What I Read – 2018 in Review

Happy New Year! I had fun this year ranking some of my favourite reads with my newly begun Karissa Reads Books Literary Awards but I also enjoy taking a look back at my overall reading for 2018.

My reading goal fr 2018 was to read 72 books. I’m pleased to say that I surpassed this goal by reading 78 books. The complete list is below (with links to reviews, where applicable) but first some stats:

• 61 books were fiction, 17 were non-fiction.
• 25 books were written by Canadians. The most well-represented country though was the USa, which came in at 29 books. Third place went to English writers with 14 books. Other countries represented included Ireland, New Zealand, Nigeria, Australia, China, France, Austria, Chile, India, Pakistan, and Iraq.
• 3 books were 500 pages or more.
• 41 books were written by women; 37 books were written by men.
• 6 of the books were re-reads for me.
• I read 7 short story collections
• This year I kept track of where I got my books from. The vast majority of them were thrifted, a few were borrowed. I used the local library a lot more this year and 25 of my reads were library books. 8 of the books were ones I purchased brand new.

Goals for 2019:

I have somewhat ambitiously and nervously set my reading goal for 2019 at 100 books. With two little kids it’s hard to say if this is reasonable or not since their needs are constantly changing, but I’m choosing to dream big!

I aim to put 50 book reviews on the blog this year. My number for 2018 was 28 but I feel pretty confident I can improve.

My To Read list is currently at 245. 27 of these are books I already own so one of my goals is to read as many of those 27 as I can (and hopefully clear off my shelves a bit in doing so). I also want to keep picking away at some of the titles that have been on my To Read list the longest.

Below is my complete What I Read in 2018 list. Happy Reading to all in 2019!

1. 84, Charing Cross Road – Helene Hanff (Penguin Books, 1970)
2. The War that Saved my Life – Kimberly Brubaker Bradley (Penguin Books, 2015)
3. Rules of Civility – Amor Towles (Penguin Books, 2011)
4. Your Heart is the Size of Your Fist – Martina Scholtens (Brindle & Glass, 2017)
5. The Luminaries – Eleanor Catton (McClelland & Stewart, 2013)
6. The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene (Penguin Books, 1979)
7. Purple Hibiscus – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2012)
8. The Painted Girls – Cathy Marie Buchanan (Harper Collins, 2012)
9. The Hut Builder – Laurence Fearnley (Penguin Books, 2010)
10. Night Film – Marisha Pesl (Random House, 2014)
11. Rest, Play, Grow – Deborah MacNamara (Aona Books, 2002)
12. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress – Dai Sijie (Anchor Books, 2002)
13. The Professor and the Madman – Simon Winchester (Harper Perennial, 1999)
14. The Weight of Glory – C.S. Lewis (Harper Collins, 2001)
15. Moonglow – Michael Chabon (Harper Collins, 2016)
16. Indian Horse – Richard Wagamese (Douglas & McIntyre, 2012)
17. The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstern (Doubleday Canada, 2011)
18. And No Birds Sang – Farley Mowat (McClelland & Stewart, 1979)
19. Nine Stories – J.D. Salinger (Bantam Books, 1986)
20. A Mariner’s Guide to Self-Sabotage – Bill Gaston (Douglas & McIntyre, 2017)
21. The Icarus Girl – Helen Oyeyemi (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2005)
22. Our Endless Numbered Days – Claire Fuller (Anansi, 2015)
23. Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains – Yasuko Thanh (Hamish Hamilton, 2016)
24. Funny Once – Antonya Nelson (Bloomsbury, 2014)
25. When I was a Child I Read Books – Marilynne Robinson (Picador, 2012)
26. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher – Hilary Mantel (Harper Collins Publishers, 2014)
27. Brother – David Chariandy (McClelland & Stewart, 2017)
28. Black Swan Green – David Mitchell (Alfred A. Knopf, 2006)
29. The Boat People – Sharon Bala (McClelland & Stewart, 2018)
30. The Redress of Poetry – Seamus Heaney (Faber and Faber, 1995)
31. A Grace Disguised – Jerry Sittser (Zondervan, 2004)
32. Confessions of a Teenage Leper – Ashley Little (Penguin Teen, 2018)
33. And Baby Makes Three – John M. Gottman & Julie Schwartz Gottman (Three Rivers Press, 2007)
34. The Alice Network – Kate Quinn (William Morrow, 2017)
35. Little Fires Everywhere – Celeste Ng (Penguin Press, 2017)
36. Our Animal Hearts – Dania Tomlinson (Anchor Canada, 2018)
37. The Silmarillion – J.R.R. Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977)
38. Warlight – Michael Ondaatje (McClelland & Stewart, 2018)
39. Journey to the River Sea – Eva Ibbotson (MacMillan Children’s Books, 2014)
40. Adjacentland – Rabindranath Maharaj (Buckrider Books, 2018)
41. In The Midst of Winter – Isabel Allende (Atria Paperback, 2017)
42. The Inquisitor’s Tale – Adam Gidwitz (Puffin Books, 2016)
43. Be Frank with Me – Julia Claiborne Johnson (William Morrow, 2016)
44. I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You – David Chariandy (McClelland & Stewart, 2018)
45. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute (Vintage International, 2010)
46. The Girls – Emma Cline (Random House, 2016)
47. There There – Tommy Orange (Random House, 2018)
48. Lila – Marilynne Robinson (Harper Collins, 2014)
49. Home – Marilynne Robinson (Harper Perennial, 2008)
50. The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float – Farley Mowat (McClelland & Stewart, 1974)
51. Elmet – Fiona Mozley (JM Originals, 2017)
52. Just Let Me Look at You – Bill Gaston (Hamish Hamilton, 2018)
53. Anatomy of a Girl Gang – Ashley Little (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2013)
54. An American Marriage – Tayari Jones (Harper Collins, 2018)
55. Dubliners – James Joyce (Penguin Books, 1979)
56. Herzog – Saul Bellow (Penguin Books, 1992)
57. Motherhood – Sheila Heti (Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2018)
58. Washington Black – Esi Edugyan (Patrick Crean Editions, 2018)
59. We Are All Made of Molecules – Susin Nielsen (Tundra Books, 2015)
60. Refuge – Merilyn Simonds (ECW Press, 2018)
61. Our Homesick Songs – Emma Hooper (Hamish Hamilton, 2018)
62. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth (Little, Brown & Company, 1993)
63. An Orchestra of Minorities – Chigozie Obioma (Little, Brown & Company, 2019)
64. The Forgetting Tree – Tatjana Soli (St. Martin’s Press, 2012)
65. Exit West – Mohsin Hamid (Riverhead Books, 2017)
66. This Side of Brightness – Colum McCann (Phoenix House, 1998)
67. The Fellowship of the Ring – J.R.R. Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965)
68. The Two Towers – J.R.R. Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965)
69. The Return of the King – J.R.R. Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965)
70. Kens – Raziel Reid (Penguin Teen, 2018)
71. Just Kids: Illustrated Edition – Patti Smith (Ecco, 2018)
72. Memories of a Catholic Girlhood – Mary McCarthy (Penguin Books, 1964)
73. Look How Happy I’m Making You – Polly Rosenwaike (Doubleday 2019)
74. A Literary Christmas: An Anthology (British Library, 2018)
75. Wait Til You See Me Dance – Deb Olin Unforth (Graywolf Press, 2017)
76. No. 4 Imperial Lane – Jonathan Weisman (Twelve, 2015)
77. The Last Girl – Nadia Murad (Tim Duggan Books, 2017)
78. The Lightkeepers – Abby Geni (Counterpoint, 2016)