2019 was the year I finally got myself back into reading.

It was the year I re-discovered the joys of owning a library card. The year when going to bed with a book became one of my most treasured ways to both fall asleep and practice a bit of self-care.

So when I read Candice’s 2019 reading challenge post I immediately wanted to write one for myself! I’ve never done one of these challenge summaries before, but I’ve spent the last few years becoming increasingly obsessed with adding books to my Goodreads account so it makes a lot of sense.

Besides, I’d like to write more blog posts which make me happy in 2020 – especially those I can write and publish in the same afternoon.

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My 2019 reading list

Number of books you read: Thirty three.

Number of re-reads: Zero.

Number of books you stopped reading: Six. I’ve only recently decided that if I don’t engage enough with a book after fifty odd pages then I’ll stop reading. This year that meant I abandoned Jog On by Bella Mackie, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar, and Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton.

Genre you read the most from: A good mix of fiction and memoir. Quite a few relating to grief. A couple of travel narratives in there too – and a few crime novels!

• Midnight Chicken & Other Recipes Worth Living For – Ella Risbridger
• Red Snow – Will Dean
• My Brilliant Friend – Elena Ferrante
• A Manual for Heartache – Cathy Rentzenbrink
• The Lucky Ones – Julianne Pachico
• I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death – Maggie O’Farrell
• The Brief History of the Dead – Kevin Brockmeier
• All The Hidden Truths – Claire Askew
• Grief is the Thing with Feathers – Max Porter
• Departures – Anna Hart
• Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng
• The Gloaming – Kirstie Logan
• Room – Emma Donoghue
• We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves – Karen Joy Fowler
• The Shock of the Fall – Nathan Filer
• Everything I Know About Love – Dolly Alderton
• Educated – Tara Westover
• This Must Be the Place – Maggie O’Farrell
• The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir – Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich
• The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender – Leslye Walton
• Elizabeth is Missing – Emma Healey
• This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor – Adam Kay
• Normal People – Sally Rooney
• Traveling with Ghosts: A Memoir – Shannon Leone Fowler
• Places I Stopped on the Way Home – Meg Fee
• The Other Sister – Elle Croft
• The Chronology of Water – Lidia Yuknavitch
• The Immortalists – Chloe Benjamin
• Circe – Madeline Miller
• The Lido – Libby Page
• A House Full of Daughters: A Memoir of Seven Generations – Juliet Nicolson
• Goodbye, Vitamin – Rachel Khong
• My Year of Rest and Relaxation – Ottessa Moshfegh

1. Best book you read in 2019?

It’s a tie between Educated by Tara Westover and I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O’Farrell.

Educated was a book I thought about constantly. Westover’s style of writing is exactly what gets my creative juices flowing, and her story of a Mormon upbringing in the Idaho mountains with survivalist parents is simply extraordinary.

I Am, I Am, I Am is similarly extraordinary, in part thanks to O’Farrell’s imaginative structure. Each chapter focuses on one of her ‘seventeen brushes with death’ but they jump around in time, gradually building up an impression of how each moment has defined and redefined her life. Plus her language is utterly gorgeous.

2. Book you were excited about & thought you were going to love more but didn’t?

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. Even though my best friend had highly recommended it, I couldn’t see what was so compelling about the story.

Yes, the writing is lyrical and paints a good picture of Italian life in the 1950s, but that didn’t change the fact that I was completely apathetic to the progression of the girls’ lives and their relationships. It felt like the same idea spooled out multiple times: Lena wished for Lila’s approval in various situations and either got it or didn’t, and meanwhile various boys appeared on the scene (all of whom fell for Lila immediately).

I pushed through for a good 200 pages without any real desire to keep reading, then skimmed through the final 50 pages with no more enthusiasm than I’d had for the rest of the book.

3. Most surprising (in a good way or bad way) book you read?

In a good way: Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton. After seeing this mentioned repeatedly on Twitter I found a copy at the library, but made a snap decision that it would be quite a fluffy, Instagram-caption kind of book. Instead, I devoured most of it on a long coach journey (coincidentally, on route to visiting one of my best female friends) and kept finding myself nodding along with a smile on my face – I particularly loved that it was about female friendships rather than looking for a romantic relationship to make her ‘whole’.

In a bad way: Normal People by Sally Rooney. This book has such rave reviews that I kept rereading pages to see if I’d somehow missed the point. Strangely this is one of those books which does stay in your mind afterwards – and perhaps that’s part of its appeal – but overall the writing felt sparse, two-dimensional and disconnected.

