Matt Lynn Digital maintained our strong focus on reviewing books in 2019, including concentrating on a few categories. In taking a look back at the books we reviewed this year, we’ll provide a look into all 28 of these books in a single blog. We’ll still order things with best in category at the top, though this year we thought that we’d also group books by subject matter where it made sense to us.
(The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey leads the list as the best book that I read in 2019. We reviewed this book in May).
The top rated book that we read this year came to us thanks to the business, leadership and self-help category thanks to Stephen R. Covey‘s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, which was first published in 1989. This book garnered out highest rating, namely 5-stars on a scale of of one-to-five. The advice, the stories that illustrate the advice for understanding and practice, and the reference to others I’ve read and respect who value Covey as a resource all added up to my best rating for the year.
(Matt Lynn Digital reviewed Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth in July).
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth captured our mind and heart with a clear, well-argued case for grit being a better predictor for future performance than innate talent in school, athletics, business, and life. We rated this highly in the business, leadership and self-help category with 4-stars. Other books in the category, each reviewed at 3.75-stars, included the Robert B. Cialdini book Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade from May, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink from September and To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others, also by Daniel H. Pink, from October. We completed this category with 3.50-stars for Benjamin Hardy‘s book Willpower Doesn’t Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success, which makes a case for environment shaping your outcome in what I feel is a restating of certain elements of the Stephen R. Covey book above.
(Matt Lynn Digital reviewed Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination by Brian Jay Jones in June, giving the book 4.25-stars).
Leading the biographical and autobiographical section for our year in review is the May 2019 Brian Jay Jones biography of Dr. Seuss named Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination. Learning about Theodor Seuss Geisel‘s background, style with an emotional thoroughness not brought to every biography was appreciated. Bruce Springsteen‘s autobiography called Born to Run also earned 4.25-stars from Matt Lynn Digital in March.
(Matt Lynn Digital reviewed Bernie Kosar: Learning To Scramble in February, giving the book 3.75-stars).
The book Bernie Kosar: Learning To Scramble by Bernie Kosar and Craig Stout earned 3.75-stars in our February review. The book takes an introductory look into the health repercussions of brain injury as well as a life in football that might open eyes for many casual fans. Unmasked: A Memoir by Andrew Lloyd Webber earned a similar rating in January for getting into collaborations with Tim Rice as well as some of his potentially more controversial life events and productions. The memoir Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing by Robert Caro earned 3.75-stars in our September review for getting into his writing process.
(Matt Lynn Digital reviewed John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court by Richard Brookhiser in February, giving the book 3.50-stars).
Richard Brookhiser wrote John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court as a chronicle of John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice of the United States of America. Establishing legitimacy for the court was a key accomplishment for Marshall’s time atop the highest court in the land. Bobby Richardson wrote the autobiography Impact Player: Leaving a Lasting Legacy On and Off The Field, which we reviewed in December to a similar 3.50 stars.
(The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2014).
Topping the fiction category for 2019 is 2014 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. Donna Tartt‘s 2013 book The Goldfinch takes a look into the confused adolescence and adulthood of a young man that was not particularly well-served by his environments, his friends and support system, and an explosion that takes his mother early in the story. In our April review of the book, we granted the book 4.25-stars.
(Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury earned a 4-star review by Matt Lynn Digital in September).
Three works of fiction earning 4.0-stars from us in 2019 included the book Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, the book Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie in November, and the book In the Distance by Hernán Díaz, also reviewed in November. Respectively getting into science fiction, a murder detection, and the difficulty of being foreign, the books each offer something unique and curious in ways that I appreciated.
(Matt Lynn Digital reviewed Middlemarch by George Eliot, also known as Mary Ann Evans, in May, giving the book 3.75-stars).
Mary Ann Evans, writing as George Eliot in the Victorian Era, earned 3.75-stars for Middlemarch in May. The book is a commentary on society of the era from a female point of view, which was uncommon at the time of publication. A more contemporary book with arguably similar aims, The Power by Naomi Alderman, earned 3.25-stars from us in January. The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction as a true crime novel, also garnering 3.25-stars from Matt Lynn Digital in July. The book The Whistler by John Grisham earned 2.50-stars from us in February. A look back to the book Trevayne by Robert Ludlum, a book that I read in 1992, also earned a look in 2019 from us to a rating of 3-stars.
(The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson earned a 4-star review by Matt Lynn Digital in January).
Rolling into a kind of biography of time and place, with a category that I will call nonfiction, begins with Erik Larson‘s offering of an intertwined narrative of the Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, the architect of the exposition Daniel Hudson Burnham, and the infamy of a contemporaneous serial killer Herman Webster Mudgett (aka Dr. Henry Howard Holmes) in his 2003 book The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America. Others in the same category with a similar rating include the book Tigerland: 1968-1969: A City Divided, a Nation Torn Apart, and a Magical Season of Healing by Wil Haygood from August and the book The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb by Sam Kean from October.
(Matt Lynn Digital reviewed The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer in June, giving the book 3.75-stars).
In the nonfiction category including biographical insight into time and place, David Treuer‘s January 2019 book The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present earned 3.75-stars in our June review. The book offered an affirmative, provoking, and first-person defining look into what it means to be a Native American in America.
(Matt Lynn Digital reviewed The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff in July, giving the book 3.25-stars).
The final two books reviewed in 2019 get into a more philosophical mindset, with the book Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick earning 3.50-stars from us in our January review. The book itself looks into the notions of government taxation, aiming to justify an economic theory based on the British philosopher John Locke. The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, on the other hand, raises the Eastern philosophy of Taoism to a western audience raised on Western philosophy through the characters of A. A. Milne‘s Winnie the Pooh stories. The book The Tao of Pooh earned a 3.25-star rating.
Matt – Monday, December 30, 2019
(Benjamin Hoff wrote the companion books The Tao of Pooh and 
(
Matt Lynn Digital 