2019’s Year in Reading–and Writing

Happy New Year!

I love keeping track of things. Every year I record all the books I read in a giant Excel spreadsheet, but I don’t tally it up until New Year’s Day–and because the spreadsheet is cumulative, I don’t even have a clue what the total might be.

I was pretty sure this past year my numbers would be down, mostly because they took a HUGE leap in 2018, due to a lot of reasons. And I was right: 2019 was much more in line with previous years.

For comparison, the last few years went like this:
2015: 63 total books read, of which 25 were leisure (meaning anything nobody paid me to read/edit/etc);
2016: 107 total, 27 leisure;
2017: 115 total, 23 leisure;
2018: 148 total, 64 leisure.

In 2019, I read 112 total books, of which 26 were leisure. Some of the for-fun books were pretty long, though! Some were rereads (the Dark Tower series). Most were chosen by me but some were for a book group. Here’s the list of them all, in order of reading:
Krakauer, Jon, Into the Wild
Parker, K. J., Savages
Johnson, Kij, The Fox Woman
Towles, Amor, A Gentleman in Moscow
Johnson, Kij, Fudoki
Sigler, Scott, Alive
Patel, Carrie, The Buried Life
Hillesum, Etty, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum
Shields, Jody, The Fig Eater
Mendlesohn, Farah, The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein
Patchett, Ann, Commonwealth
King, Stephen, The Gunslinger (Dark Tower 1)
King, Stephen, The Drawing of the Three (Dark Tower 2)
King, Stephen, The Waste Lands (Dark Tower 3)
Atwood, Margaret, The Handmaid’s Tale
King, Stephen, Wizard and Glass (Dark Tower 4)
King, Stephen, Wolves of the Calla (Dark Tower 5)
King, Stephen, Song of Susannah (Dark Tower 6)
King, Stephen, The Dark Tower (Dark Tower 7)
Stephenson, Neal, Atmosphaera Incognita
Davis, Kathryn, The Thin Place
Benioff, David, City of Thieves
Ellsworth, Spencer, The Great Faerie Strike
Hobb, Robin, Fool’s Assassin
Hobb, Robin, Fool’s Quest
Hobb, Robin, Assassin’s Fate

I also wrote a lot last year. Three or four novels, depending on how you count them: I brought Orcas Investigation out, though I’d done the first draft in 2018. Then I got a four-book deal for my Nightcraft Quartet (yay!) and wrote A Sword in The Sun in a mad rush mid-summer; it was supposed to be a rewrite/expansion, but I hardly used anything of what I’d written years ago…I guess that’s just how it goes sometimes. I drafted Orcas Illusion during NaNoWriMo (it’s not done though, not by a long shot); and then there was a secret book which is secret.

In addition! I published 109 articles on Medium.com, for a total of 131,000 words–which is about another book and a half. There are a few more articles in the pipeline, including one about 2020 writing goals that I submitted to one of Medium’s publications more than a week ago–if they don’t publish or reject it soon, I may just pull it and publish it directly. I mean, timeliness and all.

So I won’t say a whole lot more about this year’s goals and intentions here…because not only have I already written that up, but we’ve just waved goodbye to the last of a series of delightful houseguests/visitors/family/dinner guests/etc, and I’m completely exhausted and brain-dead. But very excited to be in a new year. Despite all my satisfying creative progress, enjoyable books read, and thriving freelance career, 2019 was difficult and taxing on so many levels, and it can just go jump in a lake already. 2020 HAS to be better.

Onward!