Books I read in 2019 / by ellie berry

 
books007.jpeg
 

In an attempt to recapture my old ferocious reading habits, for 2019 I decided to try and read 52 books. Not a particularly unique number, but the thought of devouring a book a week was just enough bait to coax my old self back to the shelves. I didn’t reach 52, but I did read 40 books, which is a number I’m quite proud to have reached. There were some big books, and some more small books, but that wasn’t the point of this.

During this year my reading has improved in random spirts and sprints. It has also made me think about why I read. At the end of June / beginning of July I re-read all 7 Harry Potter books. Also around then I read some small books by Terry Pratchett. I was doing a lot of travelling at the time, and reading books that were either sentimental or by a favourite author was very relaxing. However, when I finished, I felt guilty writing these titles into my list. Not because I had reread them. When I tried to articulate why I felt this weird guilt, I realised it was because I had enjoyed them so much, that my mind has decided that reading sci-fi or fantasy was “too easy” for me. And when I realised that that was why I was feeling guilty, I almost laughed at myself. I had been putting so much pressure to read outside of my comfort zone, to read more things of “literature”, that I’d almost forgotten why I’d started this reading challenge in the first place: to relearn how to read, and to fall in love with the process of reading again.

And so, without further rambles,

Here are the 40 books I read in 2019:

  1. Our National Parks - John Muir

  2. The City of Brass - S. A. Chakraborty

  3. Steep Trails - John Muir

  4. Eric - Terry Pratchett

  5. A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L’Engle

  6. Kingdom of Copper - S. A. Chakraborty *

  7. The Salt Path - Raynor Winn *

  8. Truckers - Terry Pratchett

  9. Only You Can Save Mankind - Terry Pratchett

  10. Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race - Reni Eddo-lodge

  11. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood *

  12. On Trails - Robert Moor *

  13. Wanderlust - Rebecca Solnit *

  14. Flâneuse: Women Walk the City - Lauren Elkin

  15. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone - J. K. Rowling

  16. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J. K. Rowling

  17. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling

  18. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J. K. Rowling

  19. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J. K. Rowling

  20. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling

  21. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J. K. Rowling

  22. The Hormone Diaries - Hannah Witton

  23. The Long Earth - Stephen Baxter & Terry Pratchett *

  24. Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel *

  25. Motherhood - Sheila Heti

  26. Diggers - Terry Pratchett

  27. The Killing Moon - N. K. Jemisin *

  28. Howl’s Moving Castle - Diana Wynne Jones

  29. House of Many Ways - Dianna Wynne Jones

  30. Wings - Terry Pratchett

  31. The Testaments - Margaret Atwood

  32. We Should All Be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  33. In Praise of Walking - Shane O’Mara

  34. The Shadowed Sun - N. K. Jemisin

  35. The hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien

  36. This is How You Loose the Time War - Amal El-Montar & Max Gladstone

  37. Doom Rolled in Glitter - Leena Norms

  38. No One is Too Small to Make a Difference - Greta Thunberg

  39. The Long War - Stephen Baxter & Terry Pratchett

  40. Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie *

 

Normally I’m quite obsessed with goals, and with achieving them. Which means that right now I’m both happy with the 40 books I read, and happy at the fact that I’m happy with that. Back at the very beginning of October I fell of my bike and really concussed myself, basically writing off two months of the year to sleep and not being able to think or remember. There was a lot of frustration in it - how slow it takes to heal a brain, how all my goals and deadlines were just slipping away. Allowing my healed self to believe that all that time was necessary to recover has taken time, and I think that allowance helped me to appreciate reading 40 books.

If you have any book recommendations for this new year, please let me know!
Also, as a not, just because I read all the above books does not mean that I recommend them all (I have however stared my favourite ones).

Some of the books I’m looking forward to reading this year are:
• The remaining 3 books in The Long Earth series by Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett
• This is not a drill - Extinction Rebellion
• The City We Became - NK Jemisin
• Unfree Speech - Joshua Wong
• Three Years in Hell - Fintan O’Toole
• Recollections of My Non-Existence - Rebecca Solnit
• Our House Is on Fire - Malena and Beata Ernman and Svante and Greta Thunberg
• Lines - Tim Ingold
• The Overstory - Richard Powers

Notes