 25 of all the wonderful books I read last year. I made a short runners up list. Not all of these were published in 2019 but all were read during the year.

Starred titles indicate books reviewed on the blog.

*Bowlaway, Elizabeth McCracken

*Chimes of a Lost Cathedral, Janet Fitch

*Daisy Jones & the Six, Taylor Jenkins Reid

*Disoriental, Negar Djavadi

*The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin

*Juliet the Maniac, Juliet Escoria

*Little Big Man, Thomas Berger

*The Lonely Hearts Hotel, Heather O’Neill

*Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, T Kira Madden

*The Loved Ones, Sonya Chung

*Lost Children Archive, Valeria Luiselli

*Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem

*The Neverending Story, Michael Ende

*The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead

*Once Upon A River, Diane Setterfeld

Palm Latitudes, Kate Braverman

*Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey

*Stone Upon Stone, Wieslaw Mysliwski

*Sula, Toni Morrison

*The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E Harrow

*The Testaments, Margaret Atwood

*The Time of Our Singing, Richard Powers

*Trust Exercise, Susan Choi

The Vexations, Caitlin Horrocks

*Washinton Black, Esi Edugyan

Runners Up

*The Blue, Nancy Bilyeau

*A Kind of Freedom, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

No Walls and the Recurring Dream, Ani di Franco

*The Prisoner of Heaven, Carlos Ruiz Zafon

*Sisters In Law, Linda R Hirshman

*Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens

*Wintering, A Novel of Sylvia Plath, Kate Moses

Happy Reading in 2020!

 

TOP 25 BOOKS READ IN 2018

My Bookshelves

I had a great reading year. I surpassed my overall goal to read 144 books. I completed a self-created challenge to read a book a month from the last 12 years of my TBR lists. I also read a book a month from my Nervous Breakdown Book Club subscription. I fell short in terms of reading as much as I had planned from my ongoing, unending challenge known as My Big Fat Reading Project.

As far as these favorite 25 books go, I made my decisions based on not only how much I loved the books but on how much they challenged me to learn new things, to understand myself and others more completely, and to savor the many ways that stories can be told.

 

My new 2019 challenge is to read a book a month set in another country by an author who lives there and writes in their own language. For me that means the book has to be translated into English. I have made a tentative list, subject to change as the year unfolds.

I will put the stats at the bottom of the list. Stats are fun and enlightening but can also be boring. Feel free to skip them.

All the books on the list have been reviewed here on the blog.

All My Puny Sorrows, Miriam Toews

Appassionata, Eva Hoffman

The Bear and the Nightingale, Katherine Arden

Becoming, Michelle Obama

The Book of Joan, Lidia Yuknavitch

Call Me Zebra, Azareen Van de Vliet Oloomi

Circe, Madeline Miller

Future Home of the Living God, Louise Erdrich

Gold Dust Woman, Stephen Davis

The Golden State, Lydia Kiesling

The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas

How To Be Both, Ali Smith

The Ice Palace, Tarjei Vesaas

Lake Success, Gary Shteyngart

The Map of Salt and Stars, Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar

The Mars Room, Rachel Kushner

Miss Burma, Charmaine Craig

The Overstory, Richard Powers

The Power, Naomi Alderman

The Resurrection of Joan Ashby, Cherise Wolas

The Secret River, Kate Grenville

Silver Sparrow, Tayari Jones

Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik

Unsheltered, Barbara Kingsolver

The Weight of Ink, Rachel Kadish

Stats: 146 books read. 135 fiction (not counting poetry and plays). 86 by women. 11 nonfiction including history, biographies and memoirs. 50 for My Big Fat Reading Project. 11 translated. 

Were any of the books on my list also favorites of yours?

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for visiting my blog and most especially for leaving comments. I maintain this blog as a labor of love. The best reward is your comments.

TOP BOOKS READ IN 2017

The image above, "borrowed" from Google images and huge thanks to its creator, spoke to me because it is called The Sleepless Reader. I have become someone who can nap any time of the afternoon but cannot always sleep at night. This year I finally faced it and just got up and read on the futon bed in my office until my eyes began to droop.

I had one of the worst years of my life, physically and emotionally, but it was reading that saved me, brought me back to some semblance of wisdom and best of all, informed and educated me. I tried, I really tried, to keep up with the news but that left me feeling powerless and often manipulated. Reading about the past, the present, and the future in books was how I found some kind of ground I could stand on. 

I read 119 books. Three less than last year but almost 2000 more pages because 11 of the books I read were well over 500 pages.

Stats:

Books read: 119. Pages read: 41080. Average pages per day: 113. Average books per week: 2.3.

Fiction: 103

Nonfiction: 16

Written by women: 68

Mystery/thriller: 13

Historical fiction: 19

Fantasy: 5

Speculative/sci-fi: 9

Translated: 5

Biography/memoir: 9

Essays: 3

My Big Fat Reading Project: 43

 

 

My top 25 are my favorite books and as usual I had trouble narrowing the list down to 25, but isn't that just the nature of things? I think I gave less than 3 stars to only a handful of what I read this year. The books were published over a wide range of years, not just in 2017. All of the books on the list have been or will soon be reviewed here on the blog.

