Every year, at the end of the year, I look back on all the books I have read the year before and list my favorites overall. This year, my goal was again 100 books (even though I read 130 last year). I barely made it to 100 (and included a school summer reading book and three literature circle books in that total – so fewer than 100 reviews on the blog – but, I’ll blame COVID). The added bonus of this post is that you don’t have to bother to read any of my other posts over the course of the year.

This year I had fewer 5-star books than I sometimes read and way too many (27) 4.5-star choices.

5 Stars
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Anxious People
Between Two Kingdoms
The Less People Know About Us
The Heart’s Invisible Furies ***TOP PICK OF THE YEAR!!!
Beautiful Country

4.5 Stars
This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing
Blood, Bones, and Butter
The Women in Black
The Midnight Library
Leave the World Behind
The Splendid and the Vile
Don’t Look for Me
Eat a Peach
Dear Child
When We Were Orphans
The Last Thing He Told Me
Empire of Pain
The Echo Wife
Think Again
Running with Sherman
Too Good to be True
The Plot
The Personal Librarian
We Are Not Like Them
The Unhoneymooners
On Juneteenth
Miss Benson’s Beetle
South of Broad
It Ends With Us
Count the Ways
The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano
What Comes After

Books finished: 100
Fiction: 48 (77%)
Non-fiction: 14 (23%), including 6 memoirs
Authors of color: 9 (14%)
Male/Female authors: 50 female (80%), 12 male (20%)
Audiobooks:  17 (27%), plus 5 audio/print combos
Average rating: 3.75
Repeat authors: 12 (19%) – Laura Dave, Cynthia D’Aprix-Sweeney, Jennifer Weiner, Taylor Jenkins-Reid, Dana Spiotta, Katherine Heiny, Joyce Maynard, J. Courtney Sullivan, Lionel Shriver, Kate Ascher and Matthew Norman.

2020’s best books are here.
2019’s best books are here.
2018’s best books are here.
2017’s best books are here.
2016’s best books are here.
2015’s best books are here.
2014’s best books are here.
2013’s paltry selection of best books are here.