A List of Books

A list of books.

This is the time of year that everyone produces their annual Best of… book lists.

Given that there are at least 500,000 books published in a year (not counting self-published titles), it has to be assumed that these lists are just the tip of the iceberg!

I have my own lists. The first is my book club’s list of everything we have read – affectionately called the Big List. I hand it out at the club’s December meeting. It’s fun to see what we have read and gives new (and old) members a chance to see what they have missed.

I also have my own personal book log. This started years ago as an attempt to keep track of what was the last book I read by a particular author – very necessary for someone who cannot read a series book out of order.

I began with just a list (title, author and series). Finish a book – write it down. Very bare bones. Then I started jotting down a note or two – never very much – since it’s just for me. Sometimes the note is just that I am not reading any more by this author and why. When I reread something, the note is often about how the book differs from how I remember it, or how my feelings about it have changed.

It is fun seeing how many books I have read – sometimes I binge and sometimes I plod – but I am always reading. I know many people use Goodreads as their book log, but I will always choose a notebook over a website.

Here is the Big List! Our book club mostly reads fiction - with a couple of genre titles, one non-fiction and a classic every year. One of the members says he joined so he would be forced to read books he wouldn’t pick on his own – I keep that thought in mind when choosing titles.

At our December meeting we each talk about one non-book club we have read during the past year. I’m going to add that list of titles to the Big List going forward.

So…. What’s on your list?

Wednesday Morning Bookies
formerly known as Friday Morning Bookies
THE BIG LIST
2025
January		Playground	Richard Powers
February		The Plot	Jean Hanff Korelitz
March		The God of the Woods	Liz Moore
April		Creation Lake	Rachel Kushner
May		The Sequel	Jean Hanff Korelitz
June		Three Days in June	Anne Tyler
July		Ingrained	Callum Robinson
August		Entitlement	Rumaan Alam
September		North Woods	Daniel Mason
October		The Turn of the Screw	Henry James
November		Water for Elephants	Sara Gruen
December		What have you read?
2024
January		Birnam Wood	Eleanor Catton
February		(did not meet)
March		Yellowface	R. F. Kuang
April		The Fraud	Zadie Smith
May		The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder	David Grann
June		James	Percival Everett
July		The Picture of Dorian Gray	Oscar Wilde
August		The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War	Erik Larson
September		Help Wanted	Adelle Waldman
October		Interior Chinatown	Charles Yu
November		Fourteen Days	Margaret Atwood & Douglas Preston
December		What have you read?
2023
January		Recitatif	Morrison, Toni
February		Companion Piece	Smith, Ali
March		Demon Copperhead	Kingsolver, Barbara
April		Passenger	McCarthy, Cormac
May		Portrait of an Unknown Woman	Silva, Daniel
June		Trust	Diaz, Hernan
July		Caste	Wilkerson, Isabel
August		Pineapple Street	Jackson, Jenny
September		Brave New World	Huxley, Aldous
October		I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home	Moore, Lorrie
November		Heaven & Earth Grocery Store	McBride, James
December		What have you read?
2022
January		Mrs. March	Feito, Virginia
February		Lincoln Highway	Towles, Amor
March		Nomadland	Bruder, Jessica
April		Hamnet	O'Farrell, Maggie
May		Magpie Murders	Horowitz, Anthony
June		Vesper Flights	Macdonald, Helen
July		Man Who Saw Everything	Levy, Deborah
August		The Sentence	Erdrich, Louise
September		Never Let Me Go	Ishiguro, Kazuo
October		Oh William!	Strout, Elizabeth
November		Shrines of Gaiety	Atkinson, Kate
December		Fairy Tale	Stephen King
2021
September		Dutch House	Patchett, Ann
October		La Belle Sauvage	Pullman, Philip
November		Atonement	McEwan, Ian
December		Cloud Cuckoo Land	Anthony Doerr
2020
January		A Gentleman in Moscow	Towles, Amor
February		Normal People	Rooney, Sally
March		Where the Crawdads Sing	Owens, Delia
2019
January		Beautiful Ruins	Jess Walter
February		The Night Circus	Erin Morgenstern
March		My Brilliant Friend	Elena Ferrante
April		Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail	Cheryl Strayed
May		The Gathering	Anne Enright
June		Passage to India	E. M. Forster
July		Underground Railroad	Colson Whitehead
August		Death comes to Pemberley	P. D. James
September		Left Hand of Darkness	Ursula Le Guin
October		Circe	Madeline Miller
November		Caleb's Crossing	Geraldine Brooks
December		Let the Great World Spin	Colum McCann