Past editions of this list: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008. This list is also available in pictorial format at Pinterest.
It was a very good year for reading here! Fifty-two books finished. I stop reading books without guilt; so you can also assume I also didn’t finish a dozen or so titles, and it probably wasn’t any fault of theirs. I have continued to enjoy audio books through Libby and Cloud Library. Reading (by ear and by eye) has improved my daily early morning walk, and given me some mental space to roam beyond my house’s four walls. This year I read horror in October, and non-fiction in November, as a #bookstagram thing.
Notes: Just because I read a book and listed it here doesn’t mean I liked it or would recommend it. By my count (corrections welcome), 27/52 books listed are by female or non-binary authors this year. 42/52 are novels (including science fiction, fantasy, historical), 2 are short story collections, 4 are memoirs. Some might be classified as YA, but that’s not something I always notice.
These are numbered in more-or-less chronological order (sometimes I read more than one book at a time), from January to December.
1. Mikel Jollett, Hollywood Park
2. David Mitchell, Utopia Avenue
3. Marisha Pessl, Neverworld Wake
4. Emma Donoghue, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits
5. Esy Edugyan, Washington Black
6. John Darnielle, Universal Harvester
7. Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic
8. Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel
9. Max Barry, Lexicon
10. Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
11. Max Porter, Lanny
12. Kira Jane Buxton, Hollow Kingdom
13. Adam O’Fallon Price, The Hotel Neversink
14. Dexter Palmer, Version Control
15. John Wyndham, Chocky
16. Carol Shields, Unless
17. Juliet Grames, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Silvia Fortuna
18. Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom
19. Sylvain Neuvel, The Test
20. Sarah Valentine, When I Was White
21. Bernardine Evaristo, Girl Woman Other
22. M. R. Carey, The Book of Koli
23. Jeff Vandermeer, Hummingbird Butterfly
24. Sadaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman
25. Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Plot
26. Kaitlyn Greenidge, Libertie
27. Brad Ricca, Mrs. Sherlock Holmes
28. Kirsty Logan, The Grace Keepers
29. Bob Proehl, A Hundred Thousand Worlds
30. Kate Atkinson, Transcription
31. Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James, The Man from the Train
32. N. K. Jemisin, The City We Became
33. Jesse Ball, The Divers Game
34. Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
35. Theodora Goss, The Thorn and the Blossom
36. Nell Zink, Doxology
37. Josh Malerman, Unbury Carol
38. Jonathan Lethem, The Arrest
39. Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
40. Emma Donoghue, Frog Music
41. C. J. Tudor, The Chalk Man
42. Josh Malerman, Black Mad Wheel
43. Alex North, The Shadows
44. Alexandra Fuller, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness
45. Terry Miles, Rabbits
46. Jill Ciment, Act of God
47. Mark Salzman, True Notebooks
48. Atul Gawande, Better
49. Alex Michalides, The Silent Patient
50. Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half
51. Robert Kolker, Hidden Valley Road
52. Julia Alvarez, Afterlife
Pennamite 