“A Best Friend Is Someone Who Gives Me a Book I’ve Never Read”- A. Lincoln

Each year, this post is always my favorite. It combines my love of reading with the opportunity to stay in touch with friends all around the country. My hope is that each of you will find a book or books that will bring pleasure in the months ahead. And I look forward to hearing from you about what you find here that is a good read.

This 2019 list is comprised of the favorite reads of 82 adults and six children (ages 2+ to almost 11). Slightly more contributors (51%-49%) were female, about the same as last year. There were an equal amount of fiction and nonfiction books cited. (Last year, nonfiction led fiction 53%-47%, and all the previous nine years fiction led nonfiction.)

I’ve organized the post in three ways:

I. The Books that have been cited by multiple readers are listed first.

II. Next, the Contributors are listed alphabetically by first name — to make it easy if you are looking for the favorites of someone you know — with the titles and authors next, followed by any comments they made about those books.

III. Finally, a Spread Sheet is arranged in alphabetical order by the first name of the Contributor for quick reference. You can print out this alphabetical list of the MillersTime Contributors whose names are followed by Book Title, Author, and whether it is Fiction (F) or nonfiction (NF).

Also, at the end of this post, I’ve linked to the yearly lists beginning in 2009, just in case you need more suggestions or want to know what you or others favored in the past.

Enjoy.

I. Titles that appear on more than one reader’s list.

Fiction (F):

• A Woman Is No Man, Etaf Fum
• Before We Were Yours, Lisa Wingate
• Bruno, Chief of Police Mysteries, Martin Walker
• Evvie Drake Starts Over, Linda Holmes
• Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng
• Machines Like Me, Ian McEwan
• No-No Boy, John Okada
• Normal People, Sally Rooney
• Olive Again, Elizabeth Strout
• Someone Knows My Name, Lawrence Hill
• Stoner, John Williams
• The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
• The Dutch House, Ann Patchett
• The Great Alone, Kristin Hannah
• The Heart’s Invisible Furies, John Boyne
• The Nickel Boys, Colin Whitehead
• The Other Americans, Laila Lalami
• The Overstory, Richard Powers
• The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Washington Black, Esi Edugyan
• Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens

Nonfiction (NF):

• American Prison, Shane Bauer
• Bad Blood, John Carreyrou
• Becoming, Michelle Obama
• Being Mortal, Atul Gawande
• Catch and Kill, Ronan Farrow
• Educated, Tara Westover
• Furious Hours, Casey Cep
• Grant, Ron Chernow
• Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson
• Leadership in Turbulent Times, Doris Kearns Goodwin
• Madame Fourcade’s Secret War, Lynne Olson
• No Visible Bruises, Rachel Louise Snyder
• Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe
• She Said, Jodi Kantor & Meghan Twohey
• The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben
• The Library Book, Susan Orlean
• The Pioneers, David McCullough
• The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson
• The Yellow House, Sarah Bloom
• Upheaval, Jared Diamond
• Working, Robert Caro

II. The 2019 Favorite Reads

(Alphabetic by First Name)

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