At the end of 2018, among the vague resolutions I made for self-improvement—better work-life balance, resting more often, and so on—I set one clear goal for the new year: I would read thirty-six books.

I established some rules:

The books had to be read external to my academic research,
They had to be books I had not read before, and
If I chose to abandon a given book, I had to read at least one third for it to count.

Simple enough.

It was only as 2019 came to its end and people began making their resolutions for 2020 I learned that for certain members of the reading and writing communities the reading goal is somewhat controversial.

Proponents of the reading goal are in favour of a given person striving to read more and (in the best case) better themselves, while detractors tend to object to the goal’s equation of reading with consumption, claiming that the overarching goal distracts a person from taking in what they’re reading, since they’re not reading purely for reading’s sake.

I can tell you right now: I have no idea how many books I read in the years prior to 2019. When I was a kid, I absolutely read greater than thirty-six books a year—but I’m almost certain that 2019 was the first year in at least a decade that I read above even twenty.

The reason for this: actively choosing to do a given thing to a given degree fosters commitment. It’s the difference between going to the gym when you have time, and going to the gym three times a week. Either way, you have a gym membership, and therefore the accompanying intention to exercise—but without making the active choice to regiment that exercise, your programme is likely to be less effective, even if going ‘when you have time’ means that you might on occasion go four times a week.

So too with reading. By setting the clear goal to read what equated to three books a month, I could hold myself accountable, which meant that I did indeed read. And I did hit the goal, which is obviously a positive outcome and an overall 2019 success.

That said, I am also sympathetic to critics of the reading goal. There was more than once when I was somewhat rushing through the end of a book because I wanted to get to the next one. And on January 30th, I was listening to the audiobook of Hayek’s The Fatal Conceit at 1.25x speed until 10pm so I could hit the goal before the festivities of the 31st commenced. I’m going to have to go back and listen to the last couple chapters again, because I couldn’t digest them in such quick succession.

Now, I don’t know if these behaviours were entirely caused by the goal—I’ve been half-engaged and rushing to the end of a book before—but I’m sure the pressure of meeting the goal was certainly a factor.

On balance, though, it feels like setting the goal was worth it. I read and learned more than I have in years. I also kept notes on most of the books I read—which I have opted not to reproduce here, but which I strongly recommend doing for the sake of recalling what you gained from a book at the time you read it.

I read some truly great books this year, and I can confirm that I will be setting a reading goal again in 2020. I’m not going to try to one-up myself, or anything like that; I’m just going to aim to read thirty-six books again, and if I outdo myself then that’s great. And if I don’t, then I still read far more books than I would have had I not set the goal in the first place.

And so, without further ado, I present a full spreadsheet of all the books I read this year.

Books are initially listed by Order Read, but you can change the view to sort them by Genre, Rating, Page Count, and Consumption Style. You can get an idea of what I read, what I liked, and what might be worth checking out.

Enjoy.

2019 Reading List