Books I Read In 2019

We could talk about how much I slacked in the reading department this year, but I'm already wearing the cone of shame. Here's what I did manage to read in 2019. 

The Woman in the Window - A.J Finn
Once I saw a movie was being made with Amy Adams I checked this out from the library. A.J is a tremendous writer and I like how she handled agoraphobia from a doctor's point of view. It looked at it very clinic-y which I appreciated. That's different. The story itself was pretty predictable but I enjoyed reading it. Though afterwards, I read an article about this author, who sounds like a grade A douche by the way, and I'm not sure I would've picked this up had I read that first. B

Milk and Honey - Rumi Kaur
This is a lovely book of poetry that at times is very hard to read. Rumi focuses a lot on sexuality including writing about sexual assault. She had a poem that I related with so much by experience that I cried reading it. I just can't get over how beautiful her writing is. A+

Becoming - Michelle Obama
I loved this. Michelle Obama is such a wonderful woman and I really enjoyed hearing her own POV and learning more about her childhood. She managed to make me feel so many different things along side her in this book. A+

Defending Jacob - William Landay
Since this is getting the TV mini series treatment on a service that I will never buy, I figured I'd read the book instead. I really liked this, it was very engaging and I flew through it. I had a few people tell me it was very disturbing so I had ideas of where the story would go as I was reading, only for it to be nowhere near as bad as I expected. Not a bad thing at all, but I was expecting something darker. A

Men Explain Things To Me - Rebecca Solnit
I picked up a few of Solnit's books of essays at the library one day and they were certainly worth the read. I found this one kind of uncomfortable to read at times with how much it examines rape. (Which needs to be done but doesn't make it any less uncomfortable to me) B

The Mother of All Questions - Rebecca Solnit
This one was my favorite. She covers such a broad scope of feminism in various forms. B+

In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
This book was excruciating. I know it's a classic and you can tell Capote put a lot of love into making this but it seriously made me question my enjoyment of true crime. I think I prefer it in shorter form, like an article or podcast or documentary. True crime books, where complete scenes are re imagined and things that have nothing to do with the crime itself are painstakingly added in is just not my thing. D

The Godfather - Mario Puzo
I went full stan after watching The Godfather so I picked up this book to continue on with that. The movie was very closely adapted, but I liked this book a lot too. Mostly for more insight on characters like Tom Hagen. A

Catch and Kill - Ronan Farrow
The saga of how he got his expose on Harvey Weinstein to go to print was very gripping for the first 300 or so pages, but once it was said and done, a lot of the follow up just wasn't as interesting to read. Farrow is a good author, and I'm glad I read this. B