Books I Read in 2019

It's early 2020 (not as early as I would prefer!) and time to look back at last year's reading accomplishments.

My goal this past year was again 100 books, and I did NOT even get close!  I read 59 books.  Again, I got irritated by several books - a lot more than last year (poor choices on my part, or misleading synopses, perhaps), and so quit reading them before I got all the way through, but I finished most of them.:

So here's the overview of my reading this year, plus some recommendations - both books to read and books to avoid, just like last year.

Memoirs were again a big part of my reading this past year - sixteen!  Last year, I read seventeen, but read twice as many books, so the percentage of memoirs this year has nearly doubled!  Recommendations:  Mr. Ding's Chicken Feet:  On a Slow Boat from Shanghai to Texas; Cleo:  How an Uppity Cat Helped Heal a Family (make sure you have a couple of skids of tissues for this one); The Old Ways:  A Journey on Foot; Thunder Dog:  The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero; and Don't Sing at the Table:  Life Lessons from My Grandmothers.  Memoirs to avoid at all costs:  Not Taco Bell Material (I got really tired of Adam Corolla); Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube:  Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North (I couldn't even make it through the first few pages - life is too short to spend on something like this); and Midnight Chicken:  & Other Recipes Worth Living For (not terrible, but not at all what I expected - an okay premise - cooking saved her sanity - but not well executed).

Shockingly, NO books on religion or kids' books this year!  I wonder why that is?  Have to cogitate on that.

As usual, lots of cozy mysteries.  I read a TON of cozies from M. C. Beaton and Marion Chesney (they're the same person!) - not great literature, but fun to read and a little addictive.  I'm still reading her stuff, especially the Agatha Raisin series.  The main character is kind of a train wreck, but I just can't quit!  I want to know what's next.

I got on a knitting kick later in the year, so there were several books, both fiction and non-fiction, with knitting/wool themes.  Recommendations:  The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society and At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much (not as serious as it sounds - some of the entries were hilarious!).   To avoid:  Craft Activism:  People, Ideas, and Projects from the New Community of Handmade and How You Can Join In (how to make political and social statements with handmade items and to "bring awareness" to issues, but NOT how to actually HELP anybody as you might by making hats, gloves, and scarves for the homeless - pompous and self-congratulatory - UGH).

I read several non-fiction/history books.  Recommendations:  A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War (how WWI influenced the work of J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis); The Almost Nearly Perfect People:  Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia (the title says it all); The Indifferent Stars Above:  The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride (WOW);  Ravensbruck:  Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women; The Last Jew of Treblinka; and The Case for Nationalism:  How It Made Us Powerful, United, and Free (EXCELLENT!).  To avoid:  We Two:  Victoria and Albert:  Rulers, Partners, Rivals (this got really repetitious - okay, we get it - Albert was smarter than Victoria, and actually made most of the political decisions of her reign after they were married - geezo Pete).  

Again, there were some surprises, both pleasant and unpleasant.  First the bad.  The Curse of the Bridal Chamber is a mystery - both its plot and how it ever got published.  UGH.  Two spunky old ladies, their gay nephew and his partner, and a bulldog, set at a mermaid convention in Florida.  Sounds like fun, but...!  As I said in my Goodreads review, "the characters were all annoying and did illogical things. The dog was a prop, and contributed nothing to the story."  Just pitiable.  And I did read the whole thing.  My mistake.  I kept thinking it would improve.  Alas, no.

Gingerbread, by Helen Oyeyem.  What can I say?  Weird.  Just.  Too.  Weird.  A total waste of time, although there were plenty of fabulous reviews.  

Now for the good.  Several novels:  The Colors of All the Cattle (The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series - always a good choice!); Leopard at the Door; and A Column of Fire (Ken Follett - great as always).  And a collection of essays and articles, Things That Matter:  Three Decades of Passions, Passtimes, and Politics, by Charles Krauthammer.  Great writing.  Good humor and baseball.  Intelligent, insightful, and logical political analysis.  I actually got this as an audiobook from the library, and more than half was read by the author himself.  I thoroughly enjoyed them all.  Krauthammer died last June.  A great loss.

If you want to see the complete list of the books I read this year, click here.