I didn’t do a Goodreads challenge this year. I didn’t even use Goodreads (looking up one-star reviews of books notwithstanding), but I was keeping track of my reading, and as the the year went on, I could tell something was amiss.

I’ve never cracked 100 books in a year, but I usually get close. By Novellas in November time, I start doing calculations, and look for super-short novels to speed things along. This year, I was barely past 50 books read on November 1. No amount of novellas was going to get me out of this one.

It took an embarrassingly long time for me to figure out what was going on. Late last year, I embarked on what was supposed to be an extended social media break, and treated myself to some newspaper subscriptions to keep me informed about the world. I got the local paper Monday-Saturday and the Globe and Mail Friday and Saturday. I got back on social sooner than expected, but kept getting the papers, and added the Sunday New York Times to the mix.

I can cruise through the local paper in the 10 minutes it takes to eat breakfast, but the others are consumed on the weekend, and involve longer articles, crosswords, and of course, the NYT Book Review. I’m probably spending a good 2-3 hours on these each weekend, which would go pretty far towards explaining why I “only” read 64 books in 2019.

And I’m conflicted! I do love the routine of reading the paper. It seems like a good, important thing to support journalism. But, I’m paying nearly $100/month for the privilege. And neither paper is perfect – The Edmonton Journal is super conservative, and not very high quality. The Globe is hit and miss – some weekend issues have great long articles, some I can flip through in a few minutes. And the (failing?) New York Times, while the meatiest and highest quality overall, has many issues, from book reviews that read like blog posts (no offence to bloggers but honestly) to inexcusably lazy reporting (how excited was I to see a Canadian story on the front page? How disappointing to see that it was full of stereotypes?)

Here’s my full list and a few stats. * means it was really good. I’m still reading the papers for now. I even sprung for the NYT crosswords app. But something may have to give!

1. The Tiger Flu by Larrisa Lai
2. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
3. The Coming of Winter by David Adams Richards
4. My (Not So) Perfect Life by Sophie Kinsella
5. What If This Were Enough? by Heather Havrilesky
6. The Collected Short Stories of Jean Rhys
7. The Child Finder by Renee Denfield
8. Educated by Tara Westover
9. The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova
10. Cunt by Inga Muscio
11. The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon*
12. The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg
13. Schadenfreude, a Love Story by Rebecca Shuman
14. The Sweet Girl by Annabel Lyon
15. Hungover by Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall*
16. How to Disappear by Akiko Busch
17. Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergy Dyanchenko, translated by Julia Meitov Hersey
18. The Little Friend by Donna Tartt*
19. Bad Blood by John Carryrou
20. Love Me Back by Merritt Tierce
21. Birthday Girl by Penelope Douglas
22. The Order of the Day by Éric Vuillard, translated by Mark Polizzotti
23. Love in the New Millenium by Can Xue
24. The Rest is Silence by Scott Fotheringham
25. Mouthful of Birds by Samata Schweblin
26. Smut by Alan Bennett
27. Transparent City by Ondjaki, translated by Stephen Henighan
28. Bina by Anakana Schofield
29. Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson
30. Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely by Andrew S. Curran
31. Zucked by Roger McNamee
32. Winter Journal by Paul Auster*
33. How to Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen
34. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
35. Little Reunions by Eileen Chang
36. CanLit in Ruins edited by Hannah McGregor, Julie Rak & Erin Wunker
37. The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma
38. The Road by Cormac McCarthy*
39. The Prison Book Club by Ann Walmsley
40. How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
41. Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk
42. Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson*
43. Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe*
44. The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist, translated by Marlaine Delargy
45. Near to the Wild Hear by Clarice Lispector, translated by Alison Entrekin
46. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
47. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrente, translated by Ann Goldstein*
48. The Woman Who Stole my Life by Marian Keyes
49. Dream Sequence by Adam Foulds*
50. Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin, translated by James E. Falen
51. Reproduction by Ian Williams
52. Twin Studies by Keith Maillard
53. A Lesson in Thorns by Sierra Simone
54. ʔbédayine by Kaitlyn Purcell
55. The Poor Clare by Elizabeth Gaskell
56. This is Pleasure by Mary Gaitskill
57. Lie With Me by Philippe Besson, Translated by Molly Ringwald
58. Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
59. Dinner by César Aira, translated by Katherine Silver
60. Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
61. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
62. Saudade by Suneeta Peres da Costa
63. Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
64. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, translated by Martin Hammond

• 41/64 written by women
• 12/64 in translation
• 14/64 Canadian