What I was reading in 2019

in

January
Crazy Brave, Joy Harjo
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Hank Green

February
The Leopard, Giuseppe Di Lampedusa
A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit
American Gods, Neil Gaiman

March
The Deeper the Water, The Uglier the Fish, Katya Apekina
Brunelleschi’s Dome, Ross King
Severance, Ling Ma
The Painted Word, Tom Wolf

April
Rocket Boys, Homer Hickham

May
Achille’s Song, Madeline Miller
Good Omens, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
Department of Speculation, Jenny Offil
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
Soula, Toni Morrison

June
The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles
There, There, Tommy Orange
The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore, Kim Fu

July
Lost Children Archive, Valeria Luiselli
Summer, Edith Wharton

August
Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney

September
Normal People, Sally Rooney
Cherry, Nico Walker
The Incendiaries, R.O. Kwan
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

October
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
The Good Times are Killing Me, Lynda Barry
Crudo, Olivia Laing

November
Gentrifier, Schlichtman, Patch & Hill
Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado

A man caught my eye as I was racing to finish Joy Harjo’s Crazy Brave on an uptown D train and either said aloud “Isn’t she incredible?” or said it with his eyes and my own widened and I nodded furiously but went right back to reading, desperate to finish the book. A repeat of 2018 and Angela Davis, but maybe a little less sad. This guy didn’t seem to want to talk as much. 2019 was a year of haunting books  – The Deeper the Water, the Uglier the Fish, The Sheltering Sky, Severance, Cherry, Conversations with Friends, Crudo – just real fucking bummers. There’s something in me that recoils from so many of those books, even though I also read most of them so quickly and so hungrily.

And then there were the beautiful-sad-beautiful – Sula and Gilead, and Song of Solomon. The aching sort of books that make you sad but grateful to have spent time with them. (Sad, but not bummers, you know?) Among them too, Lost Children Archive, and There, There. The unexpectedly delightful – Brunelleschi’s Dome, One Hundred Years of Solitude (I had started it once earlier in the year and couldn’t find my way and then all of a sudden it was love. Two women stopped me on two different occasions to tell me how much they loved it too). It was a weird, vaguely haunted year for reading, 2019. Something steeped in sadness about the whole affair. If only I had known what was coming.