This is the sixth year that I’ve kept a running list of every book that I’ve completed for the first time and then shared that list here as the first thing I post on either the last day of the old year or the first of the new.
You can see the 2018 list here, the 2017 list here, the 2016 list here, the 2015 list here, and the 2014 list here. As always, I want to thank my friend David Daniel for the inspiration to do this.
I read 33 books in 2019, of various lengths and levels of complexity. This is the lowest number of books since 2016, which upsets me.
This list does not include re-reading familiar favorites that I turn to when I need the reading equivalent of comfort food, although it does include one book, Tam Lin, that I first read long ago.
My Top Four Books of 2019 in order of preference:
Ruiz, Don Miguel. The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom.
Duke, Annie. Thinking in Bets: Making smarter decisions when you don’t have all the facts.
Westover, Tara. Educated: a Memoir.
Sansom, C. J. Tombland: a Shardlake Novel.
The Efficient List:
1. Lu, Marie. War Cross. Finished January 6, 2019.
2. Lu, Marie. Wild Card (War Cross sequel). Finished January 16, 2019.
3. Wells, Martha. All Systems Red: the Murderbot Diaries. Finished January 19, 2019.
4. Schwartz, Samuel I. No One at the Wheel: Driverless Cars and the Road of the Future. Finished January 21, 2019.
5. Wells, Martha. Artificial Condition: The Murderbot Diaries 2. Finished January 22, 2019.
6. Wells, Martha. Rogue Protocol: The Murderbot Diaries 3. Finished January 23, 2019.
7. Wells, Martha. Exit Strategy: The Murderbot Diaries 4. Finished January 24, 2019.
8. Ruiz, Don Miguel. The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom. Finished January 27, 2019.
9. Bujold, Lois McMaster. Knife Children: a story in the world of The Sharing Knife. Finished January 30, 2019.
10. Townsend, Jessica. Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow. Finished February 18, 2019.
11. Lonon, Elly & Joan Reilly. Amongst the Liberal Elite. Finished February 18, 2019.
12. Berger, Jonah. Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior. Finished March 2, 2019.
13. Dean, Pamela. Tam Lin. Finished March 3, 2019.
14. Kreider, Tim. I Wrote This Book Because I Love You. Finished March 27, 2019.
15. Tchaikovsky, Adrian. Children of Time. Finished April 7, 2019.
16. Roush, Wade (editor). MIT Technology Review: Twelve Tomorrows: 2018. Finished May 2, 2019.
17. Stross, Charles. Glasshouse. Finished May 8, 2019.
18. Chiang, Ted. Exhalation: Stories. Finished June 21, 2019.
19. Aaronovitch, Ben. The October Man. Finished July 6, 2019.
20. Huang, S. L. Zero Sum Game. Finished July 16, 2019.
21. Bujold, Lois McMaster. The Orphans of Raspay: A Penric & Desdemona Novella. Started and Finished July 18, 2019.
22. Huang, S.L. Null Set: a Cas Russell Novel. Finished July 29, 2019.
23. Sansom, C. J. Tombland: a Shardlake Novel. Finished August 16, 2019.
24. Duke, Annie. Thinking in Bets: Making smarter decisions when you don’t have all the facts. Finished August 26, 2019.
25. Crouch, Blake. Recursion. Finished September 3, 2019.
26. Isaac, Mike. Super Pumped: the Battle for Uber. Finished September 14, 2019.
27. Harrow, Alix E. The Ten Thousand Doors of January. Finished October 6, 2019.
28. Westover, Tara. Educated: a Memoir. Finished October 18, 2019.
29. Connelly, Michael. The Night Fire: a Renee Ballard and Harry Bosch Novel. Finished October 23, 2019.
30. Brodesser-Akner, Taffy. Fleishman is in Trouble: a Novel. Finished November 9, 2019.
31. Shapiro, James. A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599. Finished November 23, 2019.
32. Wylie, Christopher. Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America. Finished 12/14/19.
33. Archer, Sarah. The Plus One. Finished 12/29/19.
The details:
1. Lu, Marie. War Cross. Finished January 6, 2019.
Terrific cyberpunk YA novel. Ready, Player One with a much better story structure, a young Asian American female protagonist, a great love story, and some really wonderful signature action sequences.
2. Lu, Marie. Wild Card (War Cross sequel). Finished January 16, 2019.
Also terrific sequel (and near as I can tell series finale) to War Cross. This really needs to be a movie or a mini-series. This half is a little heavier on the romance, but it is still chock full of exhilarating action sequences.
