These are the books that helped me in 2019 to escape for a little while, made me laugh, taught me somethings new, or made me think long after I'd returned the book to the library. Most of the books are new, published in the last couple of years. I didn't set out to read particular authors or make sure that I covered specific genres or time periods, so this list is heavily slanted towards the genres and topics I like to read. The last two weeks of the year always end up being packed with reading (I have 6 books currently checked out from the library!), so I always have mixed feelings about publishing a "best of" list before December 31. At the same time, I didn't want to wait until January to publish a list since you, like me, might have less time to read when back in your regular work routine after the holidays.
Business, Creativity & Self Help
- 100 Side Hustles by Chris Guillebeau
- Every Tool's A Hammer by Adam Savage
- Related blog post: Lessons on Making From Adam Savage's New Book
- Find Your Artistic Voice by Lisa Congdon
- Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done by Laura Vanderkam
- "The truth is that even ten minutes spent looking at the sky with nothing to fill the time can feel long."
- This is Marketing by Seth Godin
Childrens & Young Adult
- Dumplin' by Julie Murphy
- "But Loraine is not most women. She mixes her tea with powder from a box. To my mom, powdered iced tea is almost as bad as the possibility of being left behind in the wake of the rapture."
- Related blog post: What I Made and Read This Spring (fourth bullet point)
- Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
- Kid Authors by David Stabler
- The Rest of the Story by Sarah Dessen
Essays
- The Curse of the Boyfriend Sweater by Alanna Okun
- I Miss You When I Blink by Mary Laura Philpott
- "But I'm not hostile like a crazy person punching strangers on a subway platform. I'm just hostile like a crazy person who wants to gouge her eyes out when she sees grammatical errors on billboards. LOWEST PRICE'S -- I can hardly stand it."
- Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan
Fiction
- Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
- "If the book has one failing, it's that there is insufficient mention of Pilot. You can't have too much dog in a book."
- Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes
- Related blog post: Earrings Inspired by Evvie Drake's Mom
- My (Not So) Perfect Life by Sophie Kinsella
- Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
Memoir and Biography
- Becoming by Michelle Obama
- "If you don't get out there and define yourself, you'll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others."
- Educated by Tara Westover
- Fly Girls by Keith O'Brien [early female aviators]
- Inheritance by Dani Shapiro
- "We never know who we will be in the burning building, the earthquake. We never know until we are faced with our own stripped-down, elemental selves."
- Notorious RBG by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik
- Save Me the Plums by Ruth Reichl [Gourmet magazine]
- That's the Way I Heard It by Mike Rowe
- When Life Gives You Pears by Jeannie Gaffigan
Mystery/Crime Fiction
- An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good by Helene Tursten
- Ghost Hero by S. J. Rozan
- Goldy's Kitchen Cookbook by Diane Mott Davidson [cookbook related to mystery series]
- "When my sisters and I were little, we used to answer the phone, 'Motts' Candy Shop, which nut do you want?' Needless to say, we found this hilarious. Our parents did not."
- Paper Son by S. J. Rozan
Non-Fiction
- Asking for a Friend by Jessica Weisberg [history of advice giving]
- Coders by Clive Thompson [computer programmers]
- "In another experiment, the tech recruiting firm Speak with a Geek submitted 5,000 resumes to job firms, with identical specs and information. When they put non-gender-specific names on the resumes, fully 54 percent of the women got callbacks; when they included gendered names, only 5 percent of them did."
- Dreyer's English by Benjamin Dreyer [grammar/English language]
- When by Daniel J. Pink [perfect timing]
- Related blog post: What I Made and Read This Spring (second bullet point)