2019: The Year In Books

As we wrap up 2019, it is time to take a look back at the 28 books I read over the past year, an increase of 6 books over last year.  Of those 28, 7 were non-fiction and, of the 21 novels, only 3 were tied to a TV show.  Only one of the books came out of my dwindling “to-read” drawer, 19 were e-books, and, for the first time, there was 1 audio book.  I read nearly 9,500 pages, my second highest total of all time.

Once again, a majority of the books I read this year were by authors I’ve never read before. The 15 authors that I read for the first this year were:

  • Bill Clinton
  • Charles Willeford
  • Nell Scovell
  • Ernest Cline
  • Katrin Schumann
  • Lindy West
  • Luke Jennings
  • Agatha Christie
  • W. P. Kinsella
  • Aziz Ansari
  • John Gregory Betancourt
  • Julie Gregory
  • Mindy Kaling
  • Anthony Stevens
  • Louis Strauss
  • Dean Wesley Smith
  • Kristine Kathryn Rusch
  • Nell Zink
  • Stephanie Wittels Wachs

Jeffery Deaver and Karin Slaughter were the only authors that I read multiple titles from during 2019.

5 of the books I read were released this year, while 5 of them were released last century, with the oldest first published in 1934.

Finally, the breakdown by month.  My vacation to Hawaii in February and being off in December certainly helped pad its totals a tad bit.

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Book 3 (of 52) – Understudy For Death

Understudy For Death – Charles Willeford

When a seemingly happy housewife kills herself and her two children, a reporter for the local paper is assigned to find out why. Along the way, he finds dissatisfaction with his own life, finally deciding that devotion to his wife and son are enough for him.

Originally titled Understudy For Love when it was first published in 1961, the work by Charles Willeford was not quite what I was expecting.  This wasn’t a crime novel, per se, but rather a character study of an unsure man trying to find his way while investigating a crime.  I’ve had good experiences with the output from Hard Case Crime in the past, but this was, at least for me, the first clunker.