2019 - A Year in Books

Revisiting my blog today, December 31st, 2019, because I was trying to decide where I should write/keep my year in review. Apparently this was the right place, as I see now that I came back here a few times to write yearly reviews even if I haven't posted much since having kids. I don't think I wrote reviews for 2017 and 2018 anywhere because they were such difficult years -- everything was a blur. Well, not 2018 -- that was the year I started waking up. I went back to work in 2017 after two years of mat leave -- part time at my former training job as well as teaching at the U of O. I crashed and burned that fall, had surgery and thought that would fix everything (spoiler: it didn't) and then started therapy in the spring of 2018. I learned SO MUCH in 2018, and can say fairly confidently that I bounced back quickly, even though I learned that healing is not linear. And now this year, well, no wonder I feel like 2019 is the best year I have had in a long time.

I don't think I read any books in 2017. I think I may have started a few books in 2018. And here are the books I read in 2019, in the order that I read them.

I started keeping a journal this year, so that makes yearly reviews much easier!! I was also more diligent about tracking my books read on Goodreads.

JANUARY
Stories of Your Life and Others (Ted Chiang) #ebook #unfinished #fiction (I read the first two short stories only, Babylon and Understand.)
The Mindful Way Through Depression (Williams/Teasdale/Segal/Kabat-Zinn) #ebookandpaper #unfinished #startedin2018 #nonfiction

FEBRUARY
Goodbye, Things (Fumio Sasaki) #audiobook #nonfiction
Code Name Verity (Elizabeth Wein) #ebook #loved #fiction
The Happiness Trap (Russ Harris) #ebook #loved #startedin2018 #nonfiction
Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Madeleine Thien) #paper #unfinished #fiction
Ready for Anything (David Allen) #audiobook #loved #nonfiction
One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way #ebook #loved #nonfiction
Sitting Still Like a Frog (Eline Snel) #loved #nonfiction #paper

MARCH
Say What You Mean (Oren Jay Sofer) #ebookandpaper #nonfiction
The Happiness of Pursuit (Chris Guillebeau) (very meh) #nonfiction #ebook
Getting Things Done, Abridged Audio version #audiobook #loved #nonfiction
Presence: A Guide to Transforming Your Most Challenging Emotions (Ann Weiser Cornell) #ebook #nonfiction

APRIL
Superhuman by Habit (Tynan) #ebook #nonfiction
The Mind-Changing Habit of Journaling (Zoe McKay) #ebook (Started journaling daily after reading this one.) #nonfiction
Fun Home (Alison Bechdel) #graphicnovel #paper #nonfiction

MAY
A Velocity of Being #unfinished because I’m savouring it! #paper #nonfiction
Your Illustrated Guide to Becoming One with the Universe (Yumi Sakugawa) #graphicnovel #paper #nonfiction
Frida Kahlo: A Illustrated Life (Maria Hesse) #graphicnovel #paper #nonfiction
Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos (Lucy Knisley) #graphicnovel #paper #fiction
In the Sounds and Seas (Marnie Galloway) #graphicnovel #paper #fiction - beautiful art but unfortunately not much of a story
Zen Keys (Thich Nhat Hanh) #unfinished #paper #nonfiction

JUNE
Atomic Habits (James Clear) I’m adding this here because, while I didn’t actually read the book, I listened to a long interview with him on The One You Feed #podcast about his book, and then signed up for his newsletter. I actually listened to this podcast episode twice, and didn’t feel the need to read the actual book.
Découvrir la parentalité positive (Mitsiko Miller) #ebookandpaper #nonfiction
No Drama Discipline (Dan Siegel) #ebook #unfinished #nonfiction

JULY
Mindfulness in Plain English #unfinished #ebook #nonfiction
Vivre simplement (Elizabeth Simard) #paper #unfinished #nonfiction
Hold on to Your Kids (Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté) #audiobook #unfinished #nonfiction

