Some Cannibals, a Businessman and a Witch Walk Into a Room, Or: My Year in Books

Last year, in an attempt to do a little digital detox, I made a goal to read a book a month. Unlike previous goals such as “don’t eat cookies literally every day,” reading was easy to stick with—so I’ve kept up the tradition and almost doubled my books read count in 2019. Here’s the list:

Fiction

  • An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Hank Green

  • The Adults, Caroline Hulse

  • Akin, Emma Donoghue

  • An Anonymous Girl, Greer Hendricks

  • The Arrangement, Sarah Dunn

  • The Beekeeper’s Pupil, Sara George

  • Big Little Lies, Liane Moriarty

  • The Book of Essie, Meghan MacLean Weir

  • Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney

  • Doxology, Nell Zink

  • Emergency Contact, Mary H.K. Choi

  • The Farm, Joanne Ramos

  • The Female Persuasion, Meg Wolitzer

  • Fleishman is in Trouble, Taffy Brodessor-Akmer

  • French Exit, Patrick deWitt

  • Give Me Your Hand, Megan Abbott

  • His Favorites, by Kate Walbert

  • I’m Fine and Neither Are You, by Camille Pagan

  • The Intermission, Elyssa Friedland

  • The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa

  • Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Winifred Watson

  • The Most Fun We Ever Had, Claire Lombardo

  • My Ex-Life, Stephen McCauley

  • My Sister the Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite

  • Necessary People, Anna Pitoniak

  • The Newlyweds, Nell Freudenberger

  • Nine Perfect Strangers, Liane Moriarty

  • Normal People, Sally Rooney

  • Odd One Out, Nic Stone

  • The Power, Naomi Alderman

  • Queenie, Candice Carty-Williams

  • Room, Emma Donoghue

  • Stay Up with Hugo Best, Erin Somers

  • Things You Save in a Fire, Katherine Center

  • Trust Exercise, Susan Choi

  • Vacuum in the Dark, Jen Beagin

  • Very Nice, Marcy Dermansky

  • The Water Cure, Sophie Mackintosh

  • We Cast a Shadow, Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Nonfiction

  • Erosion: Essays of Undoing, Terry Tempest Williams

  • Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters, Richard P. Rumelt

  • The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride, Daniel James Brown

  • Nicholas and Alexandra, Robert K. Massie

  • Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities, Alexandra Robbins

  • Relentless Forward Progress: A Guide to Running Ultramarathons, Bryan Powell

  • The Rise of the Ultra Runners: A Journey to the Edge of Human Endurance, by Adharanand Finn

  • Strong: A Confidence Journal for Runners and All Brave Women, Kara Goucher

  • Three Women, Lisa Taddeo

  • Wolfpack: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game, Abby Wambach

Memoir

  • AWOL on the Appalachian Trail, David Miller

  • Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life, Ali Wong

  • Everything’s Trash But It’s Okay, Phoebe Robinson

  • Fraud: Essays, David Rakoff

  • The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls

  • Initiated: Memoir of a Witch, Amanda Yates Garcia

  • No One Tells You This, by Glynnis MacNicol

  • The Push: A Climber’s Journey of Endurance, Risk, and Going Beyond Limits, Tommy Caldwell

  • Scrappy Little Nobody, Anna Kendrick

  • Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike, Phil Knight

  • Together: A Memoir of a Marriage and a Medical Mishap, Judy Goldman

  • Unwifeable: A Memoir, Mandy Stadtmiller

  • We Are Never Meeting In Real Life, Samantha Irby

Some common themes and hot takes:

  • Once again, really just a lot of memoir. Can’t get enough!

  • I thought a lot of the “best of 2019” books like Doxology, The Water Cure, The Female Persuasion, Normal People and, most notably, Trust Exercise were just so-so. There were exceptions, like The Farm and We Cast a Shadow, but my key takeaway is not to buy the hype.

  • Is it just me, or are books featuring open marriages, teacher-student affairs or women who have a lot of casual sex to mask their pain and/or loneliness getting a little long in the tooth? Between the nonfictional Three Women and the memoir Unwifeable to all the novels I read featuring one or more of these, it just became sort of a downer. And while Three Women and Unwifeable get a pass because, you know, real life, I’m just bored with all of these stories in fiction since they so rarely have anything new or particularly poignant to say.

  • I am officially too old for YA. I read two young adult novels—Emergency Contact and Odd One Out—and suffered through both.

So, of the 60 books I read in 2019, which are get the metaphorical Hannah Book Club seal?

The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride, Daniel James Brown

I am not an audiobook or podcast person—I hate listening to talking, probably because I would generally prefer to be the one speaking. But when my husband and I drove to Austin, Texas last February, we needed some shared entertainment since our musical tastes are too at-odds to withstand a 12-hour car ride. Friends had recommended this book. Since it was exactly 12 hours, so we gave it a shot, then spent the next few months talking about the Donner Party and only the Donner Party at dinner, drinks, parties and weddings, which I’m sure has done great things for our social standing.

I’ll warn you, it starts off slow as Brown gives an abundance of backstory and painstakingly sets the scene. (If I had been reading the book, it’s like I’d have skimmed the first bit of it, but that’s a little more difficult to pull off with an audiobook.) Just as we were beginning to wonder out loud when people were going to start eating each other, things got good. I learned from this book—not just about the Donner Party, but about snow blindness, hypothermia and the larger historical context of the movement West. This book is harrowing but it’s absolutely fascinating.

Room, Emma Donoghue

I devoured this book, starting it one evening and finishing it the next morning. Then I watched the movie (which starts the amazing Brie Larson and is very well done). Similar to The Indifferent Stars Above, it’s the type of book that just sticks in your head—and as a work of fiction it’s a tremendous feat. I also read Emma Donoghue’s newest work, Akin, which was very, very good and completely different from Room in both tone and premise (though both books do feature an adult and child essentially stuck with each other). Mad props to this women for being able to write so expertly from the point-of-view of a five-year-old boy and an 80-year-old man.

Initiated: Memoir of a Witch, Amanda Yates Garcia

Most of my books come from the library, but when it was the week of Halloween and I saw this on display at my local bookshop, I had to snag it. This was an impulse buy without regret. Written by a professional witch (it’s a thing!), the book is personal, political and mythological all at once. Even if you, like me, have no experience with spell casting, this book is a magical feminist manifesto.

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike, Phil Knight

And now for something completely different—a business memoir! By a MAN! Hear me out, though. Shoe Dog is a truly fascinating read, because the Nike we know today is certainly not the Nike of the 60s. It is absolutely wild to read how the company was started, with an origin story that seems completely impossible in today’s era. If you’re interested in sports, business or history, this is a great read, and if you like all three, even better.

The Power, Naomi Alderman

The one-sentence pitch I served up a co-worker for this book: “The Handmaid’s Tale, but opposite.” I don’t know about you, but it’s 2019, and I am here for men’s subjugation. (At least in fiction, but think it could be worth a shot IRL…) The comparisons to The Handmaid’s Tale are unsurprising, given the author’s relationship with Margaret Atwood. This book-within-a-book follows multiple characters’ stories, which I almost always enjoy as it keeps things feeling fresh. While the premise is interesting enough on its own, I think it’s the execution and style that made this book such an entertaining and powerful (seewhatididthere) read.

Here’s to a new year and new books! If you have recommendations—particularly for memoir—send ‘em my way.