Here is my annual list of the books I read this year. My goal was 50 and I read 64 (plus one I decided to not finish, one re-read, and one I will finish in 2021). Four and Five star ratings are highly recommended. Two reading goals this year were to read more female authors and to focus on books that fit my Reading Around the World goal.
January
5 stars A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World by C.A. Fletcher
5 stars Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger
3 stars People Can’t Drive You Crazy if You Don’t Give Them the Keys by Mike Bechtle
4 stars Sword of Kings by Bernard Cornwell
5 stars The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in between by Hisham Matar
5 stars Ali and Nino by Kurban Said
February
4 stars An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew by Annejet van der Zijl
5 stars The Broken Circle: A Memoir of Escaping Afghanistan by Enjeela Ahmadi-Miller
4 stars Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World by Michael Pollen
5 stars The Minuteman by Greg Donahue
5 stars Malcolm and Me by Ishmael Reed
5 stars The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
3 stars Beyond the Shadow of Night by Ray Kingfisher
4 stars I Was Anastasia: A Novel by Ariel Lawhon
5 stars The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
March
5 stars Born a Crime: Stories of a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
5 stars The Warsaw Protocol by Steve Berry
4 stars Blood Territory: The Death of Jimmy O’Connell by Mark Whittaker
3 stars Go: A Coming of Age Novel by Kazuki Kaneshiro
5 stars American Radical: Inside the World of an Undercover Muslim FBI Agent by Tamer Elnoury
4 stars The Hangman’s Daughter by Oliver Potzsch
3 stars When We Believed in Mermaids by Barbara O’Neal
3 stars Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations in Life with John F. Kennedy by Jacqueline Kennedy
4 stars Jane Austen’s Emma (Audible Original) by Anna Lea
5 stars Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield
April
3 stars The Future of Feeling: Building Empathy in a Tech-Obsessed World by Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips
(Did Not Finish) Appalachian Reckoning; A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy by Anthony
5 stars An Ordinary Man by Paul Rusesabagina
1 star Goodbye Paris, Shalom Tel Aviv by Marco Koskas
4 stars Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzo
May
5 stars The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
5 stars The Golden Orchard by Flora Ahn
4 stars The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
5 stars The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict
5 stars The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson
5 stars A Column of Fire by Ken Follett
5 stars Where the Lost Wander by Amy Harmon
4 stars The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd
5 stars White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Tobin DiAngelo
5 stars All This I Will Give To You by Dolores Redondo
July
4 stars The Giver of Stars by JoJo Moyes
5 stars A Drop of Midnight: A Memoir by Jason Diakite
4 stars Talking to Strangers by a Malcolm Gladwell
4 stars The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
5 stars The House of Long Ago by Steve Berry
August
5 stars Trust Your Animal Instincts by Tabitha A. Scott
5 stars In Her Footsteps by Lonely Planet
5 stars How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps by Andrew Rowe
5 stars Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson (re-read for 3rd time)
September
4 stars How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
3 stars The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
5 stars The Dark Heart: A True Story of Greed, Murder, and an Unlikely Investigator by Joakim Palmkvist
3 stars King of Sting: The Story of Australian Conman Peter Foster by Justin Armsden
4 stars This Life or the Next: A Novel by Demian Vitanza
5 stars The Passion According to Carmela by Marcos Aguinis
1 Star Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov
October
5 stars Thicker than Water by Tyler Shultz
5 stars The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Segovia
5 stars Plan for the Worst (A St Mary’s Chronicle) by Jodi Taylor
November
5 stars The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See
3 stars Phreaks (Audible Originals)
4 stars The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer
4 stars The Woman on the Orient Express by Lindsay Jayne Ashford
December
4 stars Water Music by T.C. Boyle
(started) A Promised Land by Barack Obama
4 stars The Blue by Nancy Bilyeau
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