Zenobia’s Books of 2019

2019 has been a year of books for me, more than ever. I have been fortunate to connect with some amazing book lovers around the world and as 2019 draws to an end, I’m connecting with some of community members to learn more about them and what they have been up to this year. Please welcome Zenobia, who I met through Twitter. Let’s start off with learning a bit about her and the importance of books in her life.

Note that Zenobia’s words are in italics and since this is a bookish discussion, all book links open in a new tab so that you can refer to them afterwards.

Welcome to Armed with A Book, Zenobia. 🙂 Tell me a little bit about your love for books.

Hi Kriti! I’m so excited and thank you so much for having me be a part of this. I LOVE books! You could say that I’ve grown up around books. My mum loved reading so we always had various kinds of books lying around the house. Her love for reading eventually passed down to both my brother and I as we grew older. This love for reading then led me to start my book blog.

And I’m excited to see the new bookblog in the near future! 🙂

Do you participate in the Goodreads Reading Challenge? How do you usually choose this goal and what was your goal for this year?

Yes I did! I tried last year and failed miserably so I made up my mind to try again this year and keep to the goal I had set. Since I work full time I don’t have that much time to read so I decided to make my goal a little more realistic. Taking everything into consideration, I settled on 24 books this year. Two books a month was easy enough to manage. In fact, I exceeded my goal by 3 books!

That’s always good to hear. All subsequent books are bonuses! How do you choose which books you are going read?

The Book Blogging community and Bookstagram play a big role in helping me choose my next read. It’s usually a recommendation that I read online that leads me to a certain book. Apart from that, I check out the bestseller or “editors pick” section in bookstores or online stores for suggestions. I also have a few of my favourite authors whose books I love to read.

Has the bookstagram and book blogging community helped you in any way this year? Be it book recommendations or anything?

I became a part of the bookstagram and book blogging community in July this year and there have been a steady stream of book recommendations and ideas for book staging. Following #advancedreadercopies has let me hear about books that are still months away from publication but already have a cult-like following (I’m thinking The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern and There will come a darkness by Katy Rose). The other day, I was thinking of buying The Starless Sea and I ordered it. I thought it had been out forever but that day was its publication day! 🙂

The Starless Sea is on my TBR too. I love the cover! Talking about covers, do “pretty covers” influence you in anyway when it comes to purchasing or reading a book?

Guilty. There are definitely some book covers that I have seen on Instagram which I have added to my TBR but not gotten around to buying yet.

About the books this year

I believe that every story I read has something to offer and changes me in ways. Was there such an impactful read for you this year? Were there any books this year that challenged your thinking and you learned a lot from?

Not really. I wouldn’t say there were books that challenged my thinking process but there were quite a few that left an everlasting impact. Books that made me think about the story days and weeks after I had finished reading it.

That’s great! More on those books in a little bit. Did you read any books that had practical strategies to apply to life?

I read two books this year that helped me. The first was How to be a Bawse by Lilly Singh aka Superwoman on YouTube. This book is a lovely self-help guide to living a happy life. Self confidence and self love were a few things that I learned from this book. The second was 100 Days of Sunlight by Abbie Emmons. This book showed me that no matter what life throws at you we should always look at the brighter side of it because hardship doesn’t last forever.

Lilly Singh is absolutely hilarious! I did not know she had written a book! There was a clip of her’s floating on Facebook couple months back about the Indian way of parenting vs the western way.

I know it is hard to give recommendations, especially when we read so many books in a year! If you had to choose, tell me about four books that I should check out and why.

The four books that I loved this year and that I have been recommending to everyone I meet are:

• 100 Days of Sunlight by Abbie Emmons:
  I had read a review for this book online and fell in love with the story immediately. At the time it was only available on NetGalley and I was overjoyed when I got accepted for the review. It’s a cute feel-good love story between two teenagers who lean on each other and help each other in overcoming hardships and tragedy. I love this book and it’s an instant classic. Definitely one of my favorite books I’ve read in a very long time.

