We Are the Weather by Jonathan Safran Foer

I was secretly so happy that Meg didn't get this book for Christmas so that I could buy it and read it ASAP. I think her review would have been interesting because she's a vegetarian, BUT I am a long-time lover of Jonathan Safran Foer's writing so I wanted to get to it first.

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Fortune's Rocks by Anita Shreve

Anita Shreve is one of my favourite fiction authors and she sadly passed away last year at 71 years old from cancer. I wrote a whole author spotlight on her here and can't say enough good things about her writing style. Sadly I only have a handful of her books left unread and I'm torn between whether to savour them or just read them all in one go and eliminate the stress of their finale. I've been wanting to read Fortune's Rocks for a while now because it's set on the American east coast (one of my favourite places) but am sad to report that this is actually one of my least favourite books of hers, if not my actual least favourite.

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Best & Worst of Reads of 2019

The end of a decade! I wish we could tell you guys we'd do a big post of top books of the last ten years, etc. but that sounds way too hard. Instead, here are the top and bottom 3 each of us read in 2019!

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Books We Got For Christmas 2019

Every year we make a running list of 50+ books to make our friends' and families' Christmas shopping a dream. We love doing this list each year as it's almost a good forecast of what to expect on the blog for 2020!

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10:04 by Ben Lerner

I asked for Ben Lerner's 10:04 last year for Christmas after Jonathan Franzen had recommended it. Franzen is one of my favourite fiction writers and I'm always jotting down books I've heard he's mentioned in an interview. He was the one who brought me to Paula Fox's Desperate Characters which I've read multiple times and love. So I finally got around to picking up 10:04 on Franzen's recommendation.

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The Greatest Love Story Ever Told by Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman

I got this book as a gift for Christmas 2018 and have been really excited to read it all year. I love both Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman and I love watching other people find out they're married and have the same excited but full of disbelief reaction I did when I first found out. Couples that last in Hollywood are rare, which also makes them extremely beloved and precious. I also love this celebrity memoir genre, so I had really high hopes for this book.

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Best of the Internet 2019

Everyone knows we love books, but the second true love of our lives? We consume a lot of content be it shows, movies, podcasts, reviews, articles, blogs, etc. and we thought we would diverge from our usual programming to share with you all 10 things from the internet this year that we absolutely loved.

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Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer

When I first met Ben he was much more into football than he was basketball. He used to follow the Oakland Raiders and the Arizona Cardinals. Of the two teams the only things that came to mind for me was the N.W.A. and Pat Tillman... and so I decided to get a copy of Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman so I could never be excluded when people talk football again... It has proven to be a good conversation starter with some sport fans, but Stefan and Ben still prattle on about football and Jon Krakauer's fifth book hasn't proven to be the in I wanted. STILL, I enjoyed reading this and here's what I thought...

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The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

I've been on a kick to read everything Michael Lewis has written since I fell in love with his book Moneyball about this time last year. Since then, I've read The Blind Side, and now The Fifth Risk, his newest book. I thought because I loved Lewis' writing and his nonfiction style that I could read anything on any topic he writes about, but I've since learned American politics is where I draw the line no matter how good a writer he is.

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Motherhood by Sheila Heti

I always check out "best of the year" write ups when it comes to books, and then make a list of the ones I would be interested in reading myself. Sheila Heti's Motherhood happened to be on the New York Times Magazine list last year (published in May 2018) and I decided to buy it after working on our 10 Books About Motherhood list. Motherhood is something all women think about, myself included, and I was really drawn to a book whose central purpose is to weigh the pros and cons.

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Bachelor Nation: Inside the World of America's Favourite Guilty Pleasure by Amy Kaufman

ANOTHER BACHELOR BOOK? I know, I know, but after reading Most Dramatic Ever at the end of the summer I just felt like I had no other choice than to read this one as well and really kill all my brain cells at once with useless facts about a dumb reality show THAT I LOVE. I got this book for Christmas last year and was curious how it would stack up against Showler's pop culture analysis.

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2019 Holiday Gift Guide

Based on popular demand (relative to this blog, lol) we've moved this list up to November to accommodate early shoppers. We love making this list to help people shop for people who are notoriously hard to shop for, the teachers and mother-in-laws, and new boyfriends that you're not sure if you're supposed to get a gift for or not. We really don't think there are any better gifts than books. There's some really fun stuff on the list this year, and a few we're both hoping may be wrapped under the tree for ourselves.

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