3. Wells, Martha. All Systems Red: the Murderbot Diaries. Finished January 19, 2019.
Delightful short SF novel, almost a novella, told from the POV of a half-organic, half-robotic “SecUnit” (security unit) working for a landing party that is exploring a new planet. Murderbot is an interesting character, cranky, shy, deadly. In retrospect, this reminds me of Leckie’s Ancillary series, only more interested in the central character’s interiority than a big space opera plot. (That’s not a ding: I love Leckie’s work.) I’m sufficiently interested in Wells that, well, you’ll see…
4. Schwartz, Samuel I. No One at the Wheel: Driverless Cars and the Road of the Future. Finished January 21, 2019.
Terrifically smart book about the likely impact of self-driving cars on the world from the perspective of an authority on transit—New York’s famous “Gridlock Sam”—rather than a cheerleader for the industry. Schwartz’s perspective is welcome. For example, he talks about how humans historically have had to adapt to cars rather than the other way around.
5. Wells, Martha. Artificial Condition: The Murderbot Diaries 2. Finished January 22, 2019.
6. Wells, Martha. Rogue Protocol: The Murderbot Diaries 3. Started and finished January 23, 2019.
7. Wells, Martha. Exit Strategy: The Murderbot Diaries 4. Started and finished January 24, 2019.
As you might discern by my having inhaled three of these narrative Triscuits in three days, this delightful series didn’t disappoint. At the end, I wished for more Murderbot, even though I suspect its tale is done. I’m certainly interested in reading more books by Martha Wells.
8. Ruiz, Don Miguel. The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom. Started and finished January 27, 2019.
This is one of the top four books of the year, and it’s also one of the best books I’ve ever read… so good that I’ve now given copies to at least three people who, I thought, could benefit by reading it. It’s difficult to describe why this book is so powerful, particularly since the power comes in spite of the quasi mystical, Mexican Toltec shamanistic metaphor that begins the book. For anybody who feels trapped by circumstance and reactivity, this is a powerful help.
9. Bujold, Lois McMaster. Knife Children: a story in the world of The Sharing Knife. Finished February 1, 2019.
A terrific novella in which Bujold, my favorite living science fiction and fantasy author, returns to one of her universes after a long hiatus. If you haven’t read the Sharing Knife series, then this isn’t the place to start. If you have, then don’t miss it.
10. Townsend, Jessica. Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow. Started January; finished February 18, 2019.
I spotted this on the shelf at a bookstore in Sydney on a business trip and picked it up for my son, who loved it. Delightful YA in the vein of Harry Potter, although less scary.
11. Lonon, Elly & Joan Reilly. Amongst the Liberal Elite. Finished February 18, 2019.
I had the good fortune to meet Elly Lonon at a book reading at Powell’s in Portland and to hang out with her afterwards, as we have mutual friends. This graphic novel is a wince-inducing satire both of liberal political correctness and the conservative forces to which it is a response. The two protagonists are so irritating that I had to take a break, later coming back to finish the book after writing this journal entry:
I’ve returned to reading the “Amongst the Liberal Elite” graphic novel, which is an incredibly annoying book. So annoyingly out-there liberal that even Rachel Maddow would go, “whoa there.”
One thing occurred to me, though, is that in its very annoyance the book is stretching the frontiers of the thinkable. This is akin to the Overton Window of Political Possibilities. The window proposes that, “The job of think tanks, Overton proposed, was not directly to advocate particular policies, but to shift the window of possibilities so that previously unthinkable policy ideas – those shocking to the sensibilities of the time – become mainstream and part of the debate. “
The graphic novel seems to be doing similar work.
12. Berger, Jonah. Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior. Finished March 2, 2019.
Berger is a marketing professor at Wharton, and this is his second book after Contagious, which I read back in 2015. As with his previous work, and like the work of behavioral economists like Daniel Kahneman, this is an exploration of how so many human decisions are not nearly as rational as we think they are, and how many of our decisions are driven by social factors. An enjoyable read, although it’s perhaps damning that I couldn’t think of a memorable example from the book without looking at my annotations.
13. Dean, Pamela. Tam Lin. Finished March 3, 2019.
A rare re-read, this is a fantastic YA fantasy book that I first read in graduate school. It tells the story of an undergrad English major at a New England liberal arts college who winds up dating a young man who has a mystical past connected to Shakespeare. It held up, even more than 20 years later.
14. Kreider, Tim. I Wrote This Book Because I Love You. Finished March 27, 2019.
I stumbled across this in my local library, picked it up, began reading, and then startled other patrons when a loud bark of laughter exploded from me within the first pages. Kreider is a hilarious, insightful, gem-cutting humorist. If you like to laugh at human foibles, gently but ruthlessly exposed, then this is the book for you.
