2020: Year in Review

Everyone, including me, has agreed that 2020 has been the worst, but shockingly, it's been fantastic for my reading--and even more fantastic for writing about my reading. This year I wrote 22 (!) reviews, the most since 2014, before I had children. I also read 30 books, equaling my 2014 total (and in 2014 I spent a whole summer hugely pregnant, sitting around the house, doing nothing!). I had attributed my continued reading to my book club, but with that on pause since March, I realized I'll read plenty on my own, and maybe even more without the pressure of a deadline.

Partly I read because I didn't want to think about this year. Reading was an escape and a distraction. I wrote because I felt stupid and ineffective sitting at home. Writing was a way to prove to myself that I'm still capable, still have intelligence to offer, even if it's rarely called on these days. 

Even so, writing the reviews was a struggle at first. I had fallen out of the habit of composing reviews in my head, something I used to do as a way to occupy idle time. When I do sit down to write, my brain resists the necessary effort to make my swirling ideas into coherent thought. I feel myself getting lazy--putting down ideas but not taking the time to form them into a cohesive whole. 

But I decided permitting some of the laziness was a necessary compromise in order to write. If I demanded A+ work every time, I'd stop doing it altogether. So I wrote 22 reviews. Some I'm happy with, some I'm not. Some expressed my thoughts about a book well, and others are just glimpses of still-inarticulate thoughts. That's okay, which is probably the biggest lesson of 2020. 

Books read in 2020:

1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (Jan)
2. Lanny by Max Porter (Jan)
3. The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (Feb)
4. Ghosts of Eden Park by Karen Abbott (Mar)
5. Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (Apr)
6. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah (Apr)
7. Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams (May)
8. Normal People by Sally Rooney (Jun)
9. Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham (Jun)
10. Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin (Jun)
11. Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson (Jun)
12. White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo (Jun)
13. The City We Became by NK Jemisin (Jul)
14. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (Jul)
15. Wordslut by Amanda Montell (Aug)
16. A Burning by Megha Majumdar (Aug)
17. Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann (Aug) 
18. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (Sept, a reread)
19. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (Sept)
20. Pew by Catherine Lacey (Oct)
21. There There by Tommy Orange (Oct)
22. Space Invaders by Nona Fernandez (Oct)
23. The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine (Nov)
24. The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown (Nov)
25. Survival Math by Mitchell S Jackson (Nov)
26. No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (Nov)
27. Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh (Dec)
28. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver (Dec)
29. Cleanness by Garth Greenwell (Dec)
30. Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh (Dec)

Twenty-one of the books were written by women, a huge shift from when I started blogging and oddly favored men. In addition, about a third of the books were written by people of color. Almost a third were non-fiction, also a big change from a decade ago. Most of the books were published in the last three years, with only four written before 2010.

There were some fantastic books this year. I'm still proud of myself for finishing Ducks, Newburyport. It's an English lit fanatic's dream, and I'm still thinking about it. Little Women was an absolute delight (as is the Gerwig movie adaptation). Perhaps Normal People wouldn't have resonated as much if I hadn't watched it alongside the Hulu miniseries, but it nonetheless has stuck with me. Though there were some I didn't love, there weren't any real stinkers.

So as I close out 2020, I'll just reiterate that this year was the worst, except for the books.