It feels anti-climactic to post the books of the year after being able to post the books of the decade at the beginning of 2018. But, decades consist of years. We’re into the second decade of book tracking. Here’s to many more!
This year I read 58 books, which is quite close to last year’s total of 62, and more than my annual average (52). Other vital reading stats:
- Page count: 22,154, based on what LibraryThing lists. I am sure I didn’t exactly read this many pages, once you count appendices and notes, but it’s the best number I have.
- Library use: 19 library books (mostly ebooks), 2 borrowed from friends. This year I read more books that I owned. I can’t say if this is because I was working on the backlog or buying more books. We may never know.
- Female/male authors: 49 by female authors, 9 by male authors. When it’s right, it’s right.
- Digital and analog: 40 digital, 18 paper.
- Fiction and non-fiction: 39 fiction, 19 nonfiction.
- Books in other languages: 4 books in Spanish. I really meant to read more Spanish books this year. I started out strong, but I got bogged down later in the year with exhaustion. I’ve since been diagnosed with sleep apnea and obtained a cpap. I’m hoping next year it will be easier to focus.
- Favorites: This question always stumps be a little because I love everything I read. The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty was a definite favorite, so was Cat Valente’s Space Opera. I enjoyed Kate Elliot’s women-focused stories in the Jaran series and Spiritwalker Trilogy (which I’m still reading). All the books I got from Powell’s Indiespensible were stunning and made me reflect. This includes Red Clocks, There There, and The Mars Room. As for non-fiction, I think the books that have most stayed with me are Prairie Fires, which I did not expect to like that much, but the history involved was fascinating, and Bodies Out of Bounds. Rage Becomes Her and Text Me When You Get Home both distilled a mood around being a woman and getting along in this world.
And now for the list!
| Date Finished | Title | Author |
| 1/6 | The City of Brass | S. A. Chakraborty |
| 1/10 | Provenance | Ann Leckie |
| 1/18 | The Girl in the Tower | Katherine Arden |
| 1/24 | Ghost Talkers | Mary Robinette Kowal |
| 1/29 | The Ruin of Angeles | Max Gladstone |
| 2/4 | Freedom Is a Constant Struggle | Angela Davis |
| 2/7 | The Will to Battle | Ada Palmer |
| 2/8 | Caramba! | Nina Marie Martinez |
| 2/8 | The Jewel and Her Lapidary | Fran Wilde |
| 2/11 | Crosstalk | Connie Willis |
| 2/15 | How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective | Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor |
| 2/25 | The Unwomanly Face of War | Svetlana Alexievich |
| 3/1 | Como agua para chocolate | Laura Esquivel |
| 3/4 | A Wrinkle in Time | Madeleine L’Engle |
| 3/7 | Red Clocks | Leni Zumas |
| 3/8 | Everfair | Nisi Shawl |
| 3/13 | The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth about Food and Flavor | Mark Schatzker |
| 3/17 | Karen Memory | Elizabeth Bear |
| 4/6 | Hild | Nicola Griffith |
| 4/13 | Republic of Thieves | Scott Lynch |
| 4/18 | Space Opera | Catherynne Valente |
| 4/24 | Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City | Matthew Desmond |
| 5/4 | La Maravillosa Historia de Español | Francisco Moreno Fernández |
| 5/4 | The Dream-Quest of Vellit Boe | Kij Johnson |
| 5/9 | Invisible: How Young Women with Serious Health Issues Navigate Work, Relationships, and the Pressure to Seem Just Fine | Michele Lent Hirsch |
| 5/17 | Jaran | Kate Elliott |
| 5/20 | US Politics in an Age of Uncertainty | Lance Selfa |
| 5/31 | Doing Harm: the Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick | Maya Dusenbery |
| 6/1 | An Earthly Crown | Kate Elliott |
| 6/7 | His Conquering Sword | Kate Elliott |
| 6/7 | Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture | Roxane Gay |
| 6/8 | Learning Together: Children and Adults in a School Community | Barbara Rogoff, Carolyn Goodman Turkanis, Leslee Bartlett |
| 6/21 | The Law of Becoming | Kate Elliott |
| 6/29 | Prarie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder | Caroline Fraser |
| 7/6 | There There | Tommy Orange |
| 7/12 | Tierra de Brumas | Cristina López Barrio |
| 7/18 | The Calculating Stars | Mary Robinette Kowal |
| 7/22 | The Invisible Library | Genevieve Cogman |
| 7/29 | The Masked City | Genevieve Cogman |
| 8/5 | The Mere Wife | Maria Dahvana Headley |
| 8/15 | The Burning Page | Genevieve Cogman |
| 9/16 | The Fated Sky | Mary Robinette Kowal |
| 9/16 | Bodies Out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression | Jana Evans Braziel, Kathleen LeBesco |
| 9/24 | A Study in Honor | Claire O’Dell |
| 9/30 | The Power | Naomi Alderman |
| 10/10 | The Lost plot | Genevieve Cogman |
| 10/16 | The View From Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America | Sarah Kendzior |
| 10/26 | Borne | Jeff Vandermeer |
| 10/26 | [Un]framing the “Bad Woman”: Sor Juana, Malinche, Coyolxauhqui, and Other Rebels with a Cause | Alicia Gaspar de Alba |
| 10/31 | Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion | Elizabeth Cline |
| 11/7 | The Bees | Laline Paul |
| 11/12 | The All New Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate | George Lakoff |
| 11/20 | Rage Becomes Her | Soraya Chemaly |
| 11/30 | Trail of Lightning | Rebecca Roanhorse |
| 12/15 | Text Me When You Get Home | Kayleen Schaeffer |
| 12/24 | Cold Magic | Kate Elliott |
| 12/27 | The Mars Room: A Novel | Rachel Kushner |
| 12/29 | Cold Fire | Kate Elliott |
