The 20 Best Books of 2019

[image description: An open book with pages edged in red sitting open on a brown couch next to a bowl of grapes and strawberries.]
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This is my sixth year writing an end-of-the-year “Best of 20XX” post, so I can say with confidence that this is always the hardest post I write every year. It’s so hard to choose!

At this point in my life, I’m pretty good at choosing books I know I’ll enjoy. There are usually only a handful in any given year that I despise. That means I have to choose between 100+ excellent books to narrow it down to the best of the best.

I read a mix of new releases and backlist titles, so my best-of list is comprised of titles I read during 2019, regardless of when they were actually published.

I’ve used Indiebound affiliate links in the list, so if there’s a title you like you can click the image of the cover to buy the book from your nearest independent bookstore. Not shit river Amazon! So if you use Indiebound, you can support your local community bookstore and this blog––a win-win. :)

Let the countdown begin!

#20 Normal People by Sally Rooney

I think nearly everyone who has spent any significant time dating has had one of those “catch and release” relationships. I call them that because, despite caring deeply for one another, things never seem to work out for you to actually be together for any real amount of time. It’s usually because one or both parties are too busy, live too far away, are too immature, care too much what others think, etc. That’s usually coupled with a stringent failure to communicate and tendency to assume the worst in the other person based on past disappointments.

It’s hard to define these relationships because they’re hardly relationships at all. More like hopeful ships passing in the night with each person left reeling by the strength of their hopefulness and the even stronger let down of the disappointment. Even though I’m a writer, I find it hard to put these false start relationships into words, but Sally Rooney has done it in an absolutely beautiful way in this novel. It’ll make your stomach hurt it’s so good.

#19 Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Why did I wait so long to read this?! I wish I hadn’t waited so long because Salvage the Bones is definitely one of those books that begs a re-read.

There’s so much to dive into here. The dynamics of the youthful friendships that morph as puberty encroaches, and the shifting dynamics in the protagonist’s family (especially since the father treats his sons so differently than he treats his daughter), and the love a boy has for his dog… it’s a LOT. Jesmyn Ward cracks open every relationship you’ve ever had or even thought about having and adds depth and nuance and poetry to each. Then she puts them against the backdrop of a community already on the brink of desperation with a hurricane looming.

I couldn’t put it down. I don’t know how anyone writes a near-perfect novel, but she did it.

#18 We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir by Samra Habib

I picked this one up in Canada while I was on vacation this past summer, so I hope it’s available elsewhere as well. I’ve been reading a ton of memoirs by marginalized people over the past couple of years because those real human stories lend so much understanding to how larger societal and cultural issues affect everyday people.

While I’ve read a number of queer memoirs, I hadn’t read one by a Muslim woman until this one. Samra Habib packs so much into such a short book and she uses such a poetic economy of language to do so. There were so many moments in the story where I felt her hopelessness (especially when she was in the arranged marriage and her family was making it difficult for her to get out of it) and knew that if I were in her position I probably would’ve given up. Samra’s strength and resilience throughout the process of finding and living her authentic truth is an inspiration to us all.

#17 Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

I know it’s only 2019, but I think this might be the iconic Southern novel of this generation, even this century. Everything about life in the swamp marshes, the failures of family, and the judgment of society is so deeply rooted and stunningly rendered. There were so many places the language made me swoon and several places I totally cried even though I rarely cry from reading.

I still can’t believe this was Delia Owens’ debut novel. What a glorious, bright-burning debut it is. Whatever she does, she’s got a fan for life in this Southern gal.

#16 I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara

I read myself to sleep every night and have for years, so I’m accustomed to curling up with a book and letting it lull me to dreamland. Even though I knew going into it that this book would creep me out, I was still surprised when I found I couldn’t sleep. Like, at all. I hardly got a wink of sleep for three nights reading this book (which contributed to me finishing it so quickly) even though I knew beforehand that they caught the killer in the end!

It wasn’t just the killer that kept me awake. It was also the fact that Michelle McNamara devoted years of her life to finding him when law enforcement had practically given up, and she did so at great expense to her health. She died before seeing this book published and the killer brought to justice. Honestly, that broke my heart more than anything… Thinking about the emotional labor women do and the labor that so often goes unnoticed and unappreciated until it’s too late. And how selfless it was to keep searching for answers when others had given up.

Yep, this one made me cry too.

#15 Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

I love a good intergenerational novel. I’m fascinated by how the present day characters got the way they are and how their lives––aspects both good and bad––were built on what the older generations experienced. In Red at the Bone I loved how Jacqueline Woodson let the reader inside the grandparents’ and both parents’ heads.

I also appreciate how Jacqueline has such a talent for turning stereotypes about black people into so much more than they seem. In this story, the granddaughter is raised by her grandmother––not because the mother was out doing something she “shouldn’t have been doing,” as stereotypes would dictate, but because she went to college, got her degree, and started chasing her dreams. I think it’s also great how the mother is the absent parent, not the father, which is more often the case in other stories I’ve read. The father is attentive, loving, and caring and the only thing keeping him away from his child is poverty.

