Books Read in 2020

 I read 60 books in 2020: 8 more than my goal of 52. I probably have the pandemic to thank for that, right? Here are the books and some comments about each collage.

This is a particularly good set of books! Some of my favorites of the year (a 4 or 5 star ratings on my Goodreads) are here: Dear Edward, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, The Gifted School, Stay, The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, Writers and Lovers, Defending Jacob, Your Perfect Year, and Between the World and Me. 

Persuasion and The Bean Trees were both re-reads, and both were for book clubs. Persuasion still bored me, and I still loved The Bean Trees. It's been 30 years since I read them! 

Prep was one of my least favorite books of the year. The main character was intriguing and I had high hopes for her, but ultimately....she just turned out to be self-absorbed and without any sort of growth. Pizza Girl was horrid. Unfortunately, it was the book I picked for book club for 2021, as it sounded rather fluffly and fun! I have already taken it off the list, begging my fellow clubbers not to read it. 

This collage has more of my favorites and a few I did not like at all. The Silent Patient, March, The Other Wes Moore, Where the Crawdads Sing, The Vanishing Half, The Islanders, and The Silent Treatment all garnered 4 or 5-star ratings from me on Goodreads. I also really liked The Operator and found Carole King's autobiography fascinating.

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, Messy Grace, and the Lager Queen of Minnesota were three of the five worst books of the year for various reasons. Death Cleaning was actually interesting, but it was a terrible book to read in the midst of a pandemic. Also, one of our best friends had just passed away as I was listening to the audiobook, and it really just made me cry a lot.

And this last collage is full of wonderful memories! These are actually the first 20 books I read of the year, pre-pandemic. Remember those days? I loved Dear Mrs. Bird, This Is How It Always Is, Matchmaking for Beginners, The Sweeney Sisters, and Southernmost. 

Becoming, Just Mercy, and Born to Run were my favorite nonfiction books of the year. Oh man. I loved each of those so much!

Things Fall Apart was a re-read for me. I used to teach this in high school literature classes and decided to re-read it, as my college sophomore was reading it for a class. What an amazing book!

I really disliked Mrs. Everything. I don't remember much about it except that way too much happened. Snow took a long, long time for me to plow through. It was a book club choice, and I think we all agreed that we wish we had understood it better. The prose was beautiful, but the topic was difficult and the history largely unfamiliar to us. Dear Mrs. Bird and Courting Mr. Lincoln were also book club books. Heart in the Right Place may have been also, but I do not remember that one.

Here is my 2020 Top Reads List, although really, I could have added many more for fiction!

Top 10 Best Fiction:

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger

Stay by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

The Sweeney Sisters by Lian Dolan

 

Nonfiction:

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

 

Memoir

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen

March by John Lewis

Happy reading! 

Ten Signs You’re a Book Lover

With my daughter at Parnassus Books in Nashville

1. You interject this comment into conversations on a regular basis: "That reminds me of a book I read..."

2. And also: "Have you read..." or "You should read..."

3. You go to thrift stores just to check out the book section.

4. You shudder and grimace involuntarily when people say, "I'm not really a reader..." or "I haven't read a book since college!"

5. You would never miss your monthly book club meetings—and you actually read the books.

6. No matter where you travel, you always visit a bookstore.

7. You roll your eyes when you hear the name "Marie Kondo" because 30 books.

8. You always read the book before seeing the movie.

9. You use stacked books as part of your decor.

10. You feel anxious and sweaty if you accidentally go anywhere without something to read.

Can you relate?

Linked up with Artsy Reader Girl's Top Ten Tuesday

Books Read in 2019

I read 54 books in 2019. My goal was 52, so I am definitely pleased with myself. I was on what amounted to bed rest for six weeks this summer, so I no doubt got more reading done than I would have otherwise. We'll see if I can meet that same goal this year, without being sick!

Here are all the books and my brief remarks about some of them.

