As the year comes to a close, many in the book blogging and reviewing community, and the book community in general – radio shows, podcasts, authors – have been posting and recording about this. And let me tell you, it is hard, and often, so many good ones are left off, and to me, ranking them is just mean because how can you rank books? Especially all those ones that stayed with you.
I had hoped 2019 might be easier to start with – not only do I have the list with me now, but for 2010-2019 I need to go back into other lists and hope I have those records. Or at least be able to work out what books I read that were published between those dates. 2019 seems to be the easiest place to start – as I have that list easily at hand for now. Out of 196 read so far, I found fourteen I loved – and the majority are by Australian women. Of course, these are in no particular order of favouritism, simply the order I read them throughout the year as that was easier to copy across.
The French Photographer by Natasha Lester
Kensy and Max: Undercover by Jacqueline Harvey
While You Were Reading by Ali Berg and Michelle Klaus
Kensy and Max: Out of Sight by Jacqueline Harvey
There Was Still Love by Favel Parrett
Rebel Women who Changed Australia by Susanna de Vries
Pages and Co #2: Tilly and the Lost Fairy Tales by Anna James
The Lily in the Snow by Jackie French
Clancy of the Overflow by Jackie French
All the Tears in China by Sulari Gentill
Even though we still have two weeks left in December, I’m trying to get as many of these posts ready as possible – with my full wrap up posts appearing at the very end of the month or early in the new year, as well as the start of all my reading challenges in 2020 as well.
Choosing best of lists is always hard – there are often so many good books, but this year I went with the ones that stood out for me. Some that did were published earlier than 2019 and will possibly make it onto the 2010-2019 list – which of course, is bound to be longer and have entire series on there as I simply cannot choose only one from each year. It feels like a betrayal to a whole series to do that!
So there you are – for once I was able to choose fourteen favourites!
The Book Muse 
That’s a fantastic list, very diverse, I’m definitely with you on Jackie French. I look forward to your decade list.
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Thank you – I tried my best to be diverse – and I know there are some authors of more diverse backgrounds whose books I haven’t read (mainly down to availability in stores etc). But these were the ones that stood out. It was a tough call, and my decade list is proving just as hard!
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Tell me about it, my list was heaps longer, but I managed to cut it to those that really did stay with me when I thought about them, ones I didn’t have to try to remember the stories for.
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Yeah that’s what I’m trying to do – use the ones that really stood out. Now I’m going through all my logs for 2010-2019 to find some for that list.
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Good luck!
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Thank you! I may have included an entire series as one entry and will potentially be doing the same for others 😛 So whilst there may only be ten-fifteen entries, there might be 50 books on there. hehe.
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Did you see mine, I also included a whole series as one choice lol
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I did. How can we choose with a series?
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I couldn’t as the whole series stayed with me, it’s one I’ll read again.
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Me too – and I think for the 2010-2019 round up I have at least 4 series to include – two are still ongoing so in total that’s almost 30 just with those series!
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Lol awesome, it’s great when a series grabs you like that.
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Wait, make that 5 series now….and some authors got multiple entries.
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Same here, and 5 series wow
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Good list. I’ve read only a couple of these. Favel’s was easily my favourite this year!
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Thank you 🙂
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Still pondering on mine but pretty sure we’ll have a crossover with There Was Still Love.
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Nice!!
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