Last week, I gave a highlight of the best books I read in 2019. Below, I present what I read in 2019. By comparison to 2016, 2017, and 2018, last year was a paltry year in reading for me.

	Title	Author	Date Completed	Pages
1	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows	J.K. Rowling	6-Jan	640
2	The Bullet Journal Method	Ryder Carroll	31-Jan	320
3	Daring Greatly	Brene Brown	4-Feb	320
4	Trumpocracy – The Corruption of the American Republic	David Frum	25-Feb	320
5	Drive	Daniel H. Pink	4-Mar	288
6	Twilight	Stephenie Meyer	10-Mar	544
7	The Gift of Failure	Jessica Lahey	12-Mar	304
8	Better – A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance	Atul Gawande	27-Mar	288
9	The Graveyard Book	Neil Gaiman	11-Apr	368
10	Bad Blood	John Carreyrou	9-May	352
11	Atomic Habits	James Clear	23-May	320
12	Built to Last	Jim Collins	25-May	368
13	Digital Minimalism	Cal Newport	30-May	304
14	Right Here Right Now	Stephen J. Harper	14-Jun	240
15	Mastery	Robert Greene	20-Jun	352
16	Complications – A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science	Atul Gawande	25-Jun	288
17	Vagabonding	Rolf Potts	29-Jul	240
18	Becoming Superman	J. Michael Straczynski	4-Aug	480
19	A Game of Thrones	George R.R. Martin	11-Aug	864
20	Ultralearning	Scott H. Young	31-Aug	304
21	Reader Come Home	Maryanne Wolf	11-Sep	272
22	The Threat	Andrew G. McCabe	14-Sep	288
23	Indistractable	Nir Eyal	19-Sep	300
24	Permanent Record	Edward Snowden	22-Sep	352
25	The Path Made Clear	Oprah Winfrey	19-Nov	208
			Total:	8924

I have a few thoughts as to why my reading rate dropped off significantly last year and what I can do about it in the year to come.

Life Pressures

Last year had a few significant pressures on my life that might have affected my desire to read. We started basement renovations early in the year, only to discover our basement’s foundation was cracked, requiring us to source quotes and opinions for repairs. This delayed our basement renovation, which didn’t finish until the summer. The protracted project weighed heavily on our minds throughout the year as we questioned whether we were making the right decisions for our home repairs, or whether we would need to make additional fixes later down the line.

Another big change for me was a change of my job at work. While I wouldn’t say it affected me as strongly as the basement renos, it disrupted my routine enough to impact my desire to focus on reading when I came home from work. Couple that with another full year as Board Chair for the non-profit I head up, and it left me with less cognitive bandwidth for self-improvement.

Podcasts and Music

If 2016 was my year of purchasing books, 2017 saw me start to utilize Libby to access the library, and 2018 was an all-out race for me to go through as many audiobooks as my brain could absorb, I felt a greater push away from books in 2019. Instead of working my way through 8-15 hours of content for one piece of work, I found the shorter format of podcasts more satisfying on my commutes. I enjoyed the variety in topics, shows, and voices.

However I also found I was drawn back to listening to music instead of information. With the sheer volume of books I’ve consumed in the last three years, it was nice to go long stretches without a goal of getting through books (or trying to learn new things) and instead allow the melodies, riffs, percussion, and lyrics sweep me away.

Book Burnout?

Overall, my rate for the year was a bit varied. I started slow in January and February, then picked back up in March. April only saw one book completed, then I found my footing again through May onward. However, October is when my wife and I traveled abroad for our honeymoon, and I never recovered my reading habit for the rest of the year.

Given that I spent most of the last three years focusing on business, personal development, and productivity books, I didn’t feel a strong desire to read those books in 2019. Even among the books I did read from that area, I found looking back that I don’t remember anything of note from those books. Neither the book’s theses nor the examples they offered have stuck with me as I enter the new year.

I’ve mentioned a few time the concept of the animated bibliography on this blog, and I think I’ve hit peak saturation for the genre. I’ve read the canon, and find that reading new books in the genre is resulting in diminishing returns; that is, I’m not really seeing a lot of new insights being offered that leaves me wanting more.

In my list last week, I commented that the books that I’m drawn to now is starting to shift away from business and productivity and more towards moral lessons found in fiction, biography/memoir, and journalistic explorations of current events. That’s not to say I won’t continue to be tempted to pick up the latest book that promises to fix my life, but it does mean that I’m intending to be more selective in what I choose to prioritize.

Assuming I continue to live a somewhat healthy life that is free from accidents, I figure that I have around 45-50 more years of life left. If I read around 3 books consistently per month, I will get another 1,650 books in my lifetime (4 per month is 2,208 books, and 5 books per month is 2,760 more books before I die). While that sounds like a lot, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the number of books that come out each year and the books that have already been written. There is more to life and learning than being more productive or seeking more meaning in one’s life. I’ve grown to appreciate the value of storytelling this past year, and there are a lot of stories out there to sink into. If I only get access to a few thousand more stories, I should make sure they count.

Happy New Year and Stay Awesome,

Ryan