Books I read in 2019
Crissi Cochrane
On the Sunday afternoon before I went into labour, I curled up in bed around my great big belly, a bowl of grapes, and a book.
Little did I know that that one book would reignite my love of reading. Along The Infinite Sea by Beatriz Williams sat on the shelf below the bassinet, beside the bed, gathering dust, until those long hours of endless feedings began, and then, I was glad to have something in reach to keep my mind occupied. (Something that wasn’t my phone.)
Since then, I’ve become the voracious reader that I was as a child, when I would often bring home the maximum number of books allowed from the library. This year I read, on average, one book per week. I watched very little TV and movies, I just read books. There are so many books I want to read, so many great worlds to explore within them, and I generally have an easier time finding something I enjoy in a book rather than on Netflix.
This year, I decided to start keeping a list of all the books I read, to see how many I was reading per month (and also, to prevent myself from accidentally reading the same book twice). Below is the list of all the books I read this year. I’ll note that my favourite genre(s) seem to be historical fiction with some mystery and or romance thrown in, and that I prefer female writers, and books with female characters (I frankly don’t want to spend my little bit of free time dwelling in worlds without women).
The list unfortunately begins in May, since it didn’t occur to me to make this list until then. Also, you’ll see that I took a long hiatus from October until December, too busy with recording my album and managing an intense schedule with lots of gigs and song commissions. But then, my favourite author Beatriz Williams came out with another book, and even though I had no time to read, I devoured it in two or three days, once more reigniting my love of reading and getting me back on the wagon. (Thank you Beatriz!)
May 2019
The Clockmaker’s Daughter, Kate Morton
June 2019
House of Glass, Susan Fletcher
The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, Lauren Willig
The Summer Country, Lauren Willig
Come From Away, Genevieve Graham
The Girl You Left Behind, Jojo Moyes
July 2019
Promises To Keep, Genevieve Graham
Let Me Tell You About A Man I Knew, Susan Fletcher
Tony’s Wife, Adriana Trigiani
The Secret Keeper, Kate Morton
Carnegie’s Maid, Marie Benedict
Big Little Lies, Lynne Moriarty
August 2019
China Dolls, Lisa See
White Houses, Amy Bloom
The Golden Hour, Beatriz Williams
The Distant Hours, Kate Morton
All My Puny Sorrows, Miriam Toews
September 2019
Fatal Inheritance, Rachel Rhys
Women Talking, Miriam Toews
The Nest, Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
Milk and Honey, Rupi Kaur
Tides of Honour, Genevieve Graham
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Lisa See
Where The Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
Abandoned, John Schlarbaum
October 2019
All Is Beauty Now, Sarah Faber
At The Mountain’s Edge, Genevieve Graham
Dangerous Crossing, Rachel Rhys
Once Upon A River, Diane Setterfield
On A Personal Note, Rita MacNeil
The Quintland Sisters, Shelley Wood
December 2019
The Wicked Redhead, Beatriz Williams
Marley & Me, John Grogan
Very Valentine, Adriana Trigiani
Genevieve Graham is an author who writes novels around important events in Canadian history, and I love this about the genre of historical fiction: you get to enjoy the escapism of reading while also learning something real about different places in time. I especially loved reading At The Mountain’s Edge, about the Yukon gold rush (how brutal it was to journey to Yukon, the conditions were war-like, and the fact that people subjected themselves to this willingly just blows my mind), and Promises To Keep, which takes place during the expulsion of my Acadian ancestors in the mid 1700s.
Tony’s Wife by Adriana Trigiani was a book that I especially enjoyed because it followed a fictional young woman’s career as a songwriter and entertainer in the big band era of the 1940s. I just find that kind of story so easy to read - anything in the mid 20th century around show business is generally like candy to me. In a similar vein was China Dolls by Lisa See, about a group of young women who meet in San Francisco in the 1930s and work in a glamorous and exclusive nightclub in Chinatown.
The Golden Hour by Beatriz Williams was a book that stayed on my mind for a long time, because I so loved the main character, and missed having her in my life once the book was done. The women Williams creates are women who I want to be. This story of a reporter working the royal beat in the Bahamas before WWII does what Williams’ stories always do, jumping back and forth between two different points in time, so that you don’t really know the pivotal moment of the mystery until the end of the book is approaching, which keeps you desperately turning pages, trying to solve it first. If I could write books, I’d want to write a book like this.
Women Talking by Miriam Toews was one of the most fascinating books I’ve ever read. It’s based on the true story of a Mennonite community in Russia where women and girls were drugged and assaulted in their sleep by the men of their community. I didn’t know if I could read a book on such a traumatic topic, but it‘s essentially the minutes of secret meetings where the women debate whether they should leave the community (despite knowing nothing of the outside world and having no money or maps), stay and fight, or do nothing - and the tangents they get into are so fascinating and philosophical. This is a text that should be studied at the university level. Before this, I read Toews’ book All My Puny Sorrows, about a famous pianist and her attempts to end her life, and her sister’s desperation to save her - another excellent read. Most books hold your hand and walk you slowly through the scenes, pointing things out to you almost leisurely; Toews moves through them at a brisk pace, tossing out thoughts and vignettes almost erratically, but despite this, you desperately want to keep up with her.