My name is Rachael Mead and I am a book addict.

In 2019 I have committed to not buying any books; new or secondhand until I’ve read my way through my stack of unread titles. This is not easy. To illustrate how difficult I’m finding this cold turkey business I’m keeping a record of the books I wanted to buy but managed to resist. This is meant to make me feel like I’m achieving something but the 2017 list ended up just being a shopping list for the following year.

Books I wanted in 2019 but didn’t buy

1. Dark Emu – Bruce Pascoe

Books I wanted in 2017 but didn’t buy

1. To The River – Olivia Laing
2. Mortal Trash – Kim Addonizio
3. Poet’s Companion – Doriane Laux & Kim Addonizio  Found this on my shelves.
4. Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace – D.T. Max
5. Girl with the Curious Hair – David Foster Wallace
6. Ways of Seeing – John Berger
7. The Paris Review Interviews I
8. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
9. Can’t and Won’t: Stories – Lydia Davis
10. Family Furnishings: Selected Stories 1995-2014 – Alice Munro
11. Selected Stories 1968-1994 – Alice Munro
12. The Tree – John Fowles
13. The Gender of Suicide: Knowledge, Production, Theory and Suicidology – Katrina Jaworski
14. The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair – Joël Dicker (translated by Sam Taylor)
15. The Mirror Thief – Martin Seay
16. I’m Thinking of Ending Things – Iain Reid
17. Fear – Dirk Kurbjuweit (translated by Imogen Taylor)
18. The End of the Alphabet – Claudia Rankine
19. Flâneuse : Women walk the city in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London – Lauren Elkin
20. Ecoza – Helen Moore
21. 4321 – Paul Auster
22. Insomniac City – Bill Hayes
23. The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald
24. The Outrun – Amy Liptrot
25. The Green Bell – Paula Keogh
26. Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast – Megan Marshall
27. The Song of Trees – David George Haskell
28. The Transmigration of Bodies – Yuri Herrera
29. Signs Preceding the End of the World – Yuri Herrera
30. The Book – Keith Houston
31. The Nix – Nathan Hill
32. The Lighthouse Road – Peter Geye
33. Wintering – Peter Geye
34. George Washington – Adam Fitzgerald
35. The Dead Ladies Project – Jessa Crispin
36. Why I Am Not A Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto – Jessa Crispin
37. How I Became a North Korean – Krys Lee
38. Shrill – Lindy West
39. Where the Trees Were – Inga Simpson
40. The Crying Place – Lia Hills
41. Penguin Modern Poets 3 (Malika Booker, Sharon Olds & Warsan Shire)
42. The Art of Memoir – Mary Karr – I was given a copy of this as a gift. Yay for lovely people who read lists and love memoir.
43. 4321 – Paul Auster  – I wrote this as number 21 so I’ve just not bought it twice.
44. Things That Helped – Jessica Friedmann
45. In Two Minds – Gordon Parker
46. Lit – Mary Karr
47. The Last Garden – Eva Hornung
48. The Long Run – Catriona Menzies-Pike
49. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness – Arundhati Roy
50. On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes – Alexandra Horowitz
51. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner – Alan Sillitoe