My Fave Reads - 2019

Here's my 2019 favorites -- not necessarily titles published this year, although most are, but my favorite things I read this year.  I love that at Bookmarks everyone on staff, booksellers, store managers, and operations alike, gets a year-end endcap to group our staff picks.  I am not likely to hit my Goodreads challenge this year, but I did complete 44 books, not including rereads, and I might get a few more in before the ball drops to ring in 2020.  Curiously, this year was an exceptional year for me in audio -- five of my nine top picks I did on audiobook via libro.fm, which is an audio subscription that allows you to support your local indie bookstore with your audiobook purchases.  (I know there are only eight books on my endcap.  There is a separate libro.fm endcap in the store that we all got to contribute to.)

The Sentence is Death

by Anthony Horowitz

Mystery/Thriller

(Self-proclaimed) brilliant private investigator.

Screenwriter/middle grade author.

And a bloody, wine-covered corpse.

What could go wrong?

Me

by Elton John

Arts - Music

What’s your favorite Elton John song? 
I can’t pick just one!  But it might be Goodbye Yellow Brick Road… or Candle in the Wind 1997… or I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues...

The Parker Inheritance

by Varian Johnson

Middle Grade

White letters on black pages

Black letters on white pages

Black letters on grey pages

Different voices, different times, and a treasure to be found.  An intriguing take on the Civil Rights Movement

Over the Moon

by Natalie Lloyd

Middle Grade

also audiobook thru libro.fm -- the only audiobook I’ve ever know where they hired a composer!
Are you brave enough to dream?

WANTED

Brave and wiry young fellers (orphans preferred)

Unafraid to ride and race and fly in the fear of certain death!

Great riches await!

The Huntress 

by Kate Quinn

Historical Fiction

also audiobook thru libro.fm

I want to be Nina when I grow up.

She’s the last eyewitness to what The Huntress did when the Nazis set her on their prey.

And she’s one of Die Nachthexen, the Night Witches, the Russian female fighter pilots.

Every Tool’s a Hammer 

by Adam Savage

Science & Technology

also audiobook thru libro.fm; read by the author

Let’s hear it for the Makers!

Success principles work here too?  It’s not just business and self help books that have success principles.  Memoir by Mythbusters’ and Tested’s Adam Savage.

Tiger vs Nightmare 

by Emily Tetri

Middle Grade Graphic Novel

You can do it!! 

The Monster under the bed keeps away Nightmare, but what to do when the Monster needs Tiger’s help?  

A Place to Land 

by Barry Wittenstein, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney

Who inspires the inspirations?  

Mythos 

by Stephen Fry

audiobook thru Libro.fm; read by the author

We’ve all had a prof who was just exuberant about their favorite topic and excited to tell you *every*thing about it.  Even better if they have a great voice, or a British accent, or both.

Stephen Fry talks thru an enormous breadth of Greek mythology with all the delight of a child and the word nerdery of a gleeful etymologist, drawing sometimes-ridiculous links between the stories and word origins and English cognates.  It doesn’t make sense that it would work, but it is a joy.