My Year in Reading—2019

Janet Frishberg
2 min readFeb 4, 2020

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The books I read + loved in 2019.

Note: Books listed are not stack-ranked within their categories.

Top five!

  • The Folded Clock…Heidi Julavits
  • Trick Mirror…Jia Tolentino
  • How to Do Nothing…Jenny Odell
  • A Place for Us…Fatima Farheen Mirza
  • Trip…Tao Lin

Honorable Mentions

  • White Fragility…Robin DiAngelo
  • The Recovering…Leslie Jamison
  • Normal People…Sally Rooney
  • The Moon is Almost Full…Chana Bloch

Books You Could Gift to Almost Anyone! They Are So Good and Versatile!

  • How to Change Your Mind…Michael Pollan
  • Good Talk…Mira Jacob
  • Why We Sleep…Matthew Walker
  • Am I Overthinking This?…Michelle Rial**

In 2019 I Remembered That I Fucking Love Novels!

  • There There…Tommy Orange
  • Parable of the Sower…Octavia Butler
  • Little Fires Everywhere…Celeste Ng
  • Conversations with Friends…Sally Rooney
  • Juliet the Maniac…Juliet Escoria
  • LaRose…Louise Erdrich
  • Homecoming…Marilynne Robinson
  • The Female Persuasion…Meg Wolitzer
  • Paper is White…Hilary Zaid**
  • Marlena…Julie Buntin

Always Wanting More Nonfiction by Women

  • Slouching Towards Bethlehem…Joan Didion
  • The Reckonings…Lacy M. Johnson
  • Three Women…Lisa Taddeo
  • All of Me…Dani Burlison (editor)**

Thank G-d for Poetry Though

  • Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude…Ross Gay
  • Tradition…Jericho Brown
  • My Private Property…Mary Ruefle
  • Child of the Moon…Jessica Semaan**

Teacher Books

  • Fellowship of the River…Joseph Tafur
  • Becoming Like God…Michael Berg
  • Everyday Holiness…Alan Morinis
  • Rest…Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
  • You Have the Right to Remain Fat…Virgie Tovar
  • The Spiral Dance…Starhawk
  • Where Two Worlds Meet…Janet Nohavec
  • Keep Going…Austin Kleon
  • Making Art During Fascism…Beth Pickens
  • Negroland…Margo Jefferson
  • Pleasure Activism…adrienne maree brown
  • The Power of Habit…Charles Duhigg
  • How to not always be working…Marlee Grace
  • When I say no, I feel guilty…Manuel J. Smith
  • Let Your Life Speak…Parker J. Palmer

**indicates a book where I know the writer off the page ❤

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