Whatcha Reading: Looking back at 2019
Every week we ask an interesting figure what they're digging into. Have ideas who we should reach out to? Let it fly: info@seattlereviewofbooks.com. Want to read more? Check out the archives.
One of the great joys of running Whatcha Reading is seeing all the books people are reading. In 2019, people in the column talked about 258 books. There’s a big table below listing all of them, sorted by title, alphabetically.
Of those, only eleven books were mentioned twice (no books made three mentions this year), so deserve an extra callout.
- A Field Guide to Getting Lost, by Rebecca Solnit
- Autobiography of Red, by Anne Carson
- Deaf Republic, by Ilya Kaminsky
- Dreyer's English, by Benjamin Dreyer
- How to Do Nothing, by Jenny Odell
- Is, Is Not, Tess Gallagher
- Less, Andrew Sean Greer
- Milkman, Anna Burns
- On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
- The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead
- The Secret Lives of Color, Kassia St Clair
Personally, I read Less, The Secret Lives of Color, and I saw Jenny Odell talk at the XOXO Festival, her lovely book is still sitting on my to-read pile.
You’ll see each of them listed twice below, because I’ve also linked them to the original column they appeared in, so you could find the source, if you want to be the kind of nerd who looks over huge lists of books and finds where they were mentioned on the site (and, to be clear, I am the kind of nerd who creates huge lists of books).
I wish I could tell you what the trend was this year, but waving a hand over this list revealed nothing to specific to me. I'd be curious if you have insight into that. What I can say, pretty definitively, is that Seattle is full of (and visited by, since many of these were touring writers) people who read incredibly widely. Kind of gives you hope about the world, doens't it?
Here's the full list. We'll be back next week with our normal Whatcha Reading, but isn't it fun to take a step back and gander at just how many books have been recommended on the site by guests? I'm absolutely thrilled about it.
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