Which brings me to another thing I love about Jacqueline’s books: she always shows the impact of societal ills on her characters. No one should work full time and not be able to afford a basic living for themselves and their family. And, as always, all this is done in a poetically subtle, not hit-you-over-the-head way by Jacqueline’s masterful hand.

#14 Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon

Where do I even begin… This memoir covered a lot of ground, as well as a lot of topics that were fairly new territory for me, so I found it enlightening in myriad ways. Before Heavy, I hadn’t previously read about disordered eating in black men or gambling addiction (and how there’s more to it than you think). Kiese Laymon also goes into how he was forced out of his undergrad college by some rich frat boy white supremacists and his inspiring relationships with his biggest supporter: his mom.

This memoir put crack after crack in my heart, then expertly superglued it back together. Heavy is… well, heavy.

#13 I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

Confession time. For the majority of my life, even as I tried desperately to make evangelicalism and catholicism work for me, I kept noticing how the church seemed to be a vehicle of oppression. Colonialism, imperialism, forced assimilation, cultural appropriation of ancient customs, denying women full participation, and preaching veiled white supremacy were just a few of the things I saw in my nearly two decades of trying one church after another.

So it used to flabbergast me when I’d see black people being overtly religious because it seemed like they were being voluntarily complicit in their own oppression. That’s what I thought until I read I’m Still Here and Austin Channing Brown turned my ass around. She explained how black people’s relationship with religion is extremely different than that of white people and how the church is––pardon the pun––often a sanctuary against the oppression faced in the rest of the world. She also talked about her own efforts to make the church more accepting and open so as to avoid pitfalls that white churches have found themselves in and continue to find themselves in.

Austin made me see things differently in a good way and I’m finding myself less judgmental and more understanding of the religious black people in my life who I love.

#12 The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in Death, Decay & Disaster by Sarah Krasnostein

Even though I spent a ton of time watching CSI: Las Vegas in high school, it never once occurred to me to wonder who cleaned up the crime scenes after the investigators, detectives, and police were done. So when I heard there was a book about a woman who built a business cleaning up after murders, suicides, and other traumas, I had to get it.

I went for the premise and what the business entailed, but I stayed for the woman who started the business: Sandra Pankhurst. Even before she was a wealthy trauma cleaner, she endured countless traumas of her own, many of which were the instances of transphobic abuse she suffered throughout her life. And through it all, she emerged a strong, kind, warm, thoughtful soul who cares deeply about the world and loves the people in her life fiercely. She’s truly extraordinary and I never wanted the book to end.

#11 Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood

I lost count of how many times I woke my husband up in the middle of the night because I was reading in bed and couldn’t stop giggling. And when he was awake, I kept interrupting whatever he was doing to read him passages so he’d understand why I was hysterical with laughter.

Patricia Lockwood’s father is a Catholic priest and a weird character. He likes walking around half naked and playing guitar and washing his legs with special rags. And he makes an odd roommate for Patricia, his grown daughter, and her husband when they fall on hard times and have to stay with him in the rectory.

This might be the funniest book I’ve ever read. And it’s definitely one I’ll read again.

#10 Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

Even with as much progress as we’ve made, gender queerness is so misunderstood. Partly because it’s such a unique experience for each person who is genderqueer. I loved how Maia (who uses Spivak pronouns: e, em, eir) expertly articulated what it’s like to grow up knowing you don’t fit comfortably into the gender binary in a way that teens would understand.

This is the kind of book you’ll want to press into the hands of every teenager you know. It’s smart without being overly clinical or academic. It’s emotionally deep without venturing too far into the struggle with self-hatred in the early years. It’s helpful without being prescriptive or sounding know-it-all. It’s inspiring without claiming to be universal. It’s such a great balance of what is so often missing from discussions of gender, especially for young adults.

#9 Real Queer America: LGBT Stories in Red States by Samantha Allen

As someone from the South who’s not currently living there, I hear far too often what outsiders think of Alabama when I tell them that’s where I’m from. Few of the people who say negative things about the South have spent more than a day or two there and have definitely not embedded themselves in the small but vibrant queer communities. It’s exhausting trying to explain to an elitist who’s convinced their home state or hometown is better than yours that there are good things to be seen if you look hard enough, so I’ve stopped trying.

That’s why I love Real Queer America. In it, Samantha Allen travels around the US, primarily in the Midwest (because it’s massive!) to explore queer communities in conservative states. She looks for the pockets that feel like home and places where she feels comfortable as a trans woman. It’s such an incredible look at these often overlooked places that elitists are convinced don’t exist.

The truth is that by pretending these communities don’t exist, they’re turning their back on people who are doing the important, necessary work of creating homes where one didn’t come ready-made and missing out on some of the best people this country has to offer.

#8 American Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures by America Ferrera

Normally, when I read an anthology I expect to find a couple of essays I don’t particularly like or that don’t feel like they fit with the rest of the collection. It just comes with the territory of putting so many different writers into one book.

But not this one! I loved every single essay. Each one was insightful and fascinating. I’m usually the type to be doubtful of celebrity side projects, but I assure you that every person in here can write and has a compelling story to tell. This might be my favorite anthology of all time.