 

The List (in the order I read them): 

 

The Nix, Nathan Hill

Version Control, Dexter Palmer

All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders

The Time of the Doves, Merce Rodoreda

The Gods of Tango, Carolina De Robertis

Do Not Say We Have Nothing, Madeleine Thien

To the Bright Edge of the World, Eowyn Ivey

A Book of American Martyrs, Joyce Carol Oates

White Tears, Hari Kunzru

Grace, Natashia Deon

Little Nothing, Marisa Silver

The Shadow Land, Elizabeth Kostova

The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry

The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes

Pachinko, Min Jin Lee

Sister Golden Hair, Darcey Steinke

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Arundhati Roy

The Plague Diaries, Ronlyn Domingue

The Fifth Season, N K Jemison

Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn West

Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan

Occasion For Loving, Nadine Gordimer

The Bedlam Stacks, Natasha Pulley

The Rise and Fall of DODO, Neal Stephenson

The Revolution of Marina M, Janet Fitch

 

If I follow your blog, I have read your lists for the year's most loved books. If I don't follow you or you don't have a blog, feel free to let me know of great reads I may have missed in the comments. Thanks to everyone who visits here!  

 

Happy New Year! Let's read our way to a better year.

TOP 25 BOOKS READ IN 2015

(Well, I used to look like this.)

My year of reading in 2015 was enjoyable, challenging, informative, and all the other good things I get from reading. I did a bit better on number of books read than I have in the past two years. My yearly average since 2002, when I got serious about reading everything I could before I die, has been 122 books. My best year ever was 2010 when I read 160 books. I still can't figure out how I did that!

My recent goals have included reading more books written by women and more literature translated from languages other than English. The stats show I did well on those goals this year. But I slacked off on My Big Fat Reading Project in favor of current releases. I also read 9 books that were well over 500 pages and as anyone who works with statistics knows, it's the high ones and the low ones that really skew the data.

Stats:

Books Read: 113

Pages Read: 37, 810/Average pages per day: 103/Average books per month: 9

Fiction: 96

Nonfiction: 8

Written by women: 64

Translated: 10

My Big Fat Reading Project: 28

Children/YA: 6

Indie Press: 11

Short Stories: 2

Speculative/Science Fiction/Fantasy: 14

Mystery: 7

Memoir: 2

Drama: 1

Classics: 2

(These numbers add up to more than 113 because some categories overlap)

 

Enough of that boring stuff. Here is the list of the books I loved the most:

 

Another Country, James Baldwin

Apocalypse Baby, Virginie Despentes

A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James

The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch

Claire of the Sea Light, Edwidge Danticat

Euphoria, Lily King

Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff

The Fifth Gospel, Ian Caldwell

The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing

The Goddess of SmallVictories, Yannick Grannec

*God Help the Child, Toni Morrison

Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami

*The Lower Quarter, Elise Blackwell

*Miss Emily, Nuala O’Connor

Not Dark Yet, Berit Ellingsen

Painted Horses, Malcolm Brooks

The Peerless Four, Victoria Patterson

Preparation For the Next Life, Atticus Lish

Seveneves, Neal Stephenson

The Story of a New Name, Elena Ferrante

Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart

The Water Knife, Paolo Bacigalupi

*West of Sunset, Stewart O’Nan

Wingshooters, Nina Revoyr

The World Between Two Covers, Ann Morgan

The titles with links are books I reviewed here on the blog. Starred titles with links are books I reviewed for the Lit Mag Three Guys One Book. But between March and October I posted short reviews only on Goodreads. You can find my 2015 Goodreads reviews here. 

Thanks for following my blog, reading my reviews, and most of all for commenting. While my blog and my Goodreads entries help me keep track of what I read, the main reason I do both things is to connect with other readers and to spread the word on books. I receive no money for those two activities. I am happy to report that in 2016 I will be paid for my reviews on a new Lit Mag: Litbreak, but I am also allowed to post those reviews here.  

Now, onto 2016!

 

TOP 25 BOOKS READ IN 2014

It was another tough year in my reading life. I only read 92 books in 2014. I averaged a bit less than 2 books a week, only 80 pages average a day. I read 7 books of over 500 pages and possibly more challenging books than in previous years. But the bottom line is that I missed several weeks of reading in May when I was too ill and when my cataract surgery was going on I slowed way down on reading. Then I went on the Christmas road trip and was having much too much fun with real live people and real live scenery to spend any time reading. 

It is all good. I improved my health after that wake up call in May, I have much better eyesight after the surgeries, and my personal sorrows are down to only one. Life is hard, messy, glorious, and always interesting. 