4. Book you “pushed” the most people to read (and they did)?

Educated by Tara Westover. I raved about this book to so many people (and often reminded them multiple times until they actually read it) because I felt so strongly that Westover’s story needed to be shared.

5. Best series you started in 2019?

Will Dean’s Tuva Moodyson series. I practically inhaled Dark Pines and Red Snow – both of which take place in a remote Swedish town surrounded by creepy forests and alarming characters – and I’m chomping at the bit to read the third instalment of this deaf reporter’s exploits later in 2020. Black River, here I come!

6. Favourite new author you discovered in 2019?

Maggie O’Farrell. I randomly picked up I Am, I Am, I Am off the library shelf because the subtitle of Seventeen Brushes With Death intrigued me. I quickly fell in love with her non-fiction writing, only to discover on finishing it that she has a lengthly back catalogue of fiction too. I’m trying hard to limit myself to one or two of her books each year so I don’t read them all too quickly!

7. Best book from a genre you don’t typically read/was out of your comfort zone?

For some reason, I’ve always assumed that crime novels weren’t my kind of books. I thought they were cheap lit for reading on a flight – but this year I happily discovered that the crime genre can be complex and totally compelling.

Thanks to The Other Sister by Elle Croft, Red Snow by Will Dean and All The Hidden Truths by Claire Askew, I’m now properly converted to the crime and mystery genre!

8. Most action-packed/thrilling/unputdownable book of the year?

This is a tricky one, as nothing I read this year was ‘action-packed’ per se – but there were a few books which felt utterly unputdownable.

I read Room by Emma Donoghue in a single afternoon, curled up on the sofa one Sunday, completely enthralled by the book’s young narrator and the horrific situation he and his mother find themselves in.

I daydreamed about My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh whenever the book wasn’t open in front of me, fascinated by the darkness, apathy and self-destructive nature of the central character.

And then there was The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, which did strange things to my insides. A combined murder investigation and intensely vulnerable memoir, I still can’t believe what she achieved with this book. In terms of my favourite reads of this year, it’s probably a close third.

9. Book you read in 2019 that you would be MOST likely to re-read next year?

Educated, hands down – but that’s probably so I can feel re-inspired with my own book writing!

10. Favourite cover of a book you read in 2019?

Midnight Chicken by Ella Risbridger. I’ve followed Ella on Twitter for years and was so happy when she finally managed to publish this book of memoir-style recipes – and the hand-drawn cover is absolutely gorgeous. It really reflects her style of writing too; nourishing, detailed, and heartbreakingly humorous.

11. Most memorable character of 2019?

My Year of Rest and Relaxation. I’ve never read a character like this unnamed woman before: someone I found immeasurably frustrating and yet also strangely familiar. In the year after my dad died I felt myself exhibiting many of the same behavioural quirks so I had a strong sense of empathy towards her.

But then there’s also Circe, from the book of the same name by Madeline Miller. Her retelling of the Odysseus story from Circe’s perspective is beautifully written, and although I started reading with the idea that it’d feel too historical to feel relatable, it didn’t take long before I was totally absorbed in her journey. Plus her solo lifestyle on the island is awesome.

12. Most beautifully written book read in 2019?

Grief is the Thing With Feathers by Max Porter. I find it hard to get through a whole year of reading without at least a few grief-related texts, and this is one of the most highly reviewed – yet a little confounding – grief books around at the moment.

Grief is the Thing tells the story of a recently widowed father, his two young sons, and ‘Crow’, who is the embodiment of their grief. The text is sparse, poetic, piecemeal: it’s a quick read in theory, but it stays with you long after you’ve closed the book. I read this while at an Airbnb in Berlin but already know I need to buy my own copy.

13. Most thought-provoking/life-changing book of 2019?

The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich. This book made my brain ache with the realisation of how many twists and turns the legal system – and the lawyers, police, friends and enemies of the accused – have to take when deciding on a single person’s guilt. Similarly, the ways in which my own opinion could change drastically depending on the facts I learned was surreal.

14. Book you can’t believe you waited until 2019 to finally read?

This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay. I went to school with his younger sister and I’d seen her sharing his memoir about working in the NHS on Facebook – but it’s such a popular book that the library was constantly out of copies. Despite being written with a comedic slant, Kay’s book is nonetheless a stark look at what’s happened to the UK’s healthcare system, and it’s something of a sobering read.

