2020 books: Easy reading for a hard year

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the year of 2020 sucked. 

That's why my 2020 reading year was all about escapism. I did not challenge myself. I didn't learn anything new. I didn't "make the most of my free time" by tackling all 950 books on my TBR (to be read) list. (I did, however, finally get to a lot of the TV shows I've been meaning to watch for years, so at least I can say I accomplished something worthwhile.) 

This year I simply needed to be entertained. Distracted. Which for me meant a lot of chick lit, a lot of fantasy, and a lot of re-reads. 2020 was a blacked-out Bingo card of Bad Things, but at least the books were good.

Let's get to it.

Goal: 52

Books read: 87

Pages read: 38,765 (446 pages per book, 81 pages per day)

This stat really surprised me. Last year was my banner book year at 101 books read, but this year I surpassed last year's page count by a couple thousand. All year I thought the pandemic hadn't affected my reading volume that much, when in reality I read more pages than I've ever read in a single year. See the next stat.

Longest book: The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon (1,443 pages)

But Brandon Sanderson's Rhythm of War deserves a shoutout too. It's "only" 1,232 pages, but I'm pretty sure the word count is higher. 

18 of the books I read this year were over 500 pages. Length does not intimidate me. 

Shortest book: Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler (192 pages)

Weirdly, this book shares a similarity with the two books above: slow plot progression. It was a quick read, just not heavy on plot. 

First reads: 68

Rereads: 19

Books not finished: 14

Another pandemic effect on my reading was that for months I had a reeeeeally hard time focusing, especially during the summer. So if a book didn't grab me right away or required too much concentration, I tossed it.*

Really surprised I only abandoned 14 books. It felt like much more than that.

*I only count the books I finished as "read" for the year. So these 14 books aren't included in any of my stats except this one.

Ratings

I wasn't as willing to settle for mediocre or difficult books this year, so naturally my ratings are higher than usual.

Fiction vs. nonfiction

Not a lot of nonfiction this year. Reality isn't an escapist destination of mine.

Speaking of destinations, this year I tracked the settings of the books I read (when the setting was relevant). This isn't a bad overview of places I turn to when I want to get away from reality.

This graphic is hard to read so here are the highlights: US (54%), UK (17%), Hogwarts (8%), other/unnamed fantasy world (8%), the Middle East (3%), Sweden/Russia/Panem/Mexico/Middle Earth/Switzerland/France/Roshar (1%).

Male vs. female

I think 2020 was the most female-heavy year I've had since I started doing these yearly recaps. Probably because of all the chick lit I read. (I don't love the term "chick lit," but for simplicity's sake I'm going to use it anyway. Just know that I don't consider chick lit a mere guilty pleasure but rather a genre that has produced some really great writing and stories.)   

Where all these books came from

Another area where the pandemic effect comes through. With libraries being closed for a couple months and then having to wait much longer for holds to become available, I turned to my wallet quite a bit more for my book needs. 

Plus I was trying to keep independent bookstores in business by myself. I'm proud to say that none of the books I read this year were purchased from Amazon.

A quick plug on book subscriptions: they are my favorite gifts to give myself. If you're looking for ways to bump up your reading, the Book of the Month Club usually has some great selections (two of my top fiction picks came from this subscription). Peace and Pages is a fun one if you want the book to be a surprise—you also get some other goodies with it!

Favorite book, fiction

You're getting three books this year. Each checked all the boxes for a perfect-for-me book:

• Great writing
• Complex and interesting characters
• Relatable in an unexpected way, made me see the world in a new way, or made me feel things deep inside my soul
• Satisfying ending (which doesn't necessarily mean a happy one)

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

Literature is full of doors acting as portals to other worlds. That concept is beautifully explored in this novel.

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

This book is marketed as a bank robbery that goes comically wrong, but it's really about adults who are failing at adulting in some way. This year, more than any other, I often felt like I wasn't measuring up. Backman captures the fears and anxieties—big or small—that may lie dormant at times but never leave you. Every few pages I found myself thinking, "This book gets me," or "Oh, good. I'm not the only one."

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

Addie Larue makes an ill-advised deal with the devil that grants her immortality, but with a price: no one will remember her. Schwab doesn't hold back on exploring the heartbreak of this kind of life, but Addie finds a freedom in it, too. Of all the superpowers I've considered for my hypothetical superhero life, invisibility has the strongest pull for me. When you're invisible, you don't have to act the way society expects you to act. You can go where you're not supposed to go. Find safety from social anxieties and real-life demons. Try things you would never have the guts to do with someone's eyes on you. This book really made me think about what makes life worth living and the sacrifices you have to make to keep what's most important. 

