Ah! A new year, a fresh start! I love thinking about what books I will read in this new year! Last year I made two lists here, one was 2019 new releases I had hoped to read, the other was books published before the new year. My new release list had 50 titles! And the older list had 30. Pretty unrealistic given I have other books that catch my attention all year long, not to mention book club selections.
I took a look this morning of what I read from each of these lists. Of the 50 on the new release list I read or at least started only 17 of them. Of those, there were 10 that I either finished but didn’t care for or didn’t finish at all. Not really great numbers overall.
On the list of 30 of “older” titles, I read or started 10 of them. Of those there were 4 I didn’t care for or didn’t finish. There are still 5 on that list that I intend to read, in fact some you will find below. But several of the 6 I liked wound up as favorites for the year.
It is funny to me that these numbers are so low because I read a lot! I read 91 books in 2019! Clearly there was a disconnect in my planning lists.
I decided to take a new approach for 2020. I know there are going to be books I add to my list all year long. I am very easily distracted my shiny squirrels. And all in all, my TBR list is ginormous! But I am a girl that likes a plan. I decided to make a list of 24 books – so 2 a month roughly, that I plan to read. I have only 1/4 as 2020 new releases, 1/4 as 2019 releases and the remaining 50% are 2018 or older. A few of those I wanted to read last year or I briefly started and need to finish. I think I have included a good variety to include different genres. I will always have some of the dark psychological thrillers/domestic suspense – that is my jam/guilty pleasure. But I have some non fiction too that will stretch my reading behavior bit. I have my eyes on other books as well, but I feel ready to commit to these 24 titles.
Without further babbling, here is my condensed 2020 To Read list. I can’t wait to see if I stay on track and have a better completion rate this year. I am hopeful! I put a good deal of thought into it, so I think I will be happier with these books than this past year’s list.
24 Books I Plan To Read in 2020
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith – 2009
The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett – 2010
November 9 – Colleen Hoover – 2015
A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara – 2015
When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalanithi – 2016
The Fact of a Body – Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich – 2017
The Heart’s Invisible Furies – John Boyne – 2017
Final Girls – Riley Sager – 2017
What Unites Us– Dan Rather & Elliott Kirschner – 2017
The Astonishing Color of After – Emily X.R. Pan – 2018
The Silence of the Girls – Pat Barker – 2018
The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell – Robert Dugoni – 2018
The Stationery Shop – Marjan Kamali – 2019 – I’ve been carrying this around for a week but haven’t started it yet. It will likely be the first book I read for 2020.
The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 – Garrett M. Graff – 2019 – probably on audible
We Are All Good People Here – Susan Rebecca White – 2019
Good Girl, Bad Girl – Michael Robotham – 2019
This Tender Land – William Kent Krueger – 2019
When We Believed in Mermaids – Barbara O’Neil – 2019
American Dirt – Jeanine Cummins – January 2020
The Sun Down Motel – Simone St. James – February 2020
The Glass Hotel – Emily St. John Mandel – March 2020
Eight Perfect Murders – Peter Swanson – March 2020
The Book of Longings – Sue Monk Kidd – April 2020
The Lies That Bind – Emily Giffin – June 2020
Let’s see how I do! What books are you planning on reading in this new year?