Thoughts on this set:
• I loved Valencia and Valentine but I don't remember anything about it.
• The Known World took me a looong time to get through. It was a book club book, but I didn't make it to that particular book club.
• I absolutely LOVED Kristin Hannah's The Great Alone. I was hesitant to read her again because I was so disappointed with subsequent books after reading the incredible The Nightingale. But this one was one of my favorites of the year.
• The Music Shop was definitely worth reading.
• Pachinko, Fred Rogers, The Tattooist of Auschwitz, and Girls Like Us were all for book clubs. 1) Pachinko was AMAZING but took me weeks to get through. It followed several generations of a Korean family, and I learned so much about the relationships between Japanese and Koreans, as well as cultural information, throughout the book. 2) I wasn't crazy about the Fred Rogers book. It was poorly written and rather boring. 3) Tattooist was amazing. It's hard to imagine a happy story about Aushwitz, but in many ways, it was. 4) Girls Like Us is an incredibly important book, detailing the lives of girls in the commercial sex industry.
• The Quintland Sisters was fascinating. I've always been a little obsessed with the Dionne Quintuplets, as they were contemporaries of my mother's. She had the Yvonne doll when she was a little girl, and I still have a pin with the name "Yvonne" inscribed on it from that doll. Really interesting story.
• Mary Oliver. Enough said.

Thoughts on this set. Ooooh, these are some of my favorites of the year.
• I don't remember a lot about The Wedding Date, The Woman in the Window, and Sometimes I Lie, but I know I really liked them.
• The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane was absolutely stunning. The story follows one mountain girl from her impoverished childhood through her adulthood as a tea seller, and it was all fascinating and beautifully written.
• The 57 Bus— WOW. This is the true story of two teenagers in San Francisco who inhabited totally different worlds: one white one who attended a private school, one black one who lived in a neighborhood with high crime. A single, impulsive event changed both their lives forever. This was an eye-opening book for me. Powerful.
• An American Marriage was one of my favorite fiction books of the year. A beautifully told but heartbreaking story of race, love, and how quickly a life can be derailed.
• Walking to Listen was our first book club book of the year. It was a wonderful and fascinating story of a young man who walked across the country just to hear people's stories and, of course, find himself.
• Nine Perfect Strangers started wonderfully and ended horrendously. My least favorite Moriarty book.

When I look at this set, I go from one extreme to the other. There are some that were absolutely wonderful:
• Evicted: nonfiction account of eight families in Milwaukee as they try to avoid eviction. Provides an incredible perspective on poverty and just how hard it is to keep from being on the streets.
• Once Upon a River
• Eleanor Oliphant: can't wait for the movie!
• Americanah: I never wanted this one to end
• Born a Crime: Trevor Noah's memoir of growing up a child of mixed parentage during apartheid in South Africa

And some that make me feel tired and frustrated:
• Maid: felt inauthentic. Too many things unsaid.
• The Dollmaker of Krakow: weird
• Bridge of Clay: too obtuse

All the others in this set were enjoyable but not quite up to the level of stunning.

And finally...

Snowflower and the Secret Fan was a re-read for book club. I loved it the first time AND the second time. Sworn to Silence was also a book club read, and that was chilling but satisfying! I loved The Homecoming of Samuel Lake, and all the pscyhological thrillers are fun. But my favorite out of all these is Where'd You Go, Bernadette? What a weird and wonderful novel, much like Eleanor Oliphant. I love quirky characters like Bernadette and Bee, Eleanor, and  The Rosie Project's Don Tillman.

I wanted to love City of Girls and Searching for Sylvia Lee, but meh.

Top Ten Books of the Year:

1. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
2 The 57 Bus: A True Story of Teenagers and a Crime That Changed Their Lives by Dashka Slater
3. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
4. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
5. Americanah by Chimamandah Ngozi Adichie
6. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
7. The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
8. The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
9. The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
10. Walking to Listen: 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time by Andrew Forsthoefel

What about you? 

Linked up with Top 10 Tuesday