One of my favorite posts to write last year was Top Ten Books I Read in 2018 (In No Particular Order), and I wanted to write a similar blog for 2019. Although this time, I think I’ll also touch on my reading challenge here rather than breaking it out into a separate post like I did last year.
Reading Challenge 2019
In 2019, I challenged myself to read 75 books. Now, I know that’s a hefty number of books to read over 52 weeks, but some years I read almost 90 books (and yes, that’s counting comic books and short stories), so 75 seemed like a reasonable goal at the start of 2019. I managed to read 57 books.
Goal not achieved, and that’s okay. 2019 was a year of many other achievements, so I think it’s okay that I “slacked-off” on my reading challenge a bit (Jeez, why am I so hard on myself when it comes to failing to achieve arbitrary goals that I set for myself? Guess it’s something to work on). I still averaged more than a book a week on top of maintaining a vigorous writing schedule, traveling, getting married, you know the important stuff.
But let’s break down those 57 books a little bit, shall we?
According to Goodreads, those 57 books contained 12,559 pages, the longest being 661 pages, and the shortest being 21 pages, with an average page length of 228. Brandon Sanderson clearly didn’t release a new Chihuahua killer this year, or else those stats would have been way higher. Let’s break things down further.
1.) Genre
As most of you know by now, I’m a massive nerd. I read predominantly Fantasy, Science Fiction, and things in between or adjacent, and this year was no exception.
Speculative Fiction: 51
Memoir: 3
Science: 1
Historical Fiction: 2
Contemporary Fiction: 1
2.) Language of Origin
I didn’t manage to read anything other than books that originated in English and stayed that way. I didn’t even read any Manga this year, so in that regard, I didn’t achieve my goal of reading more diversely. However, as you’ll learn under #3, I did do a pretty good job reading diversely across other axes.
3.) Author Diversity
Reading a more extensive range of authors has been a goal of mine for a while, especially after I got stuck in a place of primarily reading white, male, American authors. Last year, I did a pretty good job. Let’s see how I did this year, starting with the author’s gender.
Male: 27
Female: 27
Non-Binary: 3
So, I guess I did a better job with the gender balance this year than I did last year. Let’s see how I did reading non-white authors this year.
White American: 37
White Non-American: 11
Arab American: 2
French Vietnamese: 1
Filipino American: 2
Lebanese Canadian: 1
Asian-American: 1
Indian Canadian: 1
Puerto Rican: 1
Nigerian-American: 1
Before doing this tally, I thought I’d done a better job reading non-white writers, but I guess I’ve got room for improvement in that regard. That said, my 2019 reading was far more culturally diverse than previous years’, so I’m not going to beat myself up over these numbers. I’ll just strive to make more room in my reading schedule for more under-represented writers.
The Favorites
Now that I’ve got the numbers out of the way let’s dig into the ten books I enjoyed reading the most this year. Now, to be clear, not all of these books were published in 2019. In fact, most of them weren’t because 2019 was a year of playing catch-up by trying to read books I already had on my shelves.
1.) Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie
(Published Oct 2013 by Orbit)
Consisting of Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and Ancillary Mercy, this multi-award-winning series follows the soldier Breq who is all that remains of the consciousness of the starship Justice of Toren on her quest for revenge against the empire that destroyed her and her crew. I found this series a fascinating work of science fiction that explores (like all the best stories do) what it means to be human, while also being filled with awesome sentient spaceships and snarky space-stations and other stuff that was just plain cool. My favorite aspect of this series was the fact that the dominant culture doesn’t have a concept of gender, which made for an exciting and default-challenging read. I’ll be honest, I don’t usually read much hard sci-fi because I have a hard time latching onto the stories, sometimes. But this series was lush and thought-provoking, and even though it had space battles and what-not, it also had a lot of heart and put a lot of thought not just into the evolution of technology but into the development of society.
2.) Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
(Published Sept 2015 by Tor.com)
Binti is the first of her people to go be accepted into the best university in the galaxy, but her family doesn’t want her to go. Binti goes anyway, leaving behind her family for a world that doesn’t understand or respect her customs, and then she finds herself in the middle of a war. Binti is a fantastic work of Afro-futurism that challenged the default of space being hard, cold, metal, and white, and I want more. Lucky for me, there are two more books in the series. I just have to find time to read them.
3.) Summerlong by Peter S. Beagle
(Published Sept 2016 by Tachyon Publications)
A stunning tale of love, loss, life, and magic, Summerlong tells the story of what happens to a dysfunctional family when their decades-long routine is interrupted by the appearance of a mysterious young woman whose arrival brings about an unseasonable spring amongst other unusual occurrences. I loved this melding of the trials of every-day life and family drama with ancient mythology. I found every word breathtaking, and even though Summerlong is bittersweet in every word, I found it an incredibly satisfying read from the author of the Last Unicorn.