• Heads You Win by Jeffrey Archer:
  Jeffrey Archer is one of my favorite authors. The first book I read as an adult was written by him and since then his writings have always had a special place in my heart. What I love about this book is the unique writing style that will sort of blow your mind by the time you get to the end of the book. This book is a thrilling read and keeps you hooked onto the very last page.

• All The Light You Cannot See by Anthony Doerr:
  This was another book that I saw on Bookstagram that influenced me to buy it. I love historical fiction, especially books set around WW2. This book took me the longest to read since it’s so full of history but I loved every bit of it. It is about a blind French girl who has to live through WW2 and a German boy who grows up in WW2 era German and how both their lives cross in the unlikeliest manner. This book was one of the first that actually showed me both sides of the war and both ideologies. It’s a Pulitzer prize winning book so that tells us a lot about how good the book is.

• The Sunlight Plane by Damini Kane:
  This one is really special to me since its written by a close friend of mine and is her debut novel. Without any bias from my side, this book is simply incredible. It’s about two young boys growing up in urban Mumbai and who form a fantastic friendship. The book covers several “taboo” themes like bullying in schools and child abuse. It shows us what happens behind closed doors in “well to do” families, things that many of us would rather not believe true.

What about you? What are your top books for this year?

These all sounds lovely! All the light you cannot see has been on my list for a while. I’ll share some recommendations but first I have to say – we need to talk about the award winning books in a separate blog post in the future! I have a tried a couple of them and haven’t always succeeded into getting into them, as good as the final takeaways could be.

I love historical fiction as well so I’ll mention the books from my 2019 pile that fell in this category and you might enjoy:

• When a toy dog became a wolf and the moon broke curfew by Hendrika de Vries:
  This is actually a memoir set in the time around the second world war in the Netherland. The story is about a girl named Henny whose father is taken as a Prisoner of War when she is young. She and her mother do their best to support each other during these trying times. The power of storytelling and imagination is key throughout this book, as you can probably guess from the title. I had the opportunity to talk to Hendrika (Q&A link) and she mentioned All the Light You Cannot See as one of her favorite books.

• The Atomic City Girls by Janet Beard:
  This one was also centered around the Second World War, specifically the Manhattan Project. During the time the atomic bomb was being perfected, a number of girls were employed in the day-to-day operations of the research facilities. This novel is about one of these girls and the life in the town of Oak Ridge.

• The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff:
  I read this one earlier in the year and had found it while browsing the bookstore for a read. Set in London, Grace finds an abandoned suitcase at the train station. She can’t help looking in and it has head shots of girls, who look to be part of some program. The lady whom the suitcase belongs to dies in an accident minutes after Grace finds the suitcase. Unable to quiet the questions that keep coming up in her mind, Grace goes on a journey to find the identity of the girls and where they are today. It’s a moving story about the past and how it gets hidden between all the accounts.

Oh wow! I have heard of a few of these, added them all to my TBR for next year, maybe? The list just keeps getting longer and longer sigh.

2019 has truly been a great year of reading for me. This year I expanded my reading shelf and tried to expose myself to various kinds of books. Be it formats or genres. I started reading ebooks as well as listened to some audiobooks. I also pushed myself to read genres I never read before like Fantasy and Literary fiction. Did you try anything new in 2019? Something book related that you never did before?

I tried taking part in blog tours! Those were quite new for me. At first I thought reviewing books was a must to take part in blog tours, but I learned from my friends, that I can still be a part of blog tours by hosting the author over for a guest post or a Top 10 list. That was a relief because sometimes, it was really hard to squeeze in a blog tour book between everything else that I was wanting to read.

The Year Ahead

Would you change anything, whether it is your reading habits, review routine or reading goal, for 2020?

I guess I’d try to spend more time reading daily instead of trying to fit everything in on the weekends. It gets really hard after a while which then makes me feel overwhelmed.

Zenobia’s Little Book Bingo

I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Zenobia! Please let us know what you think and share with your circles! Our handles will be tagged if you use the tweet below.

Next up, on the 18th, I’ll have Ariel over to learn about her year in books.

Thanks for reading! ❤️