15. Tchaikovsky, Adrian. Children of Time. Finished April 7, 2019.
Arachnophobes beware, this hard science fiction story features humanity fleeing a dying Earth in cryogenically frozen ships in search of a new planetary home, only to discover that the planet they want to colonize is already inhabited by gigantic sentient spiders! I couldn’t put it down, but was so freaked out by it that I haven’t read the sequel.
16. Roush, Wade (editor). MIT Technology Review: Twelve Tomorrows: 2018. Finished May 2, 2019.
Anybody interested in the future and how different technology trends we’re facing today might become part of the tapestry of our everyday lived experience tomorrow should read this book, and, in fact, each year’s addition to the series.
17. Stross, Charles. Glasshouse. Finished May 8, 2019.
This is one of those impossible-to-describe science fiction stories where you have to give the author the benefit of the doubt for about 50 pages before it slowly starts to make sense. Philip K. Dick’s work was like this… he chose never to build the bridge between the reader’s world and the world of the book, preferring instead to have you, the reader, sink into the point of view of the story. It’s enjoyable, once you learn to breathe underwater.
18. Chiang, Ted. Exhalation: Stories. Finished June 21, 2019.
Chiang may be the best prose artist in science fiction today, and he creates elaborate but crystal-clear stories that seem magical while being rooted in SF. I’m waiting for his first novel, but if he keeps etching stories like these then I’m content to wait.
19. Aaronovitch, Ben. The October Man. Finished July 6, 2019.
An enjoyable paraquel novella to the author’s “Rivers of London” series featuring a German counterpart to Peter Grant named Tobias Winter. Definitely not the place to start the series, but don’t miss it if you’re a series fan already. (NB: a paraquel is a story that takes place alongside another story.)
20. Huang, S. L. Zero Sum Game. Finished July 16, 2019.
A rollicking thriller with a woman math genius protagonist. Great fun to read, albeit shallow. I came to this because the sequel just came out and I spotted it in Powell’s. The library had the first one… Nice that the two heroes stay buddies without a romantic relationship even though that would have been an easy move. Don’t know if I’ll read the next… maybe when it come to the library…
NOTE: Zero Sum Game was the 20th book I read in 2019, which is a lot less than at this point in 2018 (29), 2017 (25), although more than 2016 (18). I’m also alarmed that all but three of these books are fiction, and that so many of them are so short or juvenile.
21. Bujold, Lois McMaster. The Orphans of Raspay: A Penric & Desdemona Novella. Started and Finished July 18, 2019.
I tried desperately not to read it all in one sitting, but failed. Bite. Chew. Swallow. Gulp. The Penric and Desdemona stories are fantastic. My one complaint about Bujold is my historic one: she just doesn’t write fast enough.
22. Huang, S.L. Null Set: a Cas Russell Novel. Finished July 29, 2019.
Yeah, yeah… I did read the sequel, which just came out and which the library had. Amazeballs. It’s every bit as fast and action packed as the first. Also, like the first, it declines to solve the mystery of Cas Russell’s amnesia, although we do learn more along the way.
23. Sansom, C. J. Tombland: a Shardlake Novel. Finished August 16, 2019.
The seventh and most recent of the fantastic Henrician/Elizabethan Shardlake murder mysteries by Sansom. This one is the best yet, featuring a mystery set amidst an epic popular rebellion in Norwich, England, during the brief rein of Edward VI. The story is a whopping and delicious 800 pages, and there is a 50 page historical essay afterwards that details the author’s research. One of the four best books I’ve read this year.
24. Duke, Annie. Thinking in Bets: Making smarter decisions when you don’t have all the facts. Finished August 26, 2019.
Another one of the top four. Terrific and immediately actionable book about decision making, using poker as a probability assigning lens to increase accuracy. It’s a business/strategy/applied counterpart to one of my all-time favorite books of literary criticism: Gary Saul Morson’s Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time.
25. Crouch, Blake. Recursion. Finished September 3, 2019.
Nifty time travel thriller that’s like an apocalyptic version of the movie Groundhog Day, also similar to the 2014 Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt movie Edge of Tomorrow, and also the 1980s sci fi novel Replay by Ken Grimwood. But just because it has plot antecedents does not diminish my enthusiasm for this book, which I finished on the NYC subway from JFK to my hotel.
26. Isaac, Mike. Super Pumped: the Battle for Uber. Finished September 14, 2019.
A compelling account of the rise and rise and sorta fall of Travis Kalanick by one of The New York Timesreporters who has been covering Uber for years. I have little that’s optimistic to say about Uber, and there was nothing in Isaac’s book to change my mind.
27. Harrow, Alix E. The Ten Thousand Doors of January. Finished October 6, 2019.
A lovely, lyrical fantasy novel in the spirit of Alice in Wonderland, the Wizard of Oz, and the Chronicles of Narnia, all of which deal with young people going to different worlds and then back again. I’m not sure if this book is intended to be YA or if it’s just timeless.