Favorite book, nonfiction: Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl

If you don't count my road trip to the Grand Canyon, I ate inside a restaurant just 2-3 times this year. Reading this book during dine-in and travel restrictions only made me yearn to travel more, but it also helped fill the void. Reichl's food descriptions are so good you can taste the food along with her, and the disguises/personas she created whenever she went out to eat were fun as well. A very well written, entertaining, comforting read. 

Favorite reread: The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

This book has all the qualities my top fiction picks have. I picked it up again because I remembered being fascinated that each flower has a meaning, but I got much more than that the second time. This is a story about a young girl who triumphs, despite everything in her past working against her. It's a difficult book at times, but a hopeful one.

Book recommendations for every pandemic mood

The books I read this year directly correlated with whatever pandemic mood I was experiencing at the time. Here are some of the highlights.

Let's all make bread: Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan

Not to brag or anything, but I've been making bread for years. So when it became everyone's favorite hobby this spring it was super irritating because I couldn't buy yeast for two months. But, I get it. Everything about bread-making is comforting: the labor, the taste, the smell, the trial-and-error learning process. The Little Beach Street Bakery series is about a woman who loses everything—her job, her house and car, her boyfriend—and moves to a tiny Cornish town by the sea to open her own bakery. Through her I got to live my fantasy of leaving the corporate world forever for a simpler, more charming one, and it helped me get through the worst month of my life. 

Novice gardening: The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman

While I was making bread before it was cool, I did jump on the gardening bandwagon this year. My backyard is about the size of a sandbox, so I haven't done anything with it except let the weeds take over.

Summer 2019

So I joined the throng of people flooding Home Depot's website to do something about my weed patch. Armed with long sleeves, gloves, and allergy medication, I waged battle on those weeds and won. It was a lot more work than I anticipated and it took my back weeks to recover (which was less time than it took my back to mostly recover from sitting on a bad chair during that first month of working from home, go figure). But in the end I had an obviously-not-professionally-done woodchip "backyard" to enjoy while I read outside on those glorious summer nights. 

Summer 2020

Around this time I also read a book about a character who joins a gardening club as a way to help her work through the grief of losing her husband a few years earlier. Manual labor is a gift in situations like these, whether you're mourning the loss of a loved one or the loss of normal life. It puts you to work, keeps your hands busy and your mind engaged on a simple task. It certainly helped me get through part of a really rough summer.

(If you are bookishly nerdy at all, I highly recommend Abbi Waxman's next book, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill. It's funny and relatable in the most delightful ways. And it confirms my theory that introverts are the funniest people.)

A yearning to travel: The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley

Garlic and Sapphires is the obvious pick for this category, but since I already talked about it here's another book that made me want to travel (to Scotland, specifically). It's a book about a writer. She stays in a cottage in Scotland and writes, and when she's not writing she's meeting handsome Scottish men. I cannot tell you how deeply I envied her non-traditional work life. Most of us have to sell our souls to the 9-to-5 corporate life to acquire and sustain independence—a steep price that's worth the cost, however much it sucks at times. Traveling temporarily frees you from whatever keeps you tied down, and this book make me yearn for that freedom.

I am under house arrest: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

I've spent most of my year alone. I live alone, work from home, and don't have many social opportunities these days. I'd still say quarantining alone is 1,000 times better than quarantining with roommates—even quarantining with family would be difficult—but it's had its challenges. Too much time with my own thoughts, going a little crazy, time passing differently, that kind of thing. Piranesi is about a guy trapped in a strange house all by himself, and even though this wasn't written to be a quarantine novel, the novel captures the essence of what it's like to be trapped inside a familiar space while the world outside rages with uncertainty. Really strange but cool book.

Escape to a simpler time: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

I'm not an Austenite, but I do have an academic appreciation for her work. This year I pulled out my Austen anthology because I wanted to go to a simpler world with simpler problems. And I actually enjoyed it for its entertainment value, rather than just as a literary classic! Jane Austen is a clever, funny lady.

Understanding the darker side of humanity: Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell

Books on racism and social issues surged this year, but I wasn't one of the many people seeking those books out. The civil unrest I saw in the news every day maxed me out. This book was the exception. Gladwell makes some fascinating points about how bad we are at judging people based on first impressions, which leads to some disturbing situations. This is the book that opened my eyes to the prejudices I have that I didn't realize I had. Highly recommended.