AUGUST
Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi) #paper #nonfiction
Waking Up (Sam Harris) #paper #nonfiction
Birth of a Bookworm #unfinished #paper #fiction
Un ange cornu avec des ailes de tôle (Michel Tremblay) #unfinished #paper #fiction - have both the French and the English translation on the go at the same time

SEPTEMBER
Grit (Angela Duckworth) #audiobook #nonfiction
Wherever You Go, There You Are (Jon Kabat-Zinn) #bookclub #paper #nonfiction
*Next Step Dharma online course
*Self-Healers’ Circle online course/book club

OCTOBER
The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Magic (Emily Croy Barker) #paper #fiction

NOVEMBER
Tribe of Mentors (Tim Ferriss) #unfinished #ebook #nonfiction

DECEMBER
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Pema Chodron) #ebook #nonfiction
The Wanderers (Meg Howrey) #paper #fiction
The Knitting Circle Rapist Annihilation Club #bookclub #ebook #fiction

Statistics:

38 books total
26 finished
12 unfinished
5 audiobooks
16 ebooks
17 paper books
3 books I bought two copies of - paper and ebook
10 fiction
28 non-fiction

My favourites from this year:

Say What You Mean is the most life-changing book I read this year.

Other books that had a big impact are The Kaizen Way, Resilient and The Happiness Trap.

I really enjoyed almost all the graphic novels I read and plan to read more again this year.

Some books already on the list for 2020:
Living Nonviolent Communication
Nonviolent Communication at Work
The Wisdom of Anxiety (Sheryl Paul) #bookclub
Heroes in my Head (Judy Kebick) #bookclub
The Handmaid’s Tale #bookclub
The Testaments #bookclub

Some of the unfinished books on my 2019 list I hope to get back to this year:
Vivre simplement
Birth of a Bookworm

Both A Velocity of Being and Tribe of Mentors are books that are better read in little pieces, so while I plan to continue reading them, I may not even finish them in 2020. (And that’s totally fine.)

I bought SO many more books this year than I read. I plan to assemble them on one shelf at home (maybe this coming weekend) and sort through them to decide which ones I want to prioritize.

My goal for this year was to spend more time reading -- and it worked. One of my strategies was to read whatever I felt like, which is why so many books are left unfinished this year. If I didn't feel like reading my current book, instead of turning to IG or FB, I started another book. So this was a successful strategy for reading more... but having so many books on the go at once also meant that I felt a bit confused/overwhelmed at times. I think some of the overwhelm also came from the guilt of abandoning books though. I would set books aside and start others, but still be thinking about the abandoned book and telling myself I "should" get back to it. So if this year, I decide to abandon a book, I need to do it consciously and be confident in my decision. I am allowed to read what I like, when I like. It's better to start something else than to turn to another source of entertainment (social media). A "mindless" read is still a better use of my time than mindless scrolling. I would rather spend my time reading. And better to read whatever I have on hand rather than use the excuse of "I don't have my current read with me". This year, there are books that remained unfinished because they "lived" in my living room bookshelf and I mostly only read them while sitting in my reading chair. Or they lived in my backpack, or my bedroom bookshelf. I read a lot more ebooks than paper books, just because it's so much more convenient for me to read in bed with a backlit e-reader than to turn on a light.

One thing I could do this year is to set some ground rules (that's actually what Z recommended I do when I told her how much I was reading, the online courses I was taking, etc.). I think it's totally fair to start a new book if my current read isn't accessible/available. I also think it’s important to balance “light” reads with heavier ones and to have at least one of those on the go at all times -- and to give myself permission to start one whenever I don’t currently have one started. So, ground rules:

Finish what you started OR make a conscious decision to set it aside for another time.

Avoid reading two similar books at once (e.g. books about mindfulness or meditation).

One online course at a time. I’m going to start by focusing on finishing the Next Step Dharma one. And I’m going to set aside time for it once a week (Friday mornings).

“[...] reading is a joy. It’s a touch of growth, it’s a beacon of inspiration, and it’s source of connection. We are how we spend our time, and we become what we consume. It only makes sense, then, that what we read informs how we see the world.” (from an article on medium.com by Zat Rana)