What I Read – 2020

Here’s where I share my entire reading list for the year as well as a few observations. Primarily for my own interest but feel free to let me know how it compares to your reading year or if we read some (or a lot) of the same books!

Some stats on my 2020 reading:

• Read 87 books. This was less than my total (104) from last year and less than my goal (100).
• 23 of my books were non-fiction. 63 were fiction. One was an anthology of mixed fiction, poetry, and non-fiction.
• 57 books were written by women; 23 by men. Others were either anthologies or the gender of the author was not stated.
• Genres: I read 6 kids or YA novels, 2 graphic novels, 10 memoirs, 5 Christian books, 2 parenting books, 1 science fiction novel, and 7 short story collections.
• I read one book this year that I had read before.
• Where did my books come from? I read a lot of ARCS this year: 35, to be exact. 24 of my books came from the library. 10 of them were thrifted. 6 were borrowed. 11 were books that I bought brand new at some point (whether this year or another). 2020 definitely had an affect on these stats. I bought more books new, thrifted fewer books, and got out fewer books from the library than I otherwise would have.
• Another 2020 change: I read 13 e-books. The majority of these were read when the library was closed and instead I turned to borrowing e-books from the library. Some of the ARCs I read were also in e-book form as the number of physical ARCs I received was drastically reduced in the second half of the year. While I’m glad to have had e-books available in the spring and I’ll likely borrow some again from the library, it solidified that I vastly prefer physical books.
• While I didn’t read as many translations as I had hoped, there are still a number of different nationalities represented in my reading. Americans lead once again at 39 authors. Canadians show up with 22 writers, followed by the English with 9. The Irish make a good showing with 4 and then Australians and Swedish at 2 each. Other nationalities represented include Hungarian, Korean, Ghanian, German, Brazilian, Scottish, Singaporean, Japanese, Nigerian, Vietnamese, and Venezuelan. (Numbers are less exact here because I will count twice for authors who identify from more than one country.)
• January was my best reading month (12 books) while November and December were tied for last with 4 books each.
• How did I do for my bookish goals? Uh, not great. Of the goals I set for myself, the only one I accomplished was reviewing 75 books here on the blog and even that I just squeaked in at the last moment. 2020 though was a year of letting things go and one of those things was the self-pressure to accomplish certain goals. When the library closed in March, I let go of my goals to read a certain number of translations and when the Writers Festival was cancelled I let go of my Writers Fest Challenge. In June I started thinking more about diversity in my reading and added more BIPOC authors to my TBR. Like a lot of other readers in 2020, my reading suffered from a major slump at the beginning of both lockdowns (March and November). Of all the things to feel disappointed about in 2020, not reaching my reading goals is not one of them. I read some great books, I found a lot of fun and connection through my blog, and I am looking forward to the books 2021 will bring.

2020:

1. Pages & Co: Tilly and the Bookwanderers – Anna James
2. Strange Planet – Nathan Pyle
3. Strange Hotel – Eimear McBride
4. The Escapist – David Puretz
5. 100 Times: A Memoir of Sexism – Chavisa Woods
6. Introverted Mom – Jamie C. Martin
7. Dear Girls – Ali Wong
8. The Marrow Thieves – Cherie Dimaline
9. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous – Ocean Vuong
10. The Truants – Kate Weinberg
11. Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood – Melissa B. Kruger
12. A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing – Eimear McBride
13. The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant – Michel Tremblay
14. The No-Cry Sleep Solution – Elizabeth Pantley
15. Bleak House – Charles Dickens 
16. The Man in the High Castle – Philip K. Dick
17. The Man Who Saw Everything – Deborah Levy
18. Last Impressions – Joseph Kertes
19. Agnes, Murderess – Sarah Leavitt
20. No More Nice Girls – Lauren McKeon
21. The Regrets – Amy Bonnaffons
22. Ducks, Newburyport – Lucy Ellmann
23. Apeirogon – Colum McCann
24. If I Had Your Face – Frances Cha
25. We Two Alone – Jack Wang
26. The Mercies – Kiran Milwood Hargrave
27. Lost Boy Found – Kirsten Alexander
28. The Moment of Tenderness – Madeleine L’Engle
29. Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi
30. Little Eyes – Samanta Schweblin
31. Moonfleet – J. Meade Falkner
32. Beach Read – Emily Henry 
33. A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth – Daniel Mason
34. Still – Emma Hansen
35. They Said This Would Be Fun – Eternity Martis (McClelland & Stewart, 2020)
36. The Penguin Book of Mermaids – ed. by Cristina Bacchilega and Marie Alohalani Brown (Penguin Books, 2019)
37. Behind the Scenes at the Museum – Kate Atkinson (Picador, 1995)
38. Hold on to Your Kids – Gordon Neufeld & Gabor Mate (Vintage Canada, 2005)
39. A Good Man is Hard to Find – Flannery O’Connor (A Harvest Book, 1983)
40. How We Disappeared  – Jing-Jing Lee (Hanover Square Press, 2020)
41. Shiner – Amy Jo Burns (Riverhead Books, 2020)
42. This Little Light – Lori Lansens (Random House Canada, 2019)
43. Drifts – Kate Zambreno (Riverhead Books, 2020)
44. On the Beach – Nevil Shute (Vintage Books, 2009)
45. Uncommon Ground – Timothy Keller & John Inazu (Nelson Books, 2020)
46. Becoming Mrs. Lewis – Patti Callahan (Thomas Nelson, 2018)
47. The Doctor of Aleppo – Dan Maryland (Blackstone Publishing, 2020)
48. Etched in my Memory – xwu’p’a’lich Barbara Higgins (Creator’s Touch Press, 2017)
49. Rebent Sinner – Ivan Coyote (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019)
50. When the Red Gates Opened – Dori Jones Yang (She Writes Press, 2020)
51. God and the Pandemic – N.T. Wright (Zondervan, 2020)
52. The Family Clause – Jonas Hansen Khemiri) (translated from the Swedish by Alice Menzies) (Anansi, 2020)
53. The Vanishing Half – Brit Bennett (Riverhead Books, 2020)
54. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou (Ballantine Books, 2015)
55. Me and White Supremacy – Layla F. Saad (Sourcebooks, 2020)
56. Five Wives – Joan Thomas (Harper Collins Canada, 2019)
57. Tokyo Ueno Station – Yu Miri (Riverhead Books, 2020)
58. Children of Blood & Bone  – Tomi Adeyemi (Henry Holt, 2018)
59. Sisters – Daisy Johnson (Riverhead Books, 2020)
60. If I Had Two Wings – Randall Kenan (W.W. Norton & Company, 2020)
61. The Daughters of Foxcote Manor – Eve Chase (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2020)
62. Between Inca Walls – Evelyn Kohl LaTorre (She Writes Press, 2020)
63. Radicalized – Cory Doctorow (Tor, 2019)
64. True Story – Kate Reed Petty (Viking, 2020)
65. Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies – Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Anansi, 2020)
66. Molly of the Mall – Heidi L.M. Jacobs (NeWest Press, 2019)
67. Family in Six Tones – Lan Cao and Harlan Margaret Van Cao (Viking, 2020)
68. God In My Everything – Ken Shigematsu (Zondervan, 2013)
69. Hamnet & Judith – Maggie O’Farrell (Knopf Canada, 2020)
70. The Nickel Boys – Colson Whitehead (Bond Street Books, 2020)
71. The Apothecary – Maile Meloy (Puffin Books, 2011)
72. How Much of These Hills is Gold – C. Pam Zhang (Riverhead Books, 2020)
73. Mother Mother – Jessica O’Dwyer (Apprentice House Press, 2020)
74. The Bird King – G. Willow Wilson
75. The Party Upstairs – Lee. Conell (Penguin Press, 2020)
76. Bunny – Mona Awad (Hamish Hamilton, 2019)
77. It Would Be Night in Caracas – Karina Sainz Borgo (translated from the Spanish by Elizabeth Bryer) (HarperVia, 2019)
78. The Summer Book – Tove Jansson (translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal) (New York Review Book, 2008)
79. Prayer – Philip Yancey (Zondervan, 2007)
80. Real Life – Brandon Taylor (Riverhead Books, 2020)
81. Monday Was A Simpler Time: Reflections on a Pandemic (self-publication, 2020)
82. Waiting for a Star to Fall – Kerry Clare (Doubleday Canada, 2020)
83. Halfbreed – Maria Campbell (McClelland & Stewart, 2019)
84. He Must Like You – Danielle Young-Ullman (Viking, 2020)
85. A Book of Good Stories – ed. G. Fred McNally (The MacMillan Company of Canada, 1934)
86. Say Nothing – Patrick Radden Keefe (Doubleday, 2019)
87. Under Milk Wood – Dylan Thomas (J.M. Dent & Sons, 1970)