This list is in alphabetical order by title not by favorite, but are the most loved and rewarding books I read in the past year. Not all were published in 2014. I read about 2/3 in real books and the rest on various e-readers. I have posted reviews of all but two books on the list and will post those shortly.

 

JUDY KRUEGER’S TOP FAVORITE BOOKS READ IN 2014

All the Birds, Singing, Evie Wyld

Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Bird Skinner, Alice Greenway

Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin

The Blazing World, Siri Hustvedt

Boy Snow Bird, Helen Oyeyemi

The Chronicle of Secret Riven, Ronlyn Domingue

The Golden Arrow, Anna Redmond

The Golem and the Jinni, Helene Wecker

Half-Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan

If Beale Street Could Talk, James Baldwin

The Invention of Wings, Sue Monk Kidd

Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart

Long Division, Kiese Laymon

Lucky Us, Amy Bloom

The Madonnas of Echo Park, Brando Skyhorse

The Magician’s Land, Lev Grossman

Mood Indigo, Boris Vian

Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut

My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante

The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert

Southland, Nina Revoyr

Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel

A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki

The Tuner of Silences, Mia Couto

TOP 25 BOOKS READ IN 2013

I only read 111 books in 2013, my lowest ever since 2005 when I read 110. I averaged 2 books a week instead of 3 or 4, averaged 110 pages a day instead of 140. Those higher averages are from 2010 when I read 160 books. 

Looking back over this past year I see that I was distracted by personal troubles and turned to the internet and (most shameful of all) playing Solitaire on my iPad, when I could not settle down to reading. On the positive side, I wrote more including progress on my memoir and on my novel. I also wrote 18 professional reviews. Some of that time on the internet was spent on research for my writing but I can't deny that way too many hours went by while I jumped around here and there. 

That is the trap I guess. I think I could maintain my focus better when I used to research in libraries using books. It is so easy for one thing to lead to another on the web but I also think it is a matter of finding the best way to use it as a resource. The internet is an amazing invention and like all new inventions there are benefits as well as drawbacks. 

Enough! I need to get reading!!

I still managed to read many great books last year and as usual had fun winnowing my list of favorites down to 25. Except for We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (only found on BookBrowse) and On Such a Full Sea (releasing next week and not posted yet), my reviews of all the rest of the books can be found here on my blog. Not all of these books were published this year and the order is alphabetical by title, not most favorite to least. I loved all of these books for many different reasons.

THE LIST

The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone

The Accursed, Joyce Carol Oates

The Bone People, Keri Hulme

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Anthony Marra

Five Star Billionaire, Tash Aw

Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver

The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt

Hild, Nicola Griffith

The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri

MaddAddam, Margaret Atwood

May We Be Forgiven, A M Homes

My Education, Susan Choi

The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

On Such a Full Sea, Chang-rae Lee

The Round House, Louise Erdrich

The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Gary Shteyngart

Sisterland, Curtis Sittenfeld

Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl

South of the Angels, Jessamyn West

Thinner Than Skin, Uzma Aslam Khan

To the End of the Land, David Grossman

Transatlantic, Colum McCann

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler

Woke Up Lonely, Fiona Maazel

The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, Anto Di Sclafani

FAVORITE BOOKS READ IN 2006

Well I actually did a rough draft of the next chapter of Reading For My Life. I know, you are saying, "Yeah, yeah." But really all I have to do is edit/re-write/etc. and you will have it.

Meanwhile, as promised, here are the books I liked most in 2006. They were not all published in 2006. They are culled from the books I read in 2006. I am proud to say that I read more books last year than ever before: 141. That is almost 12 per month. I impressed even myself.

THE LIST:
1. The Thin Place, Kathryn Davis. Magical, mystical novel about modern times.
2. Ursula, Under, Ingrid Hill. Amazing fictional history of a northern Michigan family and what America really is.
3.Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson. More historical fiction combined with modern techno realities.
4. With Billie, Julia Blackburn. One righteous biography of Billie Holiday.
5. The Dream of Scipio, Iain Pears. Historical fiction again but which addresses what it takes to keep civilization going.
6. The Patron Saint of Liars, Ann Patchett. Very real and deep fiction about being a woman.
7. Small Island, Andrea Levy. Lives of Jamaican immigrants in post WWII England.
8. The Big Sky, A B Guthrie Jr. The best western I have ever read, hard to find, try used bookstores.
9. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer. The only fiction about 9/11 that I could believe. The coolest kid in fiction today.
10. White Ghost Girls, Alice Greenway. Incredible writing about sisters growing up in the Far East during the Vietnam War.
11. The Tender Bar, J R Moehringer. This is what memoir should be.
12. Brick Lane, Monica Ali. More immigrants in England, this time from Bangladesh. A great story.
13. There Will Never Be Another You, Carolyn See. If you like this author (I do), this is one of her best.
14. The King's English, Betsy Burton. The story of an independent bookstore. Reads like a page-turner novel.
15. Gifts, Ursula Le Guin. Supposed to be Young Adult fiction, but whatever she writes, it is about how to have peace on earth.