The beginning of a new year means a quick look back first at last year’s reading in review. (Some people put these lists out at the end of the year… I’m still adding books to the list until the very end, so New Year’s Day it is!) I’ve posted a few compendiums (compendia?) through the year and highlighted some favorites as I went, so I’ll just do a brief wrap-up here.

My 2019 reading is all logged over on Goodreads (as is everything I’ve read since 2007!). Somehow I got through 82 books in 2019 - the most I’ve ever read in a year. 33 of those were fiction… which left a lot of non-fiction, mostly theology and history. I read 23 by female authors this year, which is more than previous years, though not quite as many as I had hoped to get to.

Favorite fiction of the year:

• Virgil Wander by Leif Enger
• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
• Wanderers by Chuck Wendig
• Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin

Favorite non-fiction of the year:

• A Song for Nagasaki by Paul Glynn
• In The Shelter: Finding a Home in the World by Padraig O Tuama
• Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America by Chris Arnade
• What Is A Girl Worth? by Rachael Denhollander
• God in the Rainforest: A Tale of Martyrdom and Redemption in Amazonian Ecuador by Kathryn T. Long
• Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle’s Vision for Men and Women in Christ by Cynthia Long Westfall 
• Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir by Stanley Hauerwas

For 2020 I’d really like to find a little more fiction that engages me. I’ve picked up several novels this year only to have them completely fail to capture my interest enough to go on with them. I have a plenty big pile of unread books next to my bed and on my Kindle to work through.

Alternately, I could probably spend the whole year just reading Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest… and chase it with something really long from N. T. Wright. 

Here’s to another year of reading!