I’ve never been a person to track sleep or steps. I haven’t owned a scale in decades and have no idea how much money I spend in a given month. (Sorry, financial planner!) But there’s one thing I do track religiously: the books I read. Don’t get me wrong. I am by no means a wildly prolific reader—I average about 35 books a year, which is nothing compared to the 100 my best friend regularly plows through. But after writing them all down (along with a few notes about which I liked most and why), I realized I’ve read well over 175 books in the past half-decade. Not too shabby!

Certain themes emerge: I love quirky non-fiction that teaches me about a subject I don’t know (a history of butts, a deep-dive into how parking explains the world) and I will read literally anything by Curtis Sittenfeld or Elizabeth Strout. But there are also some outliers. I went through a Stephen King phase last year. I hated Lessons in Chemistry, which everybody else on the planet adored.

But as for a favorite book…I trolled my lists from the past five years, and while it was so very hard to choose amongst my favorites (James by Percival Everett! Tom Lake by Ann Patchett! There There by Tommy Orange!), there was one book that stood out from the rest: Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell.

It's Only June, But I Think I've Already Found My Favorite Book of the Year