2020 in Reading

(Previous years: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, which has 2015 copied at the end)

In early March, I stopped by the campus library. The popular reading section has strict borrowing periods, so I only grabbed four books. “These should get me through spring break,” I thought.

Cue the clusterf***.

Truly, what to say about reading in 2020. In previous years, writing this post has felt celebratory; this time around I’m hoping to land on therapeutic rather than doomposting. But I have to be honest: there were a few months there where I truly was not myself, which manifested in many different ways including not being able to read. Period. In late March and April, I couldn’t read a book, couldn’t read the newspaper, couldn’t read Twitter. For someone whose entire MO is consuming information, it was incredibly disconcerting. On good days, I filled this empty space with time outdoors; on bad days, I hid in the closet and just tried to breathe. I know that everyone’s 2020 had its own challenges, and I was incredibly lucky in my situation. But it was still tough.

The book that brought me out of this period was Planetwalker by John Francis. Francis is a Black environmentalist who grew up in Philadelphia, and who stopped riding in motorized vehicles in 1971. Two years later, he stopped speaking. He maintained these practices for 22 and 17 years, respectively. Looking back, I can see how a story of someone whose life suddenly shifts dramatically has some resonance with this year, but at the time of reading I was just focused on his descriptions of the natural world, and grateful to read something that didn’t have the threat of a plot or emotional stakes the way that fiction does. 2020: the year that “plot” and “emotional stakes” felt like threats. I read a few pages each night until I fell asleep — this was also the period in which I was trying to “program my dreams” by focusing on something pleasant right before sleep, to mixed results.

Eventually, though, I got back to my normal reading practices, with one exception: NO MORE BOOKS ABOUT PLAGUE. Ever since reading The Hot Zone in high school, I have read just about every book on plagues/viruses I could find, from nonfiction (And the Band Played On, Ebola, How to Survive a Plague, The Coming Plague, The Ghost Map, Pale Rider, The Great Influenza, On Immunity) to fiction (The Plague, Station Eleven, Year One, The Summer Prince, The Stand, Fever, The Fever, Blindness, The Dog Stars), and I’m sure there are some I’m forgetting. This year, when Emma Donohue’s Pull of the Stars was available on my Overdrive (digital library app) account, I did my best impression of someone who stumbles upon a snake and backs slowly away. Maybe someday…maybe not. Instead, now I read every book I can find about birds and birdwatchers. They tend to be pretty gentle, and that’s exactly what I need. I hope you can find the genre/topic that suits your needs these days, too.

Below, the full list with a little bit of commentary.

• The Old Drift, Namwali Serpell
• Good Talk, Mira Jacob (maybe the first graphic novel to appear on my year in reading lists?)
• Wayward Son, Rainbow Rowell
• The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead (this book BLEW ME AWAY. It was an early candidate for best read of the year, and I don’t think anything else displaced it.)
• The Library Book, Susan Orlean
• Disappearing Earth, Julia Phillips
• The Water Cure, Sophie Mackintosh (Hmm, this might count as another plague book — I read it in The Before Times)
• Catch and Kill, Ronan Farrow
• Inland, Tea Obreht (one of the ill-fated spring break library books! I returned them on Thanksgiving lol)
• Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evaristo
• Black Water Rising, Attica Locke (Locke has found her way to my “I will read everything this writer publishes” list)
• Planetwalker, John Francis
• The Stranger Diaries, Elly Griffiths
• The Dutch House, Ann Patchett (shoutout Elkins Park!)
• Kingbird Highway, Kenn Kaufman
• Lady in the Lake, Laura Lippman (after reading this, I was happy to discover Lippman’s extensive back catalog, and also read through the first 8 of her 12 book Tess Monaghan series. If you enjoy female detectives and a good sense of place — in this case, Baltimore — check them out!)
• Long Bright River, Liz Moore (oh how I wish Liz Moore had a back catalog like Laura Lippman’s! I’ll just look forward to her next one. Another female detective tale with a great sense of place — this time, North Philly.)
• Lost Among the Birds, Neil Hayward
• The Third Rainbow Girl, Emma Eisenberg (shout out to another local author, and a good follow on Twitter)
• Hill Woman, Cassie Chambers (is this the year my list stops taking potshots at J.D. Vance? HECK NO. There are more rigorous rejoinders to Vance’s BS Appalachia portrait, but this one was high on the readability scale. I also very much enjoyed reading scathing reviews of the Hillbilly Elegy movie this year. I have a sinking feeling that Vance may be positioning himself to fill a Trump-shaped void in our national scene, and I HATE IT.)
• The Shadow King, Maaza Mengiste
• Heaven, My Home, Attica Locke
• The View from Hawk Mountain, Michael Harwood
• How to Be An Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi
• Red at the Bone, Jacqueline Woodson
• Season at the Point, Jack Connor (shout out Cape May!)
• Started Early, Took My Dog, Kate Atkinson
• In Her Shoes, Jennifer Weiner
• Big Sky, Kate Atkinson
• Conviction, Denise Mina
• Excellent Online Teaching, Aaron Johnson (one of these things is not like the other!)
• The Confessions of Frannie Langton (Sara Collins)
• The Guest List, Lucy Foley (File this under the: “After 2 weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time” meme)
• Garlic and Sapphires, Ruth Reichl
• All Things Reconsidered, Roger Tory Peterson
• Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich
• The Grail Bird, Tim Gallagher (I want to believe!)
• The Heir Affair, Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, aka the team behind GoFugYourself
• The Hunting Party, Lucy Foley (See above, but replace “private island” with “remote lodge.” I enjoyed both of these Foley books, but I’d like to see the next one do something a little bit different.)
• The Mirror and the Light (I DID IT! I finished the very long Hilary Mantel trilogy. I think by the time I finished this last one, I was finally starting to get drawn in. This is a very bad take that I can’t defend, but it felt like reading oatmeal.)
• The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett. (I enjoyed The Mothers, but I think this book leveled up. Excited to see what comes next.)
• When No One is Watching, Alyssa Cole (Cole is probably best known for her Reluctant Royals romance novels, so I thought, “How scary can this horror novel be?” Cut to me, at 2AM, unable to sleep.)
• American Spy, Lauren Wilkerseon
• Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison (when I said Nickel Boys never lost the lead in best book I read this year, I forgot about this one. No one can compete with Toni Morrison, and that’s ok.)
• The Night Watchmen, Louise Erdrich. (Maybe my favorite of Erdrich’s uniformly excellent books? In any case, a real high point to end the year on).