Somehow I read books in 2020. It felt like the perfect time to be forever reading, but enthusiasm and concentration were often in short supply. What I did do was buy a hell of a lot of books. (Hopefully their names will make it onto my 2021 reading roundup.)
But there were days, surely weeks, I’d even believe months, where I didn’t read, I only watched very, very slow-paced television about gardening. And then there were the nights I stayed up late, unwilling to leave the cocoon of Jane Eyre.
Some of my books were really zeitgeist-y—one small way I managed to be connected to the world through a year of isolation.
Here, from what I can piece together from memory, my shelves, and my library apps, is what I read. I’ll link to where I’ve written something about it, and some of my favorites are in bold.
Antidemocracy in America (essay anthology)
Difficult Women (stories by Roxane Gay)
Gaia’s Garden (a permaculture gardening book)
The Glass Hotel (audiobook, as part of WNYC & All of It’s book club)
The Vanishing Half (Brit Bennett)
Catherine House (Elisabeth Thomas)
There There (Tommy Orange)
Heads of the Colored People (stories by Nafissa Thompson-Spires)
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (poetry, Ross Gay)
How to Do Nothing (Jenny Odell)
Morning Haiku (poetry, Sonia Sanchez)
Lincoln in the Bardo (George Saunders)
SproutLands
Gossamer Days
The Gatsby Affair
The Book of Delights (Ross Gay)
Department of Speculation (Jenny Offill)
So You Want to Talk About Race
Don’t Read Poetry
Nothing To See Here (Kevin Wilson)
Like a Mother (memoir, Angela Garbes)
If you’d like to read any of these, please patronize your local bookstore! Or, if you don’t have one, or they aren’t easy to shop during Covid, try Bookshop.org, so your purchase can support indie bookstores instead of behemoth corporations.
For library lovers, e-readers, and people over their book budget already, I’m using the Libby app a lot these days. I have both my Brooklyn and New York library cards connected to it, and I can use it for ebooks and audiobooks alike. It’s the most user-friendly one I’ve tried so far, too.
