I need to give myself some props--I read 40 books this year! That exceeds my 2013 (pre-kids!) total. I also wrote about quite a few of the books I read, though you can see the start of the school year destroyed that streak (and drastically reduced my reading too).
- Irresistible by Adam Alter
- When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
- Slaughterhouse-Five, a graphic novel adaptation by Kurt Vonnegut, Ryan North, and Albert Monteys
- The Best of Me by David Sedaris
- Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
- Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
- A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet
- Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
- The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez
- The Liar's Dictionary by Eley Williams
- Moby Dick by Herman Melville
- Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
- News of the World by Paulette Jiles
- The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante
- A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies
- A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
- Imitations by Zadie Smith
- Consent by Vanessa Springora
- Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion
- Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- Nick by Michael Farris Smith
- Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
- Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
- My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
- Cosmogony by Lucy Ives
- The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
- The Doctors Blackwell by Janice Nimura
- Memorial by Bryan Washington
- Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour
- The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
- The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
- The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo
- No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
- Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor
- Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
- The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
- Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
- Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
- When We Cease to Understand the World by Bejamin Labatut
About 60% of the books were written by women, and a third were written by writers of color. Eight were nonfiction, and though most were published in 2020 or 2021, I read several old classics (hello 1851 with Moby Dick!).
Fortunately I liked quite a lot of the books I read! Moby Dick and Mrs. Dalloway were challenging but worth it. Butler's science-fiction is enthralling. Found myself carried away by some strong contemporary writers: Ferrante, Rooney, Lockwood. The enjoyment I got out of Saunders' book-as-college-class suggests I really would appreciate going back to school. I loved Green's Anthropocene Reviewed so much I wrote my own essay in the same style (and had my students do so too!).
