What I Read on My Vacation(s)

It's been a while since I did a post on what I read on vacation.  Last summer we took a busy sightseeing trip to London instead of our usual beach vacation, so there was not much reading done!  And while we took a (not usual for us) December vacation, it was right at the end of the year, so I ended up working on my post on my Top 10 favorite books of 2019 rather than writing up what I read on that vacation.  But now that I just came back from another vacation during President's week, thought it was time to catch everyone up on my vacation reading!

Not a bad view for reading

Finding Time to Read in a Busy World

I get asked a lot about when I read and how I find the time to read.  The honest answer is that pretty much whenever I have a spare minute, I read!  I read while I eat breakfast; if I can I read for a few minutes after I shower before I get dressed; I read while sitting in the car waiting for my kids to come out of school; I read while my kids do homework; I read before bed - the list never ends. My house is kind of a mess, and any non-critical item on my to-do list tends to languish, because, well, I'd rather read!  Obviously it helps that I'm currently a stay at home mom with older kids, but even when I was a lawyer working full time, or a part-time working mom with little kids, I still always made the time to read when I could because, well, I love to read!  And of course it helps that I'm a pretty fast reader.  But nonetheless, if you're looking to read more, I definitely have some suggestions to help you out!

Anticipated books of 2020

As if I don't already have enough books to read, I always love to look ahead and see what books are coming out that I want to read.  Here are the books I'm most looking forward to set to be published in 2020, at least that I've seen announced so far, organized by currently scheduled publication date.  And there are SO many books to look forward to this year!  Seriously, how am I ever supposed to make any headway on all the already-published books I want to read when people keep writing new ones? 😉  Though I did a pretty good job on getting throgh my list of anticipated books of 2019 - I listed 26 books if I've counted correctly, and read all but one of them!

Jen's Top 10 Books of 2019

I'm very excited to share with you my ten favorite books that I read in 2019!  I read an absolutely insane amount of books in 2019, totally blowing away the record amount of books I read in 2018, so this list really is high quality - and was extremely hard to narrow down!  Just to put things in perspective, while I had only three books over the course of the year that I rated as 5 stars, there were a whopping 19 books which I gave a 4.5 star rating.  So just to narrow that down to 10 books, I had to leave a lot of favorites on the cutting room floor - and that doesn't even begin to cover all the 4 star books I read this year which I would highly recommend as well!

For anyone who isn't already familiar with my lists, I've been creating top 10 lists of books at year's end all the way back to 1999, long before I had a blog, and sharing them with my friends.  These are books I read in a particular year, not necessarily books published that year, though this year I think all but one of the books was in fact published in 2019.

Here's my list for 2019, in alphabetical order by author's last name.

The Testaments - Margaret Atwood
Things You Save in a Fire - Katherine Center
One Night at the Lake - Bethany Chase
The Last Book Party - Karen Dukess
Evvie Drake Starts Over - Linda Holmes
Lilac Girls - Martha Hall Kelly
Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Grammarians - Cathleen Schine
The Lager Queen of Minnesota - J. Ryan Stradal
The Bookish Life of Nina Hill - Abbi Waxman

Read on for more about these books!

Critics' Top Books of 2019

Last year I wrote a post looking at various critics' top 5 or 10 books of 2019.  It was interesting and definitely gave me a few more books to add to my never ending to-read list.  So I thought I'd do it again this year.  So, while you await my picks for my favorite books of 2019 (which I don't create until January though believe me I'm thinking about it all year long), here's a look at what some of the critics have to say about the best books published in 2019.

Top 20 Books of 20 Years - The Best of the Best!

Since I started the blog, I've been periodically looking back at my ten favorite books which I read in each year since I started making top 10 lists.  I finally caught up to the present - and it just so happens that those lists cover 20 years of my reading - my top 10 lists so far stretch from 1999-2018!  So, I thought it would be fun to try to figure out my 20 favorite books of those 20 years of lists!  And yes, it's been a little while since I've posted anything - but part of the reason is that it has taken me a long time to narrow down the selections and then write this long post!

Gothic fiction

With Halloween coming up soon, thought it would be as good a time as any to look at some of my favorite modern Gothic fiction.  To me, Gothic in large part refers to the atmosphere of a book - it's often set at some kind of crumbling mansion, there's generally a hint of the supernatural (anything from implied but not real to actual creepy haunting), and there's often some kind of mystery involving a dead person in the present or past too.

I actually didn't know what the official definition of the genre was so I looked it up - here's what Goodreads had to say:  "Making its debut in the late 18th century, Gothic fiction was a branch of the larger Romantic movement that sought to stimulate strong emotions in the reader - fear and apprehension in this case. Gothic fiction places heavy emphasis on atmosphere, using setting and diction to build suspense and a sense of unease in the reader. Common subject matter includes the supernatural, family curses, mystery, and madness."