#7 The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays by Esmé Weijun Wang

I learned from reading The Collected Schizophrenias that about 1% of the population has schizophrenia, which probably explains why I’ve never read a book with a first-person account of what it’s like to live with the diagnosis. I tried not to let the book frighten me, though reading it did inspire several panicked messages to my therapist.

Admittedly, this book also infuriated me. Esmé Weijun Wang is genius-level smart and has access to a lot of resources and systems of care that most people don’t and she still had a hard time getting adequate mental healthcare. It’s hard not to read her struggles and feel like the average person with mental illnesses is just fucked. But it also made me even more dedicated to fighting for equitable access and talking openly about mental illness so as to lessen the stigma and inspire people to get the care they need to live their best lives.

#6 Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett

This book had me at lesbian taxidermist protagonist. I heard Kristen Arnett at a reading where she read aloud several passages from this book and I was hooked. I immediately bought it and read it in like 3 days.

I really like how Kristen focused on the characters coping with the aftermath of trauma rather than the actual experience of it. I’ve read some fantastic explorations of trauma and I don’t want to discount those, but often the response to the aftermath of trauma is deeply individualistic and involves the hurt person completely uprooting their life and starting over, only to be haunted by the past. But what about when you can’t or don’t want to uproot your whole life and give up on everyone you love? What if the way one person copes with grief re-triggers your trauma?

Those are the big questions this novel dives into, combined with an oddball cast of characters and quirky setting.

#5 Brown White Black by Nishta J. Mehra

If you were to ask me what this book was about, I’d say “I don’t know, but it broke my brain with everything it got me to think about and you absolutely have to read it.”

On the surface, Nishta Mehra’s family is like any other: two parents and a kid. But she and her partner are lesbians and their kid is an adopted black boy. Each family member is of a different race than the others and they all have complicated relationships with religion. To read Nishta’s account of how they all exist in the world as individuals and as a family unit is truly a gift.

This isn’t like any other memoir I’ve ever read and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

#4 Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I love a novel with a creative format that actually works. Sometimes I feel like authors try to do too much (ahem: William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas) and the structure or format is actually a detriment to the story and impairs readers’ ability to enjoy it. But when authors do it well, it’s miraculous.

That’s why I enjoyed Daisy Jones and The Six so much. It’s the story of a band in the 1960s (that feels loosely inspired by Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac), but it’s told in interview format. Reading it feels like watching a biopic of your favorite iconic band. The dialogue is spot on and Taylor Jenkins Reid does so much to ground you in the setting without breaking the all-dialogue format and without making it feel awkward for the dialogue.

There are also several twists that I didn’t anticipate whatsoever, but that worked extremely well. There’s a reason why I have yet to meet someone who didn’t like this book.

#3 The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O’Meara

I’d never heard of Milicent Patrick before reading this book and I’m not even a devotee of monster movies. What I am a devotee of, though, is having the lost and overlooked accomplishments of women from the past brought to light and properly appreciated and credited.

Milicent Patrick created the infamous Creature from the Black Lagoon monster, including designing its costume. She was a talented artist, actress, and model, who in 1950s Hollywood had to endure SO MUCH SEXISM. Men were constantly trying to take credit for her work and shut her out of the industry. Which, sadly, hasn’t changed much in the intervening years.

Mallory O’Meara is a producer and director of horror films and one of the scant few women working in the genre. Interspersed with Milicent’s story is her own, which perfectly explains why she relates so much to Milicent and why it was her calling to do right by this iconic creator.

#2 The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

I’ve been hearing people say for years that this is one of their favorite books of all time. But I’m an atheist, so the whole “Jesuits in space” description didn’t really appeal to me. But I finally gave in and I’M SO GLAD I DID.

This book will make you question everything you think you know about language, morality, religion, culture, anthropology, sex, love, and… well, everything. This novel is like a fire made from rubbing two sticks together: it’s a slow starter, but once it gets going, it really roars.

Honestly, there’s no description or review that could possibly do this book justice. I’m so glad I read it (and the sequel) and I finally understand why so many people find it deeply meaningful. It’s the kind of novel that should be required reading for life.

#1 Know My Name: A Memoir by Chanel Miller

This is the memoir I wish no one had to write, but it’s the memoir we all need. You may know Chanel Miller as Emily Doe or Brock Turner’s victim, but in this memoir detailing the rape, her coping and therapeutic processes, and the legal journey, she reclaims her name and you’ll never forget it.

It took me awhile to read Know My Name because I would get so infuriated at the world and how, even with a lot of resources and support, the process to bring Turner to justice was unnecessarily long and painful. Chanel is also a brilliant writer. Her tone is the ideal balance of smart, conversational, and poetic. I hope she writes more books because I’ll absolutely read every one of them.

Even as much as it upset me, I’m glad I read it and I hope others can get past the effects it might have on them to read it too. It’s definitely one where you’ll want to practice self-care before, during, and after reading.

There you have it! My top 20 best books of 2019. What’d you think of the list? Tell me your favorites in the comments below.