Best books of 2019

I had set a goal for reading 62 books in 2019, but so far, I've only read 51.  I blame it all on plugging away at the Laura Ingalls Wilder biography, Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser, for about a month.  It was quite thorough - perhaps too thorough - but I made it all the way through.  I didn't read as much before, during and after our trip to the Netherlands.  There was too much to see and do, and when I did sit down to read, it wasn't long before I fell asleep.

My favorite book was Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owen, which tells the story of a girl, abandoned in a primitive cabin on the coast of South Carolina.  She doesn't have anyone to talk to or play with, so spends her days observing and drawing animals, plants, and the waters around her.   She is a heroine in every sense of the word.  I had resisted reading the book because "everyone" was doing so, but I finally broke down, zoomed through, and thought it was just wonderful.    Other books I enjoyed were:

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine - Gail Honeyman
    A quirky heroine finds love.
Bookshop of Yesterdays - Amy Meyerson
    A young woman inherits a bookshop but has to move across the country and answer clues in the books before making it her own.
The Never-Open Desert Diner - James Anderson (and its sequel Lullaby Road)
     A down on his luck trucker helps who he can along his route which includes some unusual and nasty characters.
An Address in Amsterdam - Mary Dingee Filmore (who I saw in person twice - what a great speaker!)
     A young Jewish girl works for the Underground during the Nazi occupation in WW II.
Beneath a Scarlet Sky - Mark Sullivan
      A young Italian man works as a spy during WW II.

I also really enjoyed Charlaine Harris' "Shakespeare" series and devoured them all - maybe 5 or 6 in a few weeks.  And of course, I loved the latest installments by Louise Penny (A Better Man) and Jacqueline Winspear (The American Agent).