According to Goodreads, I had a good year for reading. My goal was 55 books and I exceeded that by 10. I’m not going to up my goal for next year. That’s just way too much pressure and then I tend to pick shorter books over the longer ones I might find more interesting. Indeed, the longest book I read, Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton, was actually an audiobook I would listen to while doing my diamond painting or driving.

My favorite book of the year easily was The Rose Code by Kate Quinn. It’s an excellent historical fiction story with few faults. I have a few other books by this author now on my “to read” list.

Looking through my list of completed books this year, I would definitely say these round out my top 10 reads of the year. All very different and all very enjoyable. I gravitate towards historical fiction, history, and biographies of people I admire. Tom Felton’s autobiography was one I particularly looked forward to, and it did not disappoint. The Path Between the Seas was timely as we took a cruise through the Panama Canal in February. I appreciated the Alexander Hamilton biography as it shone a light on how conflicted our founding fathers really were. Our history romanticizes that time period in our history, and it was nearly as divided as we are today.

The rest of the books I read this year (note – if I reviewed them and you want to see the review, click on the cover photo and it will bring you to the review):

There was only one book I didn’t finish this year:

This was the third book in the series and I hated the second one enough to stop reading the series right then and there. However, there was a cliffhanger at the end of that book that I was interested in enough to see how it was resolved. The first few chapters were just so horribly implausible that I put it on my “abandoned” list, which is very rare for me.

All in all, I thought it was a good year in books with many interesting and diverse reads.