30 Books of 2020
When I set out my book goal for the year, I wanted to read two per month for 24 total. Then we went into lockdown/quarantine/purgatory, all my trips were canceled, my wedding was postponed, and my social life shrunk to the size of my phone screen. Lo and behold, I hit 24 books by September and set a new goal of 30 for the year! I do love a list, so here’s a pleasurable list of my reading for your reading pleasure: the 30 books I read in 2020.
Books I’ve always wanted to read and finally did:
11/22/63 — Stephen King
As close as I get to “thriller,” but I’m a sucker for time travel stories and butterfly effect explorations.
“Life turns on a dime. Sometimes toward us, but more often it spins away, flirting and flashing as it goes: so long, honey, it was good while it lasted, wasn’t it?”
Alexander Hamilton — Ron Chernow
Like it did for many of us, Hamilton changed my life in 2016 (before that other thing that changed our lives in 2016), but I always had shame that I was a history major and hadn’t read the source material. As I read, I mentally charted my progress by what “song” I was on. The musical enhanced the book in a real full circle way.
Notes from a Native Son — James Baldwin
Glad to have finally read Baldwin’s words on his own life and circumstance; profoundly sad to discover that they could have been written this very summer.
“…the very speed of the Negro’s public progress, a progress so heavy with complexity, so bewildering and kaleidoscopic, that he dare not pause to conjecture on the darkness which lies behind him; and by the nature of the American psychology which, in order to apprehend or be made able to accept it, must undergo a metamorphosis so profound as to be literally unthinkable and which there is no doubt we will resist until we are compelled to achieve our own identity by the rigors of a time that has yet to come.”
Pillars of the Earth — Ken Follett
Just as epic and sweeping and all-consuming as they’ve been saying for 20 years. Creates a tie in a tangible way to the humans that lived on this same earth 1,000 years ago – and how we still live with their legacy today.
Books I read in preparation to see the story on-screen:
Emma — Jane Austen
I read this in preparation to see the movie (I’m still a book-first purist) and was delighted at the number of times I chuckled out loud or smiled with delight at genuinely timeless jokes. It read like a modern romantic comedy with all of the enduring relevance of love and misunderstanding.
Normal People — Sally Rooney
I read this book knowing the hype calling it the voice of our generation… and having read it, I believe I’d say it’s perhaps “a voice of a generation.” And now that I’ve mentioned I’m a book-first purist, I’ll shamelessly flip-flop and say this was a case where the Hulu show adaptation (Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal specifically) not only brought the text to life beautifully but far exceeded the delight, emotion, romance, and exquisite pain of the novel itself.
Books I kept seeing on Instagram and had to read:
The Vanishing Half — Brit Bennett
The one single overlap between my 2020 reading list and Barack Obama’s. Waited weeks and weeks for this one from the library, always a pleasure when a story with so much hype (and with such an Instagrammed cover!) lives up to the praise.
“She could become whichever woman she decided, whichever side of her face she tilted to the light.”
Tell Me Everything — Cambria Brockman
One of my favorite über-niche genres of books is northern New England boarding school novels, and this one was made in the mold of Prep, The Secret Place, Looking for Alaska, and all my other favorites, but with a hint of the thrill of an unreliable narrator.
Where the Crawdads Sing — Delia Owens
Everyone said this one was good, but the synopsis never really grabbed me. Once I started though, I couldn’t stop. Finished it in about two and a half days.
Trick Mirror — Jia Tolentino
When I read a book on Kindle, I like to highlight phrases that really hit me, that I want to save for posterity. Usually I have 5-10. In Trick Mirror I had 44.
“I was learning that in the twenty-first century it would sometimes be impossible to differentiate between the pretext for an experience, the record of that experience, and the experience itself.”
Books that happened to be unread on my shelf in late March:
The Little Paris Bookshop — Nina George
This was a book on my shelf back in the earliest quarantine days, when I was just frantically looking around for books to read and it was a delightful dalliance about losing love and finding yourself.
“Do we only decide in retrospect that we’ve been happy? Don’t we notice when we’re happy, or do we realize only much later that we were?”
Little — Edward Carey
Grotesque and fascinating, the story of the childhood of Madame Tusseaud (before, during and after the French Revolution) seems improbable but keeps pulling you back in for more.
The Paris Seamstress — Natasha Lester
This was one more in my other favorite tiny niche fiction genres: European heroines of World War II. This was certainly not a masterpiece of prose, but it was a whirlwind romance with future and past plotlines that tied together. Always satisfying.
I Am Madame X — Gioia Diliberto
Another one on my shelf and unread for a few years. (Maybe several. I may have moved with it twice.) A blend of fiction and non-fiction, it was a beautiful flash of Belle Époque Paris high society.
