What a year 2020 was! Sometimes, reading was my salvation, my escape, while other times, finding the focus to read was really difficult. I also found myself mood reading on steroids, jumping from genre to genre and putting books down after just a few pages if it wasn’t the perfect match for my frame of mind. Overall, memoirs were my most successful genre.
Somehow, I managed to set a reading record and read 66 books in 2020. Completing the 2020 EDIWTB Reading Challenge has dominated the last few weeks, but overall the categories I chose were easy – and pleasurable – to satisfy. (I’ll be posting the 2021 categories in a few days.)
Here are my 2020 reading stats.
Books finished: 66
Fiction: 49 (75%)
Non-fiction: 17 (25%)
Authors of color: 9 (14%)
Male/Female authors: 54 female (81%), 11 male (16%), 1 collection
Audiobooks: 20 (30%), plus 5 audio/print combos
Average rating: 3.75
Repeat authors: 17 (25%) – Curtis Sittenfeld, Camille Pagan, Jennifer Weiner, Jojo Moyes, Jenny Offill, Rebecca Serle, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Lily King, Laura Zigman, Sally Rooney, Emma Straub, Julie Clark, Caroline Leavitt, Christina Baker Kline, Rumaan Alam, Kent Haruf, Yaa Gyasi
My resolutions for 2021: to read more BIPOC authors; to break 70 books for the first time; to plow through a lot of of the backlist books at home; and to continue to be respectful of and responsive to my reading moods.
Here are a few superlatives for the year:
Best Books of 2020:
Oona Out Of Order by Margarita Montimore
The Knockout Queen by Rufi Thorpe
The Cactus League by Emily Nemens
28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener
Long Bright River by Liz Moore
Best Audiobooks:
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Smacked by Eilene Zimmerman
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
Books I Could Not Put Down:
28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand
Long Bright River by Liz Moore
Books That Should Be Required Reading:
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Good Talk by Mira Jacob
In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
Best Memoirs:
Smacked by Eilene Zimmerman
Good Talk by Mira Jacob
Maid by Stephanie Land
In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener
Most Overhyped:
All Adults Here by Emma Straub
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
I end with a heartfelt thank you to everyone who read my blog in 2020. I hope that you all had a fulfilling 2020 reading year. I wish you all a happy, safe and healthy new year, and look forward to sharing and talking about books more in 2021.
