2020 Reads

Best nonfiction

The Fire Next Time/No Name in the Street
Wes said these need to be read as a pair; he was correct. Read together, we see the range of Baldwin, from hope to anguish and from optimism to pessimism. He has a powerful economy of language.

Underland
Recommended by Audrey, this book explores what lies beneath the surface of this grand earth. Well-written books about our planet never disappoint.

When They Call You A Terrorist
The founder of the Black Lives Matter movement shares her life in this moving memoir. Heartbreaking and inspiring. A Nicole selection.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Lived several lifetimes in his 39 years. An important part of American racial history, regardless of what you think of his ideologies.

The Deficit Myth
Another Eric and Audrey recommendation. An explication of Modern Monetary Theory, and an argument that the richest nation on earth has enough money to provide better for all of its citizens.

Best fiction

The Broken Earth Trilogy
Eric and Audrey again. The first book here is excellent, and all three are well worth your time. Jemisin creates a world I would not want to live in, and uses the horror of it to showcase the humanity.

Girl, Woman, Other
An ensemble cast of (mostly) black women, intertwining through time in the UK. Excellently written. A lens into the fact that every human is nuanced. Another Nicole selection.

A Gentleman in Moscow
Almost entirely character driven (with a little plot sprinkled in), I liked this more than I thought I would. As pleasant as can be.

Circe
I know the names of lots of figures from Greek mythology, and the skeletons of some stories, but this modern reimagining made those stories come to life more than anything I have read before.

In 2020 I read 53 total books, of which 27 were nonfiction and 26 were fiction. I gave 23 of them five stars, 21 of them four stars, 9 of them three stars, and no books two or one stars. My ratings got inflated this year. This is good to note, as my ratings out of 100 will likely deflate (intentionally) in 2021.

I read four books in one day, and the longest it took me to read a book was almost two months for Marking Time.

This was the first year I have read a majority of my books by authors of color, and the second year in a row I have read a majority of my books by female authors (57% and 64%, respectively).

The oldest book I read in 2020 was Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius, written by 180 AD. The next oldest, slightly more modern, was Frankenstein, published in 1818. I read this on the recommendation of a friend as preparation for Frankenstein in Baghdad, a modern wartime reimagining of Frankenstein that I recommend. I read nine books published in 2020 this year. This is the highest proportion of books published in the current year I have ever read. The longest book I read was Ducks, Newburyport, a Valentine’s day gift from Nicole weighing in at 1,022 pages, and the shortest was The Fire Next Time, at 106 pages. My average book length was 336 pages.

According to Goodreads, the most popular book I read was Frankenstein, which has been read almost two million times by users. I’m not sure what the least popular was, as it registers as Meditations by Marcus Aurelius but only because of the edition I chose. Without a rigorous check, I would guess it was, again, Marking Time; the only real competitor was The Lost Scrapbook, by Evan Dara. By and large I read popular books this year.