Below is the list, published to my website & CNN’s homepage annually, of the books that I read in the last year.

Last year I knocked out nineteen books. This year I finished thirty five. That is an improvement. Excitingly, there is a new key at the bottom of the list. Continue to read below.

The List

  1. The Kite Runner*
  2. Between the World and Me*
  3. Catch 22
  4. The Girl in the Spider’s Web
  5. Atomic Habits**
  6. The Book Thief*
  7. The Cartographers**
  8. The Nineties
  9. Rock, Paper, Scissors
  10. Humor, Seriously
  11. The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye
  12. The Visible Man
  13. Making My Pitch
  14. 1Q84
  15. Sharp Objects*
  16. The Big Short**
  17. The 7 & 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
  18. Somthing Wicked This Way Comes
  19. The Girl Who Lived Twice
  20. Modern Romance
  21. Outliers
  22. Good Omens*
  23. Sea of Tranquility**
  24. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
  25. Life, The Universe, and Everything
  26. Klara and the Sun**
  27. I’m Glad My Mom Died
  28. The Red and the Blue
  29. The Once and Future Witches**
  30. A Flicker in the Dark**
  31. Downtown Owl
  32. Hell’s Angels
  33. So Long and Thanks For All the Fish
  34. An American Marriage
  35. Me Talk Pretty One Day*

 

* Indicates the book was gifted or leant to me by a friend/colleague/associate

**Indicates the book was read as a part of a book club

Most Disappointing Series – The Second Half of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Books one through three of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, written by the original author Steig Larsen, ranged from fantastic to great. The next three, written by another guy whose name I’m not going to look up or walk into my living room to check, are less so. They’re by no means bad, or poorly written, or hard to follow; and in fact if you dig “thriller” type books, give them a read. If you’re hoping they’ll capture the intracacies and plot depth that good old Steig did, don’t.

Book That Made Me Saddest – TIE: The Kite Runner / An American Marriage.

Oofa doofa folks, are we ready to feel like shit? These books are very different, one following a kid growing up in Afghanistan during Soviet occupation that delivers gut punch after gut punch, while the others follows a married (ostensibly) couple through some particularly, uh, tumultuous years. I’ll let you determine which of those descriptions belongs to which book. To give abosolutely nothing away, both were fantastic reads and 100% worth reading, but elicited some pretty strong emotions. These emotions include “sad,” “distressed,” “heartbroken,” “empathetic,” “sympathietic,” happy,” and so forth.

My Top Three:

Books I particularly liked, in no particular order.

  1. An American Marriage
  2. Klara and the Sun
  3. Rock, Paper, Scissors