bogeyandruby

My intention was to read 52 books this past year and I made it to 80.

I will continue reading throughout 2020 and hope that the cataract surgery that is pending will ease the distressing eye strain and blurriness I have been experiencing of late.

Impatient to begin a new list, I started the first book of 2020 yesterday evening. No loud ringing in the New Year for me, just the quiet turning of pages as a brand new story unfolds. I wear my party-pooper badge proudly; I will always chose a good book over a party.

Here is the entire list, the first eight months copied and pasted from a previous blog entry. There was only one real dud on the list, identified with a thumb’s down but obviously somebody somewhere enjoyed that book. If the book has a heart next to it, it simply means that reading it caused something to shift inside me, permanently. Doesn’t mean it will do the same for you but on the off chance it might, I thought I would mention it.

Do feel free to share your own reflections/recommendations on what you read this past year, and of course, what you plan to read this decade.

Lastly, love to all my followers, whether you like to read, prefer to party or live a balanced life with a little of both. And gratitude for putting up with the introversion and anti-social tendencies that tend to go along with my passion for books.

Books Read 2019

1. The Little Paris Bookshop — Nina George
2. I Know You Know — Gillian MacMillan
3. Life After Life — Kate Atkinson ❤️
4. Big Magic — Elizabeth Gilbert ❤️
5. And Then She Was Gone — Lisa Jewell
6. Bridge of Clay — Markus Zusak
7. Grit — Angela Duckworth
8. The Marrow Thieves — Cherie Dimalin
9. To the River — Olivia Laing
10. The Atomic Weight of Love — Elizabeth J. Church
11. Siddhartha — Herman Hesse
12. Lying in Wait — Liz Nugent
13. Less — Andrew Sean Greer
14. The Woo Woo — Lindsay Wong
15. A Noise Downstairs — Linwood Barclay
16. Bird by Bird — Anne Lamott
17. The Organist — Mark Abley
18. Homes — Abu Bakr Al Rabeeah with Winnie Young
19. The Haunting of Hill House — Shirley Jackson
20. Brother — David Chariandy
21. The Best Kind of People — Zoe Whittall
22. It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of War and Love — Lynsey Addario ❤️
23. The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye — David Lagercrantz
24. All the Light We Cannot See — Anthony Doerr ❤️
25. Songs for the Cold of Heart — Eric Dupont
26. By Chance Alone — Max Eisen ❤️
27. Life’s too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious — David Dark
28. Agatha Christie — The Mystery of Three Quarters
29. The Travelling Cat Chronicles — Hiro Arikawa
30. Case Histories — Kate Atkinson
31. Gift from the Sea — Anne Morrow Lindbergh
32. Under the Visible Life — Kim Echlin
33. The War of Art — Steven Pressfield
34. A Gentleman in Moscow — Amor Towles
35. The Leopard — Jo Nesbo
36. Gingerbread — Helen Oyeyemi 👎🏼
37. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine — Gail Honeyman ❤️
38. The Moon Before Morning — W.S. Merwin ❤️
39. The Word Is Murder — Anthony Horowitz
40. My Brilliant Friend — Elena Ferrante
41. The Wild Edge of Sorrow — Francis Weller ❤️
42. Warlight — Michael Ondaatje ❤️
43. Flash Count Diary; Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life — Darcey Steinke
44. Natural Causes — Barbara Ehrenreich ❤️
45. Voices in the Air (poems for listeners) — Naomi Shihab Nye ❤️
46. The Blue Between Sky and Water — Susan Abulhawa
47. One Good Turn — Kate Atkinson
48. When Will There Be Good News? — Kate Atkinson
49. Grief is the Thing with Feathers — Max Porter ❤️
50. Bird Therapy — Joe Harkness ❤️
51. Lanny — Max Porter
52. The Tattooist of Auschwitz — Heather Morris
53. The Song of Achilles — Madeline Miller
54. The Turn of the Key — Ruth Ware
55. Deep Diversity (Overcoming Us vs. Them) — Shakil Choudhury ❤️
56. #HashtagRelief — Blossom Thom (poetry) ❤️
57. Crow — Ted Hughes (poetry) ❤️
58. Started Early, Took My Dog — Kate Atkinson
59. Baggage — Wendy Phillips
60. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous — Ocean Vuong ❤️
61. The Impossible Will Take a Little While — Paul Rogat Loeb
62. All the Lives We Never Lived — Anuradha Roy
63. Albatross — Terry Fallis
64. The Overstory — Richard Powers
65. Moon of the Crusted Snow — Waubgeshig Rice
66. Fog — Rana Bose
67. Crow Winter — Karen McBride
68. The Poet X — Elizabeth Acevedo ❤️
69. Create Dangerously — Edwidge Danticat ❤️
70. Crow — Amy Spurway
71. Night — Elie Wiesel ❤️
72. The Crying Book — Heather Christle ❤️
73. The Magic Lamp — Ben Okri
74. Owls and Other Fantasies — Mary Oliver ❤️
75. Aspirations: Voices of the Street 2019 — Megaphone’s annual literary anthology
76. Year of the Monkey — Patti Smith
77. Blue Nights — Joan Didion ❤️
78. Normal People — Sally Rooney ❤️
79. Breakfast at Tiffany’s — Truman Capote
80. Christmas at the Vinyl Cafe — Stuart McLean