4.) The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty
(Published Nov 2017 by Harper Voyager)
A vivid fantasy with in-depth worldbuilding, flawed characters you can’t help but love, and heart-racing action. I fell head-over-heels for Chakraborty’s tale of Djinn, magic, and political intrigue. I loved everything about this book, from the prose to the dialogue to the characters, to the descriptions of the taste of the food. The City of Brass is not to be missed.
5.) Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
(Published April 2018 by Gallery/Saga Press)
I love language. I love stories where the word choice is just as important as the characters and the plot and the worldbuilding. For me, nobody plays with language in quite the way Catherynne M. Valente does. I would read a cereal box written by her because she would write the most whimsical nutritional facts ever. But Space Opera is so much more than a cereal box. It’s a story of a washed-up pop star’s attempt to save humanity from alien annihilation by competing in an intergalactic song competition a la Eurovision. Space Opera is silly and stupid and heartfelt and vital. The lovechild of Douglas Adams and David Bowie, it was an absolute joy to read this ridiculous book full of glitter and music and coral reefs that are also spaceships. I suspect that I’ll return to Space Opera whenever I feel like the world is getting to be too dark and too serious because sometimes, throwing glitter on a problem really does make it better.
6.) This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
(Published July 2019 by Gallery/Saga Press)
This is another one of those books that I know I’ll read over and over: a perennial comfort read. When I finished reading it, I literally could not put it down. I’d finished it; it was done, but I clutched it to my chest for almost an hour before I was willing to let it go. A spy-vs-spy epistolary, This is How You Lose the Time War is told across time and space through a series of letters between Red and Blue as they try to one-up each other and win the Time War for their own side. It’s captivating and innovative and everything that I wanted it to be and more. And it was the joint effort of two of my all-time favorite writers: Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar.
7.) The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
(Published Sept 2011 by Doubleday)
I can only describe The Night Circus as magical, which feels inadequate given the amount of fantasy I read, but that’s what it is. It’s a dreamlike story about a magical circus that is the secret venue for a battle between rival magicians, but it’s more than that. It’s a story about magic and wonder and dreams in all their forms. It’s vivid and stark and embossed into my mind. It’s the kind of story that leaves a taste in your mouth and lingers in the back of your senses, popping up over and over, no matter how long it’s been since you’ve read it. It’s a book I wish I’d read sooner, but at the same time, I wish I could reread it for the very first time. I think I will always cherish this book and the circus and all its denizens.
8.) The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
(Published April 2013 by Harper)
A work of historical fiction that incorporates the myths about Golems and Jinni’s The Golem and the Jinni is as much a story of the American Dream as it is a tale of magic. I was captivated by this story. It set my heart racing. It brought me to tears. I loved the narrative web that moved through time and space and wove itself tighter and tighter until the entire picture became clear. This story reminded me of Letters from Rivka and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. However, it covers a different era of history, at its heart, The Golem and The Jinni is an immigrant story: the story of finding yourself and your place in a strange new city.
9.) The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
(Published July 2018 by Tor Books)
Imagine that the push to get to the moon came a decade sooner because of a massive meteor strike that threatened to wipe out humanity. Now imagine that the need to preserve the human race outweighed the need to adhere to the 1950s strict gender roles. That’s the Calculating Stars. Mary Robinette Kowal has created a brilliant work of alternate history that weaves rocketry and physics into a story of race and gender politics that does it’s best to acknowledge the fact that history doesn’t just belong to white men. The Calculating Stars is masterful, and it very deservingly won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, among many others. Also, it features a happily married couple as its protagonists, which is super refreshing.
10.) In the Vanishers’ Palace by Aliette de Bodard
(Published Oct 2018 by JABberwocky Literary Agency)
On the surface, In the Vanishers’ Palace is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, gender-flipped and based in Vietnamese culture. But it’s more than that. It transcends simple retelling, transversing into the realm of deconstructing, and reclaiming the narrative. De Bodard very carefully examines the power dynamics inherent in the original tale and addresses them head-on, which makes for a take that is both confronting and refreshing. De Bodard uses lush and scrumptious language, as I’ve come to expect and love.
Alright
There we have it folks, my favorite 2019 reads. Lots of gender politics. Lots of what it means to be human. Lots of pretty words. What did you read last year? What did you love? Please share.
Thank you for reading.
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