In 2019, I reconnected with books. This is largely thanks to Libby, the app that made it easy to check out and read books, and the New York Public Library, from which I got a free card.

I did a mix of reading and listening to books, largely listening to one while I ran and did chores, and reading one at night and on weekends. Libby/your library probably give you access to a bunch of e-books and audiobooks, so give both a shot!

Here are the books I read or listened to in 2019 in the order that I consumed them. After a few warmup/fun books, I started reading books from the Pulitzer prize list for previous years in a bunch of the book subcategories, as well as recommendations from friends.

  • Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
  • Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • Night by Elie Wiesel
  • Never Lose a Customer Again by Joey Coleman
  • The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
  • Catching Fire (Hunger Games 2) by Suzanne Collins
  • Mockingjay (Hunger Games 3) by Suzanne Collins
  • Traction: How a startup can achieve explosive customer growth by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares
  • Blood in the water: The Attica prison uprising of 1971 and its legacy by Heather Ann Thompson
  • Evicted: Poverty and profit in the American city by Matthew Desmond
  • The underground railroad by Colson Whitehead
  • Hamilton: The revolution by Jeremy McCarter and Lin-Manuel Miranda
  • It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried
  • The Blood telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a forgotten genocide by Gary J. Bass
  • Hillbilly Elegy: A memory of a family and culture in crisis by J. D. Vance
  • Locked In: The true causes of mass incarceration and how to achieve real reform by John Pfaff
  • The Well-tempered City by Jonathan F. P. Rose
  • Black Flags: The rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick
  • The Triple Agent by Joby Warrick
  • The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer
  • The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
  • The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantú
  • Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin
  • Ghost Work: How to stop silicon valley from building a new global underclass by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri
  • Strangers drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help by Larissa MacFarquhar
  • All the Light we Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
  • We Fed an Island by José Andrés with Richard Wolffe
  • Sapiens: A brief history of humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
  • Less by Andrew Sean Greer
  • Amity and Prosperity: one family and the fracturing of America by Eliza Griswold
  • Ghost Wars: the secret history of the CIA Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll