I will hit a reading milestone in the next couple of days: fifteen years of keeping track of what I read, each new book that I finish (no re-reads are counted.). I wish I'd started recording my books earlier in my life, just for the pleasure of looking back and remembering, but that would probably be more data than even I would enjoy.
When I began recording my finished books in January 2007, I was entering the most prolific reading years of my life, from 2007-2015. I averaged 136 books per year in those years. In 2016, my reading fell off sharply for reasons I can't quite describe. I became much more addicted to social media and news sites because of the upheaval happening in the United States, and I became more interested in hearing other people's real-life stories, on blogs and Reddit and in comment sections, especially as the stories of women and people of color came much more to the forefront of our public discussions. And my eyesight and my attention span both went to middle-aged hell. Between 2016-2021, I averaged 44 books per year.
Every year I resolve to get my reading numbers back up, and every year I fail for various reasons, but it's okay. I re-read a great deal, and those books don't go onto my list, so I am still reading. It's still a joy, whether I pick up a library book, open a Kindle book on my phone, or pull a comfortable, beat-up oldie from my shelf.
I record and rate my books on GoodReads. The five-star books from the first ten years (2007-2016) of my record-keeping are listed here on my blog: fiction and non-fiction.
Here are the five-star reads from the past five years (2017-2021.)
Fiction:
Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton
News of the World by Paulette Jiles
The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
How To Stop Time by Matt Haig
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
The Tubman Command by Elizabeth Cobbs
The Lost Man by Jane Harper
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
Virgil Wander by Leif Enger
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
The Distant Dead by Heather Young
The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady HEndrix
Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison by Lois Lenski
Envious Casca by Georgette Heyer
The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H.G. Parry
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
V for Victory by Lissa Evans
Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty
The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams
Non-Fiction:
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild
Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson by Jeff Guinn
High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic by Glenn Frankel
What Is The Bible? by Rob Bell
Altamont: The Rolling Stones the Hells Angels and the Inside Story of Rock's Darkest Day by Joel Selvin
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore
If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat by John Ortberg
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed
The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier by Scott Zesch and Grover Gardner
American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst by Jeffery Toobin
Calypso by David Sedaris
Slaves in the Family by Edward Ball
The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventures of Les Miserables by David Bellos
Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again by Rachel Held Evans
Tender At the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl
Stories From Jonestown by Leigh Fondakowski
The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World by A.J. Baime
Once You Go In: A Memoir of Radical Faith by Carly Gelsinger
Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles by Gary Krist
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser
This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing by Jacqueline Winspear
The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock: An Anatomy of the Master of Suspense by Edward White
Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage by Anne Lamott
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May
In the past fifteen years, I have read 1,556 books. And 179 of those were five-star reads, the best and most memorable and most compelling. I always feel excited when a new year approaches and I wonder what wonderful new books will consume me. I can't wait to find them!
