Here’s my annual list of the books I’ve read this year. I keep these lists in part because self-guided reading has gaps and in the past, fellow readers have reached out to talk about books both read and overlooked; if you’ve read any of these and want to chat about them, or if there are books you think I should read, please email me! Sometimes I write short notes over on my Goodreads page.

This year I’ve put ** next to my absolute favorites.

Selected 2019 Reading (by genre, then alphabetical by author/editor last name)

Fiction/Novels

• Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman
• Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
• By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño**
• Milkman by Anna Burns
• My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
• All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost by Lan Samantha Chang
• Famous Men Who Never Lived by K Chess
• The Awakening by Kate Chopin**
• Fruit of the Drunken Tree: A Novel by Ingrid Rojas Contreras**
• Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi**
• Bloomland by John Englehardt**
• Sludge Utopia by Catherine Fatima
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson**
• An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
• The Vegetarian by Han Kang
• Goodbye, Vitamin: A Novel by Rachel Khong**
• The Golden State by Lydia Kiesling
• If You Leave Me by Crystal Hana Kim
• At Briarwood School for Girls by Michael Knight
• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee**
• Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner
• Mercury by Margot Livesey
• The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
• Severance by Ling Ma**
• Circe by Madeline Miller
• Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng**
• The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North
• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
• Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse
• Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison**
• Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• What You Don’t Know About Charlie Outlaw by Leah Stewart
• The Third Hotel by Laura van den Berg
• Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson**
• The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch

Nonfiction/Essays

• Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison**
• Welcome Home by Lucia Berlin
• Dead Girls by Alice Bolin
• The Art of Mystery by Maude Casey**
• The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story by Edwidge Danticat
• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
• On the Rez by Ian Frazier
• The Word Pretty by Elisa Gabbert
• Little Labors by Rivka Galchen
• Hunger by Roxane Gay
• Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
• Triggering Towns by Richard Hugo
• The Reckonings by Lacy M. Johnson**
• The Other Side: A Memoir by Lacy M. Johnson**
• Dear Current Occupant: A Memoir by Chelene Knight
• Heavy by Kiese Laymon**
• The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography by Deborah Levy**
• The Hidden Machinery by Margot Livesey
• Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli**
• An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken**
• Bluets by Maggie Nelson
• White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination by Jess Row**
• Against Memoir by Michelle Tea
• Sex Object by Jessica Valenti
• The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays by Esmé Weijun Wang
• Notes from a Feminist Killjoy: Essays on Everyday Life by Erin Wunker

Short Story Collections

• The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018
• Can’t and Won’t by Lydia Davis
• Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans**
• Half an Inch of Water: Stories by Percival Everett**
• Florida by Lauren Groff**
• Sing to It: New Stories by Amy Hempel**
• No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
• The Isle of Youth: Stories by Laura van den Berg

Lit Mags

• American Short Fiction Volume 21 Issue 67
• The Conium Review Vol. 7 
• Paper Darts Vol 8
• Sonora Review 72

Poetry

• When I Grow Up I Want To Be A List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen
• Currents by Bojan Louis
• My Private Property by Mary Ruefle
• The Möbius Strip Club of Grief by Bianca Stone**
• Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
• Arsonist by Joaquin Zihuatanejo

Plays

• How to Defend Yourself by Lily Padilla**
• The White Card: A Play by Claudia Rankine**
• How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel**

Zines/Chapbooks/Visual Art/Graphic Novels

• Americans in Paris 1860-1900 by Kathleen Adler, H. Barbara Weinberg, Erica E. Hirshler
• #NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women by Lisa Charleyboy, Mary Beth Leatherdale
• Fetch: How a Bad Dog Brought Me Home by Nicole J. Georges
• Parting Gifts for Losing Contestants by Jessica Mooney**
• Imagine Wanting Only This by Kristen Radtke**
• Aug 9 – Fog by Kathryn Scanlan