I wish time would go by faster: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

I don't read a lot of thrillers and crime novels, but I went through a "just give me lots of action" phase this summer. The way time dragged in 2020 probably had something to do with it. I couldn't force this horrible year to skip to the end, but I could distract myself with books where lots of stuff happens. Most of the thrillers I attempted I abandoned, but I really enjoyed revisiting The Da Vinci Code. English major snobs like me don't have a lot of love for Dan Brown, but I'm not ashamed to admit I like this book. The symbology stuff is fascinating.

Just take me to a whole new world: The Daevabad trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty (City of Brass, Kingdom of Copper, and Empire of Gold)

Technically these books didn't take me off of planet Earth. They take place in the Middle East, but inside hidden cities only magical beings know about. So it counts. This is one of the best new fantasies I've found in a long time. It takes a little effort to learn the world (at least, it does when your pandemic brain doesn't want to focus), but it ends up being a unique, fun, and diverting reading experience.

All the 2020 books (my favorites are bolded):

1. The Winter Sea, Susanna Kearsley
2. Terror in Paris, Dave Admire
3. The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow
4. Black Tide, Brett Diffley
5. Black Dawn, Brett Diffley
6. Abigail Adams, Woody Holton
7. Until the Iris Bloom, Tina Olton
8. A Noble Story, David Drayer
9. Something Fierce, David Drayer
10. The Shortest Way Home, Elaine Reidy
11. Little Beach Street Bakery, Jenny Colgan
12. Pearl Tail, M.A. Burk
13. Someday, Someday, Maybe, Lauren Graham
14. Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery, Jenny Colgan
15. Tuesday's Child, Carolyn Gibbs
16. Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery, Jenny Colgan
17. The Fiery Cross, Diana Gabaldon
18. Writers and Lovers, Lily King
19. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
20. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling
21. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling
22. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling
23. The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien
24. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
25. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling
26. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
27. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
28. In Five Years, Rebecca Serle
29. Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know, Malcolm Gladwell
30. Beach Read, Emily Henry
31. The Night the Lights Went Out, Karen White
32. I Miss You When I Blink: Dispatches from a Relatively Ordinary Life, Mary Laura Philpott
33. The Dream Daughter, Diane Chamberlain
34. The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Bill Bryson
35. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
36. A Million Junes, Emily Henry
37. I'd Give Anything, Marisa de los Santos
38. Redhead by the Side of the Road, Anne Tyler
39. A Breath of Snow and Ashes, Diana Gabaldon
40. The Last Flight, Julie Clark
41. The Perfect Couple, Elin Hilderbrand
42. The Infinite Atonement, Tad R. Callister
43. The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, Erik Larson
44. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Suzanne Collins
45. Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise, Ruth Reichl
46. Garden Spells, Sarah Addison Allen
47. The Last to See Me, M Dressler
48. The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, Abbi Waxman
49. The Garden of Small Beginnings, Abbi Waxman
50. The House in the Cerulean Sea, T.J. Klune
51. The City of Brass, S.A. Chakraborty
52. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
53. Midnight Sun, Stephenie Meyer
54. Summers at Castle Auburn, Sharon Shinn
55. Princess Academy, Shannon Hale
56. Palace of Stone, Shannon Hale
57. The Forgotten Sisters, Shannon Hale
58. Why We Sleep: Unblocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, Matthew Walker
59. Storm Front, Jim Butcher
60. Fool Moon, Jim Butcher
61. Anxious People, Fredrik Backman
62. The Language of Flowers, Vanessa Diffenbaugh
63. A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles
64. Heidi, Johanna Spyri
65. Kind of a Big Deal, Shannon Hale
66. Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
67. One to Watch, Kate Stayman-London
68. Solutions and Other Problems, Allie Brosh
69. 28 Summers, Elin Hilderbrand
70. Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution, Nathaniel Philbrick
71. No Unhallowed Hand: 1846-1893, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
72. A Deadly Education, Naomi Novik
73. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, V.E. Schwab
74. The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty
75. The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester
76. The Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty
77. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
78. The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
79. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Charlotte Bronte
80. Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson
81. In a Holidaze by Christina Lauren
82. Winter Street by Elin Hilderbrand
83. Winter Stroll by Elin Hilderbrand
84. Uprooted by Naomi Novik
85. Winter Storms by Elin Hilderbrand
86. This Time Next Year by Sophie Cousens
87. Intertwine by Nichole Van

Previous years:

2019
2018
2017

2016
2015
2014
2013
2012