Books You Can’t Put Down Reading List

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I loved reading growing up and would many times choose to read over watching TV. Now that I am an adult, I still love reading, but certainly, struggle to find the time to sit down and read as much as I’d like.

Which is why I always make it a goal to read a certain amount of books each year. Over the last couple of years, I have started using Audible to help hit that reading goal and I have loved it.

Someone recently said that they felt like using Audible to read a book was kind of cheating. But I totally disagree!

You are still getting the same content as the person who sits down and reads the physical book, but you are getting to do it while you commute or while you workout. And while I am not a fan of multitasking in most cases, listening to an audiobook while washing dishes is a great way to stimulate your mind while you are doing mindless tasks.

It does help if you are using audible to read books that are hard to put down or books that make you think. If they are boring books, you are way more likely to tune out and then it loses its effect.

To help you pick the best books to spend your time on, I wanted to start a running list of all the books I read this year to help you better decide which books are worth the read! I will keep this list updated as we go throughout the year, so bookmark it for future book recommendations!

The Books You Can’t Put Down in 2019

1. The Crazy Rich Asians series – I read this at the beginning of the year, and loved every book. They were such easy reads, and the characters are so fun. I also love that they are making the series into movies, because the visuals that these books create are really something. And the first movie (came out last year) is the first good rom-com I have seen in years.
2. Atomic Habits by James Clear – This is a great book to read if you are wanting to streamline your life through the use of habits. I found a lot of good tips in this book on how to make good habits easier (ex: if you want to eat more fruit, keep the apples in a basket on the counter, instead of tucked in the fridge, so you see them every time you reach for a snack). I really enjoyed it and highly recommend.
3. It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way – Lysa Turkeurst gets very personal in this book about her divorce and then reconciliation with her husband. It is a fantastic look at grief and how to find faith and joy in the most heartbreaking situations. One of my favorite takeaways from this book was that God does give you more than you can handle, and why that is so.
4. Girl Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis – So when this book came out there seemed to be a lot of controversy about Rachel Hollis having semi-plagiarized some of the contents in this book. I read Girl Stop Apologizing with an open mind and while some of the ideas aren’t groundbreaking and have been said before, I don’t think anyone says them the way Rachel does. She is motivating and tells it like it is. I really like her style and found myself making lots of lists for personal goals as I read through this book.
5. This is Marketing by Seth Godin – I have a marketing background and love to keep learning about best practices for the industry. And Seth Godin is for sure a leading name in the field. However, I didn’t find anything unique about this book. The strategies were all things I had heard before and they weren’t retold in a way that made them more interesting to me. Seth Godin is certainly a whiz at what he does, but I did not find myself making any reference notes in this book.
6. Smart Money, Smart Kids by Rachel Cruze and Dave Ramsey – I read this book for the first time right after Kinsley was born, but it was a little too early to put anything into practice. Now that she is two, she can totally understand the concept of working for money, so we have started to implement some of these strategies. I am a big fan of the Dave Ramsey financial practices and love how this book spells out ways to get your kids to develop a healthy relationship between work and money.
7. Essentialism by Greg McKeown – This book was really good. So many great ideas on how to do more with less. At first pass, some of the strategies in this book seemed impossible to me (ex: saying no to meeting requests – yikes!), but the research behind each point is very convincing. Essentialism definitely made me think about my time differently and I consider myself someone who really understands productivity. Highly recommend.

I will continue to update this post as I read more throughout the year!

What are some of your favorite books of 2019?! I love recommendations for books that make you think or books that are complete page-turners. Let’s hear what you’ve got!

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