Good reads & Re-reads
Last years best:
1. "The Vanishing Half"
by Brit Bennett (2020)
“People thought that being one of a kind made you special. No, it just made you lonely. What was special was belonging with someone else.”
2. "Such a Fun Age"
by Kiley Reid (2019)
3. "Mexican Gothic"
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2020)
4. "Anxious People"
by Fredrik Backman (2019)
5. "The Glass Hotel"
by Emily St. John Mandel (2020)
“Memories are always bent retrospectively to fit individual narratives”
6. "Transcendent Kingdom"
by Yaa Gyasi (2020)
7. "Rouge”
Mona Awad (2023)
“Later on I'm going to be really fucking beautiful. I'm going to grow into that nose and develop an eating disorder. I'll be hungry and angry all my life but I'll also have a hell of a time.”
8. "Project Hail Mary"
by Andy Weir (2021)
9. "Klara and the Sun"
by Kazuo Ishiguro (2021)
10. "The Only Good Indians"
by Stephen Graham Jones (2020)
11. "Piranesi"
by Susanna Clarke (2020)
12. "No One Is Talking About This"
by Patricia Lockwood (2021)
“I was just thinking that you and I...have seen very different memes in our lives”
13. "Leave the World Behind"
by Rumaan Alam (2020)
14. "A Promised Land"
by Barack Obama (2020)
15. "The Latecomer"
by Jean Hanff Korelitz (2022)
“always on the edge of some beautiful”
16. "American Dirt"
by Jeanine Cummins (2020)
17. "The Authenticity Project"
by Clare Pooley (2020)
18. "The Starless Sea"
by Erin Morgenstern (2019)
“A boy at the beginning of a story has no way of knowing that the story has begun”
19. "Circe"
by Madeline Miller (2018)
20. "The Dutch House"
by Ann Patchett (2019)
21. "The Testaments"
by Margaret Atwood (2019)
“One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others”
22. "The Night Tiger"
by Yangsze Choo (2019)
“We were a chocolate-box family, I thought. Brightly wrapped on the outside and oozing sticky darkness within.”
23. "Normal People"
by Sally Rooney (2018)
24. "Grand Tour”
by Elisa Gonzalez
25. "The Night Watchman"
by Louise Erdrich (2020)
26. "Where the Forest Meets the Stars"
by Glendy Vanderah (2019)
“People think they have to say something, and it never makes me feel better.” “I know. I’ve decided language isn’t as advanced as we think it is. We’re still apes trying to express our thoughts with grunts while most of what we want to communicate stays locked in our brains”
27. "The Water Dancer"
by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2019)
“I had dreams back then. Big dumb dreams. Dead and gone.” “And what do you dream of now?” she asked. “After what I just came up from?” I said. “Breathing. I just dream of breathing”
28. "The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue"
by V.E. Schwab (2020)
29. "The Pull of the Stars"
by Emma Donoghue (2020)
“I’m beginning to know enough to know I know nothing”
30. "Axiom's End"
by Lindsay Ellis (2020)
“I feel like an addict. Like if you leave, I'll go into withdrawl”
31. "The Midnight Library"
by Matt Haig (2020)
32. "The Guest List"
by Lucy Foley (2020)
“It's always better to get it out in the open - even if it seems shameful, even if you feel like people won't understand.”
33. "One by One"
by Ruth Ware (2020)
“Behind him is a girl with fluffy yellow hair that cannot possibly be her real shade. It’s the color of buttercups and the texture of dandelion fluff”
34. "The Death of Vivek Oji"
by Akwaeke Emezi (2020)
35. "A Children's Bible"
by Lydia Millet (2020)
36. "The Ten Thousand Doors of January"
by Alix E. Harrow (2019)
“Let that be a lesson to you: If you are too good and too quiet for too long, it will cost you. It will always cost you, in the end.”
37. "The Midnight Library"
by Matt Haig (2020)
38. "The Guest List"
by Lucy Foley (2020)
39. "My Murder"
by Katie Williams (2023)
“That’s the thing about having a baby: they are a part of you that is outside of you, so you can love them in the way you can’t stand to love yourself.”
40. "The Death of Vivek Oji"
by Akwaeke Emezi (2020)
41. "A Children's Bible"
by Lydia Millet (2020)
42. "The Beauty in Breaking"
by Michele Harper (2020)
43. "The Exiles"
by Christina Baker Kline (2020)
44. "The Four Winds"
by Kristin Hannah (2021)
“Don't worry about dying, Elsa. Worry about not living.”
45. "The Push"
by Ashley Audrain (2021)
46. "The Women of the Copper Country"
by Mary Doria Russell (2019)
47. "The Personal Librarian"
by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray (2021)
48. "The Sanatorium"
by Sarah Pearse (2021)
49. “Black Sun"
by Rebecca Roanhorse (2020)
50. "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo"
by Taylor Jenkins Reid (2017)
51. "The Giver of Stars"
by Jojo Moyes (2019)
“Time flew. And each ended the night full and happy with the rare glow that comes from knowing your very being has been understood by somebody else. And that there might just be someone out there, who will only ever see the best in you.”
52. "The Girl with the Louding Voice"
by Abi Daré (2020)
53. "Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear"
by Elizabeth Gilbert (2015)
54. "Know My Name"
by Chanel Miller (2019)
“My pain was never more valuable than his potential”
55. “The Gilded Ones"
by Namina Forna (2021)
56. “The Goldfinch"
by Donna Tartt
“I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe”
57. "Becoming"
by Michelle Obama (2018)
58. "Where the Crawdads Sing"
by Delia Owens (2018)
59. "Dear Girls"
by Ali Wong (2019)
60. "The Silent Patient"
by Alex Michaelides (2019)
“we often mistake love for fireworks - for drama and dysfunction. But real love is very quiet, very still. It's boring, if seen from the perspective of high drama. Love is deep and calm - and constant”
61. “Fear Is Just a Word”
by Azam Ahmed
