When I was in high school, there was a website that was briefly popular called Listography where you would just write public lists of whatever you wanted: Movies you wanted to see, places you wanted to visits, celebrities you had crushes on. I followed a friend who posted lists of all the books she read in a year, and I wanted to do the same. And I kept updating there for a while but eventually just moved it to a Google doc.
I started keeping tracking of my books in 2011, when I was 16. I think I’ve written down every book I’ve read since then, but in reality I’m sure I’ve missed a few. Other than social media, it’s the most consistent record-keeping I’ve done of my brain since I’m never able to keep a diary going to very long. It’s cool to look back on the lists and see different reading phases I went through, like when I got into Westerns at 18 and read a bunch of Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry (current phase is Agatha Christie.)
Or when I was in college and had time to read for fun and for school. Or dated books I would never read now, like Chelsea Handler’s memoir or The Five People You Meet in Heaven. There are authors that repeat over the decade (Toni Morrison, Karen Russell, David Sedaris) or topics I always come back to (Hollywood, food, romance).
There are some things I can notice about myself, like that every year I say I will read more but almost every year I read basically the same amount: 24 books, give or take. It’s a fine amount (for me! I know a lot of people read way more/way less!) but the issue is that I could always read more if I simply looked at screen less. But obviously I am addicted to screen. So as always, I hope to read more books in 2024, and hopefully even reread some books, which I never manage to do (because there are so many books!) (and also screen).
The only flaw in my book-reading record-keeping is that I never thought it important to write down the author’s names and in most cases I didn’t capitalize the titles either. I don’t have the will to go back and add them all, though I did so for this year. Maybe I will do better over the next 12 years.
P.S. Thank you to anyone who read or subscribed to my Substack this year. It’s something I do for fun since I no longer have a full-time writing job (unless…) and appreciate all my friends (and a few strangers) who read it :-)
Read in 2023 (favorites bolded):
N or M? - Agatha Christie
The Body: A Guide for Occupants - Bill Bryson
Earthlings - Sayaka Murata
How far the light reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures - Sabrina Imbler
A spool of blue thread - Anne Tyler
Postern of Fate - Agatha Christie
Spare - Prince Harry (lol)
A Burning - Megha Majumdar
Luster - Raven Leilani
Biography of X - Catherine Lacey
The guest - Emma Cline
13 at dinner - Agatha Christie
Raw Dog - Jamie Loftus
A holiday for murder - Agatha Christie
Happy Place - Emily Henry
I have some questions for you - Rebecca Makkai
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder - David Grann
The Return of the Wolves: An iconic predator's struggle to survive in the West - Eli Francovich
Beware the Woman - Megan Abbott
Glaciers - Alexis M. Smith
Worn Out: How Our Clothes Cover Up Fashion’s Sins Book - Alyssa Hardy
Read in 2022:
Cary Grant: A touch of elegance
Tacky
White Noise
All Adults Here
Answers in the form of questions
Recollections of my nonexistence
How should a person be?
Velvet was the night
A walk in the woods
The viscount who loved me
The third hotel
Love in color
How to weep in public
Milk fed
Book Lovers
The vanishing half
crooked house
Murder on the Orient Express
The school for good mothers
Honey and spice
The echo maker
Either/Or
The Old Place
Dead man's mirror
Interior Chinatown
Strangers To Ourselves
Read in 2021:
Pizza Girl
Evening in paradise
White Negroes
At home
Dry heart
Uncanny valley
The cooking gene
The First Lady of Hollywood
Things to do when you’re goth in the country
Crying in H Mart
Such a fun age
Sleep donation
Real life
No one is talking about this
The turnout
Pop song
Outlawed
Scandals of Classic Hollywood
Carnival of snackery
Persuasion
Read in 2020:
What doesn't kill you makes you blacker
How to do nothing
The memory police
Layoverland
Know my name
Weather
Blues for mr. Charlie
Dominicana
Wow no thank you
Trust exercise
Glitter Up the Dark
Abba Gold
There there
The mothers
Braiding sweetgrass
The Pisces
The secret lives of church ladies
How to write an autobiographical novel
Happiness, as such
Read in 2019:
Devotion
I Might Regret This
Pachinko
Severance
Broad Band
Florida
The Algorithms of oppression
Becoming
The beautiful bureaucrat
