What I read in 2019: Books

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2019 was quite the year. Like last year, I made a concerted effort to keep track of what books I read, documenting them in a thread on Twitter. I found it was a good way to keep me on track with my goal, and to generally promote books that I finished and enjoyed.

I set a goal for myself of 52 books (one a week), and I didn’t hit it. Nor did I come anywhere close to what I hit in 2018 (74 books). There are a lot of reasons for this, mainly that I picked up a lot, tossed a bunch aside, and had a bunch of other distractions over the course of the year: readjusting to freelancing, a new baby, a book, and so forth.

I read a lot that I really enjoyed, a bunch that I might not have otherwise picked up, and a bunch that I didn’t like all that much. That said I’m going into 2020 with a solid list of books that I’ve half-finished, and hopefully, I’ll get through that backlog before too much longer. I read a bit more history than I have in recent years, and that’s something I want to do more of this year.

Here’s the complete list of books that I read this year (reviews are linked where applicable):

  1. Outside the Gates by Molly Gloss

  2. Severance by Ling Ma

  3. The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi

  4. The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang

  5. Vigilance by Robert J. Bennett

  6. Legion vs. Phalanx: The Epic Struggle for Infantry Supremacy in the Ancient World by Myke Cole

  7. Golden State by Ben H. Winters

  8. Famous Men Who Never Lived by K. Chess

  9. Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson & The Making of Middle-earth by Ian Nathan

  10. The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Millicent Patrick by Mallory O’Meara

  11. The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

  12. Tiamat’s Wrath by James S.A. Corey

  13. Every Tool’s A Hammer: Life is What You Make It by Adam Savage

  14. The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

  15. A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

  16. Waste Tide by Chen Quifan

  17. Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse

  18. Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear

  19. Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

  20. The Lesson by Cadwell Turnbull

  21. The Descent of Monsters by JY Yang

  22. Alphabet Squadron by Alexander Freed

  23. Finder by Suzanne Palmer

  24. Ascent to Godhood by JY Yang

  25. The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday by Saad Z. Hossain

  26. The Bayern Agenda by Dan Moren

  27. Becoming Superman: My Journey from Poverty to Hollywood by J. Michael Straczynski

  28. The Moon by Oliver Morton

  29. Miles Morale: Straight out of Brooklyn by Saladin Ahmed

  30. The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson

  31. Rule of Capture by Christopher Brown

  32. The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

  33. The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz

  34. Watchmen by Alan Moore and David Gibbons

  35. Star Wars: Resistance Reborn by Rebecca Roanhorse

  36. The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman

  37. These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore

  38. Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  39. The Art and Making of The Expanse

  40. Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesk

  41. The Magicians: Alice’s Story by Lev Grossman / Lilah Sturges / Pius Bak

  42. The Killing Light by Myke Cole