The Best Books I Read This Year
Yes, I can pick favorites.
I’ve set a reading goal every year since 2020; during the worst of the pandemic, when I was spending the majority of my time at home and with my extended family, I bought a Kindle Paperwhite for myself and started reading regularly for the first time since before I was in undergrad.
I aim to read 50 books every year. It’s not too many but it’s not too few that it doesn’t feel like an accomplishment. I’ve never actually made it the whole way, but I don’t beat myself up over it. I read almost every day, but I’m not a fan of speedreading or not retaining anything I read because I only care about the number at the end. A book a week, or two if I’m in the right mindset, is good enough for me.
I’m almost there; I’m on number 45, which is the closest I’ve ever gotten. I think it’s mainly due to the fact that I have 90 minutes every night to decompress and relax on the train ride home from work. Since I’m so close, I thought it’d be a good time to gush about the books I really, really liked.
The list isn’t ranked; it’s basically just the books I think are the best out of the ones I read this year. (I was going to stop at ten, but I couldn’t leave some of these out.) Putting them in a precise order would be super hard and way too time consuming.
City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Nixonland by Rick Perlstein
The Women’s Room by Marilyn French
Another Country by James Baldwin
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion by Tracy Daugherty
Permanent Record by Mary H.K. Choi
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert
Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates
Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki (I’m still reading this one, but I’m in awe.)
As a little bit of a bonus, the book that I thought would end up on this list but totally let me down was Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters. The hype for this one was insane, everything I heard about it was like, oh my god, it’s the greatest sapphic romance you’ll ever read… it missed the mark for me. I liked it, but something about it didn’t completely sit right with me.
I’m looking forward to digging into some more big books over the rest of the winter, and to seeing what else I’m in the mood to read as we go into the new year! I should definitely start sharing more bookish things. I’ll warn you in advance though: my taste is not all top-tier.