Good and mad
Republic of lies
Orange world
The Idiot
The Radium Girls
Trick mirror
Parable of the sower
My sister the serial killer
Convenience store woman
Mostly dead things
Toddler hunting and other stories
Females
I’ll have what she’s having
Little weirds
The plot against America
Read in 2018:
Stories of Your Life and Others
A Room of One’s Own
Sing, unburied, sing
Made for Love
They can't kill us, until they kill us
From Scratch: Inside the Food Network
Ode to Billie Joe
The end of everything
Blood, bones, and butter
Tampa
Tippi
Sex and rage
Action: a book about sex
Too much and not in the mood
Motherhood
Eileen
Literally show me a healthy person
The incendiaries
Calypso
An American Marriage
My year of rest and relaxation
Give me your hand
Night moves
Read in 2017:
Difficult Women
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Mrs. Dalloway
The Sound and the Fury
The Princess Diarist
The Devil Finds Work
The Fire Next Time
Hidden in the Mix: the african american presence in country music
Scratch: writers, money, and the art of making a living
I Brake for Moose
Waiting for Godot
The Sun Also Rises
Handmaid's Tale
Beyond Belief
The Fever
Life's Work: a moral argument for choice
Bream Gives Me Hiccups
On Michael Jackson
Too fat too slutty too loud
Get in trouble
Theft by Finding
Dropped Names
The Tenth of December
The Potlikker Papers
The Customer is Always Wrong
I'm thinking of ending things
We are never meeting in real life
One day we’ll all be dead and none of this will matter
Insomniac City
The mother of all questions
Sweetbitter
Read in 2016:
M Train
Miss New York Has Everything
The House at Sugar Beach
Heartburn
The miniature wife
God help the child
Postcards from the Edge
Girls in Peril
Why not me?
On Beauty
Twilight of the Elites
Nat Turner
Between the world and me
The carter family
Good bones and simple murders
The edible woman
Last things
The Song is You
The First Collection by a Living Female Rock Critic
The Grownup
Dare me
Let's go crazy
Don't let my baby do rodeo
You can't touch my hair
You will Know me
Men explain things to me
Cowboys are my weakness
Racism and Human survival
Read in 2015:
O. Henry Stories 2013
Best American 2013
Jazz
Over Easy
Why we never talk about sugar
Tabloid Dreams
Bear Down, Bear North
St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
NW
The First Bad Man
By Blood
Method 15/33
Autobiography of an ex-colored man
The monster loves his labyrinth
Department of speculation
When women were birds
Hold Still
Cane
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Tropic Death
Coming Home Crazy
Black Notebooks
Sula
White Boy Shuffle
Citizen
Read in 2014:
Johnny Cash: The Life
Death comes for the archbishop
The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao
The good lord bird
Drown
The mambo kings play songs of love
This is how you lose her
Bastard Out of Carolina
The piano lesson
Maus I and II
Trash
Wonder boys
Tar Baby
Rubyfruit Jungle
When you are engulfed in flames
Dolly
The Love Song of Jonny Valentine
Sharp objects
Swamplandia!
Under the big top
The Magician's Land
Just Kids
Yes Please
Cowboys and East Indians
Reservation Blues
Read in 2013:
Their eyes were watching god
Shades of Grey
Freedom
Sula
Unaccustomed earth
1Q84
The magicians
Typical American
Bless me, Ultima
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Fault in Our Stars
A girl's guide to hunting and fishing
The wonder spot
Dad is fat
Lonesome dove
Serena
Gone girl
The bluest eye
The silver star
Telegraph days
Divergent
Insurgent
Bucking the sarge
Someone like you
The body
A little friendly advice
Sorta like a rockstar
Fun home
The magician king
Will Grayson, Will Grayson
Carrie
Code Name Verity
Allegiant
L'etranger
Marcelo in the real world
Books I've read in 2012:
For one more day
Bound for glory
No country for old men
Girl, interrupted
The old man and the sea
Me talk pretty one day
looking for Alaska
a farewell to arms
the adventures of huckleberry finn
closing time
Middlesex
the best of me
gypsy boy
tell me that you love me, Junie Moon
I feel bad about my neck
Lolita
the sound and the fury
Frankenstein
dangerous angels
beloved
the last picture show
naked
Books i've read in 2011:
summer crossing
Fahrenheit 451
the help
perks of being a wallflower
never let me go
in cold blood
Bossypants
true grit
the virgin suicides
dreamcatcher
the hunger games
catching fire
Mockingjay
Bridget jones diary
the glass castle
my horizontal life
half broke horses
the scarlet letter
The five people you meet in heaven
Chelsea Chelsea bang bang
last words
the road
is everyone hanging out without me?
all the pretty horses
naked pictures of famous people