2020 in books

over the past 10 years, i have blogged about my reading here, and in the process of documenting it and being purposeful about prioritizing it, i have increased the amount that i read.  in 2011 when i started this with the goal of reading 25 books, i read 38.  i peaked in 2016 with 58 books, and this year i read 50, about a book a week.  i've tried to make note when i read a diverse book (as in, the main character or the author is not white), and this year i read 14 of those books.  (put another way, i read 36 books this year where the main character AND the author were white, so i've clearly still got a ways to go.)

my favorite books of 2020:

golden child, by claire adam

a woman is no man, by etaf rum

one day, by gene weingarten

disappearing earth, by julia phillips

how to be an antiracist, by ibram x. kendi

the vanishing half, by brit benett

leave the world behind, by rumaan alam

december: 48, 49 & 50

i finished out the year with these books:

the invisible life of addie larue, by v.e. schwab (this is from the book of the month club and it was getting a lot of press - the premise is that the main character makes a deal with the devil, and is cursed to live forever but have no one remember her.  and then, 300 years later, someone DOES remember her.  it was slow in places and definitely won't be my favorite book i read this year, but i liked this one and it kept me interested.)

dept. of speculation, by jenny offill (this is short, in a non-traditional format, with not a ton of plot. it was one of those books that got a lot of great critical acclaim and i liked it and all, but i wouldn't have said it was one of the 10 best books of 2014, but the new york times did.  and because they did, it seems like i should really love it because that makes me smart and nuanced and cultured?  i guess what i'm saying is: this book didn't make a huge impact on me, but i did enjoy it and i thought it was beautifully written, and take that as you will.)

transcendent kingdom, by yaa gyasi (i was highly anticipating this book because i loved her first book (homegoing), and this one was really different - a more narrow story of a scientist, her relationship with her immigrant mother, their relationship to her father, and the reckoning with her brother's death.  i think this author is a beautiful writer and i really liked the way the story was told - going back and forth between the present, as she works in the lab and deals with her mother's depression, and the past, where you see the difficulties arise for her family.  in some ways this is a black immigrant story and in others it's a really universal story of families, and liked that.  i'd highly recommend it!)