Reading Challenge Book List 2019

112 Books in 12 months

2019 was a big year for reading. I set a stretch goal of 100 books after reading 91 books last year. I surprisingly surpassed my challenge by reading 112 books this year!

Below are my top picks for the year and my full reading list. Follow me on Goodreads so I can see what you’re reading.

Top Fiction

1. The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
2. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
3. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
4. The Innocents by Michael Crummey
5. A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum
6. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

Top Non-Fiction

1. How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
2. The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo
3. The Reconciliation Manifesto: Recovering the Land, Rebuilding the Economy by Arthur Manuel
4. Religion in Exile by Diarmuid O’Murchu
5. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples by Linda Tuhiwai Smith

— — — — — — — 2019 books in chronological order — — — — — — — — — —

Titles with a ⭐ next to their name are recommended reads. I gave these 5 stars on Goodreads.

1. The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion: Surprising Observations of a Hidden World by Peter Wohlleben
2. Everyday Zen: Love and Work by Charlotte Joko Beck
3. Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
4. Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq ⭐
5. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green ⭐
6. Room by Emma Donoghue
7. Some Rain Must Fall: My Struggle Book 5 by Karl Ove Knausgård ⭐
8. The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
9. The Heaviness of Things That Float by Jennifer Manuel ⭐
10. The Nix by Nathan Hill ⭐
11. French Exit by Patrick deWitt
12. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
13. After Birth by Elisa Albert
14. The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson
15. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
16. The Reconciliation Manifesto: Recovering the Land, Rebuilding the Economy by Arthur Manuel ⭐
17. Circe by Madeline Miller ⭐
18. Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan
19. Bird Box by Josh Malerman ⭐
20. Us Against You (Beartown, #2) by Fredrik Backman ⭐
21. To Be A Jew: A Guide To Jewish Observance In Contemporary Life by Hayim Halevy Donin
22. Lands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road by Kate Harris
23. Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera
24. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
25. Women Talking by Miriam Toews
26. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
27. The Overstory by Richard Powers
28. An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green ⭐
29. The Back of the Turtle by Thomas King ⭐
30. Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice ⭐
31. On the Come Up by Angie Thomas ⭐
32. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
33. Half Spent Was the Night: A Witches’ Yuletide by Ami McKay
34. The Language of Threads (Women of the Silk #2) by Gail Tsukiyama ⭐
35. The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd ⭐
36. Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami
37. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse ⭐
38. 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer
39. Blood Sports by Eden Robinson
40. Brother by David Chariandy
41. Traplines by Eden Robinson
42. Religion in Exile by Diarmuid O’Murchu ⭐
43. WTF?: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us by Tim O’Reilly
44. The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
45. The Test by Sylvain Neuvel
46. Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza by Ken Forkish
47. Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay
48. News of the World by Paulette Jiles
49. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee ⭐
50. The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer ⭐
51. The Power by Naomi Alderman ⭐
52. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples by Linda Tuhiwai Smith ⭐
53. Milkman by Anna Burns
54. The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner ⭐
55. The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells
56. Touching The Void by Joe Simpson
57. By Chance Alone: A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz by Max Eisen ⭐
58. Next Year, for Sure by Zoey Leigh Peterson ⭐
59. This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century by Mark Engler
60. I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism by Lee Maracle ⭐
61. The Victory Garden by Rhys Bowen
62. Transcription by Kate Atkinson ⭐
63. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan ⭐
64. The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy by David Graeber
65. Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson ⭐
66. Celia’s Song by Lee Maracle
67. Normal People by Sally Rooney ⭐
68. Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden ⭐
69. Global Warming and the Sweetness of Life: A Tar Sands Tale by Matt Hern
70. Educated by Tara Westover ⭐
71. The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark
72. Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance by Ruth Emmie Lang
73. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong ⭐
74. Run Away by Harlan Coben ⭐
75. Strike Your Heart by Amélie Nothomb
76. Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan
77. This Wound Is a World by Billy-Ray Belcourt
78. Mister God This is Anna by Fynn
79. Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
80. The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1) by Suzanne Collins ⭐
81. The Testaments (The Handmaid’s Tale, #2) by Margaret Atwood ⭐
82. Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson
83. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
84. The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
85. The Innocents by Michael Crummey ⭐
86. Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden
87. Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
88. Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2) by Suzanne Collins
89. A River in Darkness: One Man’s Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa ⭐
90. Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires
91. Sweetland by Michael Crummey
92. Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3) by Suzanne Collins
93. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead ⭐
94. How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi ⭐
95. This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger
96. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo ⭐
97. The Melting Queen by Bruce Cinnamon
98. This is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
99. The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You by Julie Zhuo ⭐
100. Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton
101. Where the Forest Meets the Stars by Glendy Vanderah
102. The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
103. Into the Forest by Jean Hegland
104. A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum ⭐
105. What the Wind Knows by Amy Harmon
106. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
107. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki ⭐
108. Divergent (Divergent, #1) by Roth Veronica
109. All American Boys by Jason Reynolds ⭐
110. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini ⭐
111. The Break by Vermette, Katherena ⭐
112. Learning to Die: Wisdom in the Age of Climate Crisis by Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky ⭐