28. Westover, Tara. Educated: a Memoir. Finished October 18, 2019.
One of the top four of the year. Everything you’ve heard about this story is true. It’s hard to find antecedents in which the protagonist’s point of view is so breath-takingly different and yet so compelling. Maybe Huckleberry Finn? Lolita? Although those were both fiction, and Westover’s book is an autobiography. In the opening scenes, you wonder how anybody could ever think herself out of the world view that she has been born into. The rest of the book answers the question.
29. Connelly, Michael. The Night Fire: a Renee Ballard and Harry Bosch Novel. Finished October 23 2019.
It came out October 22. I inhaled it. Connelly’s the absolute master of the police procedural, and his commitment to his protagonists getting older and dealing with changes in their lives makes them compelling for book after book.
30. Brodesser-Akner, Taffy. Fleishman is in Trouble: a Novel. Finished November 9, 2019.
I read this book quickly, luxuriating in having a page turner on a semi-lazy Saturday between busy weeks, but it’s a bit troubling. The book reminded me of Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint as if written by the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and featuring liberal use of Tinder. Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat Pray Love fame said something similar in a too-smug jacket blurb: “the sort of thing that Philip Roth or John Updike might have produced in their prime (except, of course, that the author understands women).” Yes, I suppose the author understands women, but that’s a bit less of a profound statement when written about a novel where the primary protagonist is a man. The author understands women, but I’m not as confident that she understands men. Toby Fleishman, the protagonist, didn’t feel terribly man-like to me… more of a female character trapped in the body of a man, although I suppose that’s as essentialist a statement as “she understands women,” just in a different direction. Towards the end, Libby, the third protagonist, who is really just an omniscient narrator who pops into the story now and again, makes her great claim to insight, which is that as a writer she sees “all sides of the story.” (Libby is a transparent proxy for the author.) While Libby might be able to see all sides, what inhibits the success of the Rashomon-like qualities of this story is that the author gives 85% of the reader’s attention to just one of the three protagonists: Toby Fleishman. By the time we get to see things from the second protagonist’s point of view, it’s really too late, and the story doesn’t give Rachel (#2) enough time for us to empathize with her.
This might not be the case in a movie. There was that clever, soap bubble rom-com “He Said, She Said” (1991) with Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Perkins that started over and switched points of view midway through the movie, but because it was visual it worked a bit better, even if the second version went a bit faster.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the book, and one of the reasons that I powered through it today was that I felt like I’d enjoy it a little less if I didn’t have momentum.
One perhaps-odd gripe: in my mind’s eye, I could only see a young Rob Morrow as Toby Fleishman because his character in Northern Exposure was a relatively young Jewish New York doctor named Joel Fleishman. Brodesser-Akner couldn’t have titled the book, Goldstein is in Trouble? I suppose the literal translation of Fleishman (flesh man) works because Toby is such an off-and-on horn dog in the story, but I’m not sure the metaphorical payoff is worth the Morrow-shaped distraction.
31. Shapiro, James. A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599. Finished November 23, 2019.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about turning a TEDx talk I gave about Shakespeare as a business genius into a book, so I’ve been reengaging with Shakespeare’s works and history. I’ve had Shapiro’s book for a while, but hadn’t dug into it seriously before. It’s a fascinating, thick description of what Shakespeare was doing (what little we know) and what was happening in London during a key year of Shakespeare’s life and career. Inspirational for the book I want to write.
32. Wylie, Christopher. Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America. Finished December 14, 2019.
Fascinating confession and explanation of how social media was used to affect Brexit and the 2016 US presidential election. It’s very current given the disinformation campaign happening about Ukraine. Wylie is an engaging writer and the details he has on what happened are astounding. The title is slightly misleading as just as much is been done to destroy democracy elsewhere in the world then in the United States, but that’s a quibble.
33. Archer, Sarah. The Plus One. Finished December 29, 2019.
Predictable story about an awkward, genius 29-year-old robotics engineer who can’t get a date to her sister’s wedding and so builds herself a boyfriend with whom she then falls in love. In addition to this being a second-rate Netflix rom com trapped in the body of a novel, the sexual politics of this gender-reversed Pygmalion bug me because, in 2019, if it had been a male engineer building a female robot slave in order to grow as a person then right-thinking feminists would have roundly condemned the author… but because it’s a male robot slave and a female Dr. Frankenstein everything is hunky dory. Meh.
I was feeling bad about not having read enough books, and after picking this one up and getting halfway through it I thought I might as well finish it to get to 33 rather than 32, which is a news bulletin from my neuroses.
Leave a Reply