2019 Books in Review

In 2019 I read 54 books. That’s 8,579 pages. For audiobooks, I listened to just under two days of audio. 30% of my reading was graphic novels, of those mostly Star Wars comics from Marvel. Following closely was Kindle books at 28% of my reading. Followed by audiobooks and finally, hardcovers mostly form the library.

Speaking of the library, I saved $557.13 by visiting the library and not buying those books. I was gifted one book and an author reached out and gave me their book as well.

I read almost twice as many books in 2019 as I did in 2018. Most of the books I read this past year were actually published in 2016. My average book length was 209 pages. My average rating for books on GoodReads was 3.7. Overwhelmingly the books I read were written by US authors (37). And although I want to read more books by female authors, the books I read were by men (44 to 10).

My favorite books in 2019 (in the order I read them):

  1. Becoming by Michelle Obama
  2. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
  3. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
  4. Star Wars Vol.1 Skywalker Strikes by Jason Aaron
  5. The Public Library by Robert Dawson
  6. The Little Free Library Book by Margret Aldrich
  7. We are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast by Jonathan Safran Foer
  8. Tales from the Open Road: The Adventures and Misadventures of RV Living by Joe Russo

Most Taught Texts from the Top US Universities

Adams House (Harvard): Library of
Adams House (Harvard): Library of by Paul Lowry

The Open Syllabus Project, is an effort to make the intellectual judgment embedded in syllabi relevant to broader explorations of teaching, publishing, and intellectual history.  It released the top texts taught from the top US universities over the last 15 years and Quartz released an article listing them.  This is exactly the kind of thing that I love.  I love to keep learning and the way that works best for me is reading because I also love that.  So, they only hard part is choosing the right books.  These are definitely some of them.  See the list they released below:

Rank Text Author
1 Republic Plato
2 Leviathan Hobbes, Thomas
3 The Prince Machiavelli, Niccolò
4 The Clash of Civilizations Huntington, Samuel
5 The Elements of Style Strunk, William
6 Ethics Aristotle
7 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn, Thomas
8 Democracy in America Tocqueville, Alexis De
9 The Communist Manifesto Marx, Karl
10 The Politics Aristotle

I would so love all of these books.  I’ve read only a few.  Most if not all of them are available as a penguin classic.  In their little black perfect paperback versions.  I love these.  If only you could buy all of them in one go, with of course an accompanying bookshelf!  Someday, Someday, Maybe.