2019 Reading REview

I read 47 books with a total of 18,812 pages. 11 of those books were in Dutch, 30 in German and 6 in English language. 8 books were works of nonfiction, the rest were novels or collections of short stories.

I started reading some of the Russian classics in this year: Pushkin, Gogol, Chekhov and of course Dostoevsky (I already read a Tolstoy years ago, not to worry). My favorite book of this year in reading was The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCollough - I just love chunky family histories set in the past! The biggest disappointment for me was The Secret History by Donna Tartt - I loved The Goldfinch, which I read a couple of weeks earlier, so had high hopes for her most celebrated novel, but it didn't do it for me. I was happy to finally read a beautifully illustrated edition of A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, which had been on my shelf ever since winning it after a biology contest back in high school. The choices for books were rather random: titles that spoke to me in the library, books that had been sitting on my shelves for years, recommendations by friends as well as a couple of classics from the Story Lines Reading list. Here’s an overview in chronological order of my reading.

Woman reading by Ulisse Caputo

BOOKS read in 2019:

1. Geert Mak – Verleden van Nederland (2009)
2. Multatuli - Max Havelaar (1860)
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3. F. Scott Fitzgerald – Tender is the Night (1934)
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4. Fyodor Dostoyevski – The Brothers Karamasov (1879)
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5. Niklas Natt och Dag – 1793 (2017)
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6. Tonke Dragt – The Song of Seven (1966)
7. Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens (2011)
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8. Jan Paul Schutten & Floor Rieder - Het wonder van jou en je biljoenen bewoners (2015)
9. Jan Paul Schutten & Floor Rieder - Het mysterie van niks en oneindig veel snot (2018)
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10. Annie Proulx – The Shipping News (1993)
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11. Landon Y. Jones - The Essential Lewis and Clark (1999)
12. Eric Kincaid - Nursery Songs and Rhymes (2005)  
13. Anna Romer - Under the Midnight Sky (2019)
14. Colleen McCullough – The Thorn Birds (1977)
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15. Michael Brenner - Kleine jüdische Geschichte 
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16. Bill Bryson - A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)
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17. Nathan Englander – What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank (2012)
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18. Donna Tartt – The Secret History (1992)
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19. Ray Bradbury – Something Wicked This Way Comes
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20. Antoine Weijzen - Racisme in Amerika(2019)
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21. Jerzy Kosinski – The Painted Bird (1965)
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22. P.L. Travers – Mary Poppins (1934)
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23. Nathan Englander – Dinner At The Center of the Earth (2017)
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24. Donna Tartt – The Goldfinch (2013)
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25. Alan Moore - V for Vendetta (1990)
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26. Rien Poortvliet  - Hij was een van ons (1974)
27. Charles Dickens - David Copperfield (1849)
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28. Yuval Noah Harari - Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow (2017)
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29. Cees Nooteboom – Rituals (1980)
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30. Gerard Reve – The Evenings (1947)
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31. Hanna Caspian – Gut Greifenau #2 (2018)
32. Roderick Cave – The History of Children’s Books in 100 Books (2017)
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33. Rudyard Kipling – The Jungle Book #1-2 (1894)
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34. John Meade Falkner – Moonfleet (1898)
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35. Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart (1959)
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36. Vera Buck - Das Buch der vergessenen Artisten (2018) 
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37. Charlotte Brontë - The Professor (1857)
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38. Mikhail Bulgakov – Heart of a Dog (1925)
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39. Anton Chekhov – Uncle Vanya (1897)
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40. E.M. Forster – A Passage to India (1924)
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41. Bert Decorte – Thijl Ulenspieghel
42. Annie Proulx – The Green Accordeon (1996)
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43. Nikolai Gogol – Petersburg Tales (1843)
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44. Saul Bellow – Herzog (1964)
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45. Baroness Orczy - Scarlet Pimpernel (1905)
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46. Alexander Pushkin – The Captain‘s Daughter (1836)
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