Books that I listened to :
Becoming — Michelle Obama
My mom listened to this and said she felt like Michelle was her new best friend. So I obviously had to listen to it so Michelle could be my new best friend. And reader, it happened. Highly recommend Michelle becomes your new best friend too.
Digital Minimalism — Cal Newport
Definitely thought this book was going to solve all my problems… It didn’t. But it did leave me with this nugget of perspective:
“The idea that it’s valuable to maintain vast numbers of weak tie social connections is largely an invention of the last decade.”
So You Want to Talk About Race — Ijeomo Oluo
The behavioral gut check this book gave me was much needed and appreciated.
You Are A Badass at Making Money — Jen Cicero
Another book I thought would solve all my problems… and didn’t.
Books by authors I’ve read before:
Writers & Lovers — Lily King
Euphoria by Lily King was one of those books that stuck in my craw for a long time, plus this book cover being maybe the most striking I’ve seen this year. While it was truly nothing like Euphoria, I still got real swept up in this story, and loved it more for the fact that it took place in Boston.
“I don’t know why it’s so moving to me, and I could never explain. There’s a madness to beauty when you stumble on it like that.”
Rodham — Curtis Sittenfeld
Reading a first person narrative of Hillary and Bill’s early sex life was… deeply weird, but reading about an alternate reality of what her life could have become if she hadn’t married him? Worth it. Incredible how completely different – yet equally masterful – all of Sittenfeld’s books are. (Though I’ll admit I had only read Prep and Sisterland!)
The Clockmaker’s Daughter — Kate Morton
Same author and really similar story to The Forgotten Garden, which I loved. This was a ghost story, a love story, and one of those multi-generational stories that jumps forward and back by a century — all in one. All my favorite building blocks of a novel.
Can’t Even — Anne Helen Petersen
Anne Helen is perhaps my favorite follow on Twitter, I subscribe to her newsletter, and her book Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud was seriously a must-read for millennial females finding their way in the world. This book about millennial burnout and the societal forces that created it fits right in the mold of AHP cementing herself as the voice of this generation.
Books recommended by friends, Vulture writers, or whoever curates the Boston Public Library lists on the Libby app:
Middlesex — Jeffrey Eugenides
This one was extra special because of all the Greek-American family details that threaded through the story (I’m half Greek!). This was another multi-generational tale that spanned a century, and described girlhood from the flash-forward perspective of the adult male that girl grew up to be.
I Miss You When I Blink — Mary Laura Philpott
I’ve never had the experience of feeling like a book was written specifically for and about me and only me. This was truly singular. I think I had whole pages-long highlights. It was almost too personal to recommend. But alas, I must list it!
“It’s awfully existential and weird to feel that if you get the punctuation wrong in a tweet, the world is a purposeless void. Not everyone gets it. So they don’t get that if you worry that much over the little things, the big things seem so much bigger than they already are. It’s bad enough wondering whether you’ve bought the right kind of sunscreen—are you living the right life? Should you change paths? Go back to school? Stay together or break up? Are you being the right kind of parent/daughter/sister/friend? … And I know that the more you do, the more it takes to feel like you’ve done enough. That’s why you say “Sure!” to everything and sweat all the small stuff. Then you can be the person who gets the job done and saves the day and then maybe you can rest.”
The Gone Dead — Chanelle Benz
Read back-to-back with the Vanishing Half, which I don’t recommend as the settings are very similar and I had to shake the details around in my head to get things straight. But it was still an excellent story and a quick, deep read.
Lies My Teacher Told Me — James W. Loewen
Maybe it’s just because I was a history major, but this book made me want to read full passages out loud to whoever happened to be in the room with me. I certainly knew the basics of the myths we tell ourselves about who America is and has been, but the depth and the depravity that sits at the root of all of it, that we still live in today, that’s the stuff we refuse to learn or teach our children. The argument here is simply to face the truth, and then teach it.
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine — Gail Honeyman
A fitting book for a year of quarantine, this was about a woman who lives entirely alone, after clearly suffering some extreme childhood trauma, and is now functioning as an adult without any friends or any understanding of basic social interaction. Kept me both giggling and horrified. A unique combination.
There There — Tommy Orange
This one popped up on my Libby app and I snatched it up. It read almost like a series of short stories, with a rotating cast of narrators – all 20th and 21st century Native Americans in Oakland. Both specific and roaming in its point of view, necessary and real.
American Royals — Katharine McGee
The last book of the year that I read, (finished it on Dec 31!) so it’s the last book on this list. This was certainly no Red, White, and Royal Blue, but I was still totally smitten with the fantasy concept of American royalty, and the Gossip-Girl-esque tangles of aristocratic teenagers. Would I have been a Duchess of Boston in that world?! Perhaps dahhling!