Nonetheless, everyone should read it.

15. Favourite passage/quote from a book you read in 2019?

“Perhaps the point is not to resist death. Perhaps the point is that there’s no such thing. If Simon and Saul are contacting Klara, then consciousness survives the death of the body. If consciousness survives the death of the body, then everything she’s been told about death isn’t true. And if everything she’s been told about death isn’t true, maybe death is not death at all.”

– The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin.

16.Shortest and longest book you read in 2019?

Shortest: Grief Is The Thing With Feathers by Max Porter (114 pages)

Longest: This Must Be The Place by Maggie O’Farrell (496 pages)

17. Book that shocked you the most (plot twist, character death, etc)?

The Lucky Ones by Julianne Pachico. Not because of a plot twist but simply because her set of loosely connected short stories set in the conflict years of Colombia took my breath away in a dozen different ways. This book stayed with me for a long time.

18. Favourite non-romantic relationship of the year?

It’s a heart-wrenching relationship, but my most memorable is the connection between Maud and her sister in Elizabeth is Missing. And, in fact, the connection between Maud and the titular Elizabeth too. I didn’t expect this novel to hit me the way it did but I definitely cried at the end (and it’s probably just as worthy of the shock question above this!).

19. Favourite book you read in 2019 from an author you’ve read previously?

I’d only read Will Dean and Celeste Ng previously – everyone else was a new author to me this year – and both of their books were fantastic.

20. Best book you read in 2019 that you read based SOLELY on a recommendation from somebody else?

Probably Everything I Know About Love. Turns out constantly saving Twitter recommendations to my Goodreads account is a good idea after all!

21. Newest fictional crush from a book you read in 2019?

Circe. That girl is COMPLEX, and I always wanted to know what she was going to do next. Also I just wanted to hang out in the island kitchen with her and learn about witchy herbs and potions.

22. Best 2019 debut you read?

I don’t think anything was published in 2019 so I’ll go with The Other Sister by Elle Croft – a blogging friend who’s doing fantastical things in the crime genre. Her third book is out in 2020 and I can’t wait to delve into it.

23. Best worldbuilding/most vivid setting you read this year?

The Gloaming by Kirsty Logan. I’m not hugely into fantasy but there was a lovely mix of reality and strange magical touches in this book – and the image of the cliff edge scattered with stone statues will stay with me for a long time.

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. Set in a small Ohio town in the 1970s, the intricacies of how a Chinese-American family cope with their daughter’s death had me hooked. There’s something about a ‘mundane’ book setting which, when written well, can be so much more compelling than a huge extravagant adventure narrative. Ng absolutely nails this in both novels of hers which I’ve read (like Little Fires Everywhere which blew my mind!).

24. Book that put a smile on your face/was the most FUN to read?

This question made me realise I don’t often read ‘fun’ books..! Which is a bit of a downer.

That said, I really felt like Everything I Know About Love was a smile-inducing book – as was Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong. Despite the topic (a novel detailing how dementia affects a family), it’s a short, sweet and beautifully funny read.

25. Book that made you cry or nearly cry in 2019?

Room by Emma Donoghue. I hadn’t seen the film so didn’t know the storyline, and there were multiple moments which both lifted and broke my heart.

26. Hidden gem of the year?

The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich. I don’t think this book is getting the exposure it deserves!

27. Book that crushed your soul?

Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter.

28. Most unique book you read in 2019?

The Fact Of A Body. I’m still in awe of her ability to construct such a compelling narrative from little more than police reports and news footage.

29. One book you didn’t get to in 2019 but will be your number 1 priority in 2020?

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino. These essays have been making the rounds on social media and my friend’s copy has sat beside my bed for months because I keep meaning to start it!

30. Book you are most anticipating for 2020?

Will Dean’s third instalment of Tuva Moodyson’s Swedish adventures. I even made my first attempt at a Netgalley review copy for Black River but was sadly unsuccessful!

What books did you love in 2019? Anything you can’t wait to read in 2020? I’d love all your recommendations – and hopefully I’ll get through more than 33 books this year! 

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NB: This article contains affiliate links, but it won’t cost you anything to click on them – it just helps me with the cost of running this site! Also, many thanks to Perpetual Page Turner for these challenge questions, and to Christin Hume who shot the feature image for this article.