Year in Review: 2020 Book List



At the end of 2019, I set a reading goal of 50 books in 2020. 50 would be a reach, but not impossible; in prior years I’d read around 40 books. 50 seemed both manageable and challenging.

I read 70 books in 2020.

After visiting my family in California near the end of February, I didn’t leave a few square miles for the rest of the year. My 2020 days revolved around books. I was editing one and writing another, and when I wasn’t writing, I was often reading.

As Washington, D.C. prepared to lock down mid-March, Aaron and I dashed to the library for a last-minute hoarding trip. For some reason we thought four books for me and six books for him would last the entire pandemic.

As my library pile dwindled, stimulus money came in and I sent it right back out to local bookstores. Kramers delivered Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven with a side of fries to me in around half an hour. Politics and Prose hosted Crowdcast author readings, for the price of a book or for free. Loyalty Bookstores personalized Stay the F Inside Bundles, and I was thrilled to receive five books, a zine, a journal, a magnet, and a print from a local artist. I attended a Zoom writing workshop with Lily King hosted by Old Town Books, as well as two of their remote reading marathons. With the last of my stimulus money, I purchased a bookcase to house my new books from those stores plus other DC favorites like MahoganyBooks and East City Bookshop. And after a few months, the library reopened for book takeout.

Narrowing all these books down to a Top 10 was tricky, and rather than tacking on an honorable mentions list that rapidly sprawled to include a bulk of the remaining 60 books, I pivoted to a Top 15. First I’ll list all the books, and then the Top 15, with a few sentences on why I enjoyed each one.



Afterlife ~ Julia Alvarez
Arrival ~ Ted Chiang
Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation ~ Latasha Morrison
Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia ~ Joshua Yaffa
Black Klansman ~ Ron Stallworth
The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War ~ Fred Kaplan
The Book of Longings ~ Sue Monk Kidd
The Captain and the Glory: An Entertainment ~ Dave Eggers
Circe ~ Madeline Miller
Conjure Women ~ Afia Atakora
Conversations with Friends ~ Sally Rooney
Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All ~ Suzanne Nossel
Dark Horses ~ Susan Mihalic
Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets & Advice for Living Your Best Life ~ Ali Wong
The Death of Vivek Oji ~ Akwaeke Emezi
Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming ~ Paul Hawken
Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style ~ Benjamin Dreyer
Elegy for the Undead ~ Matthew Vesely
The Elements of Style ~ William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
Evvie Drake Starts Over ~ Linda Holmes
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life ~ Richard Rohr
Family Trust ~ Kathy Wang
The Fire Next Time ~ James Baldwin
The Girl with the Louding Voice ~ Abi Daré
Girl, Woman, Other ~ Bernardine Evaristo
Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others ~ Barbara Brown Taylor
How to Resist Amazon and Why ~ Danny Caine
I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness ~ Austin Channing Brown
Infinity: Betrayal ~ Víctor Santos and Agustín Graham Nakamura
Jesus and the Disinherited ~ Howard Thurman
The Last Train to London ~ Meg Waite Clayton
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet ~ Becky Chambers
Lot: Stories ~ Bryan Washington
Modern Tea: A Fresh Look at an Ancient Beverage ~ Lisa Boalt Richardson
The Mothers ~ Brit Bennett
Navigate Your Stars ~ Jesmyn Ward
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness ~ Michelle Alexander
New York ~ Edward Rutherfurd
Normal People ~ Sally Rooney
Notes from a Young Black Chef ~ Kwame Onwuachi
The Paris Hours ~ Alex George
The Philosopher’s War ~ Tom Miller
Piranesi ~ Susanna Clarke
The Proposal ~ Jasmine Guillory
Red, White & Royal Blue ~ Casey McQuiston
Salvage the Bones ~ Jesmyn Ward
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind ~ Yuval Noah Harari
Show Them You’re Good: A Portrait of Boys in the City of Angels the Year Before College ~ Jeff Hobbs
Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place (A Transgender Memoir) ~ Jackson Bird
The Starless Sea ~ Erin Morgenstern
Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart ~ Alice Walker
The Ten Thousand Doors of January ~ Alix E. Harrow
There There ~ Tommy Orange
This Close to Okay ~ Leesa Cross-Smith
Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope ~ Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today ~ Rachel Vorona Cote
Transcendent Kingdom ~ Yaa Gyasi
The Vanishing Half ~ Brit Bennett
Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race ~ Debby Irving
We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast ~ Jonathan Safran Foer
What Is the What ~ Dave Eggers
Who Fears Death ~ Nnedi Okorafor
A Woman Is No Man ~ Etaf Rum
Writers & Lovers ~ Lily King

Reread

Giovanni’s Room ~ James Baldwin
The Great Gatsby ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
Mistborn Trilogy ~ Brandon Sanderson
    Mistborn
    The Well of Ascension
    The Hero of Ages
Station Eleven ~ Emily St. John Mandel



Top 15

The Book of Longings ~ Sue Monk Kidd
Kidd transported me into the heart of a woman striving to live a life beyond the societal norms of her first century world; someone who craved more than what everyone around her said she should want. I loved Ana and didn’t want her story to end.

Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All ~ Suzanne Nossel
As a society, we’re still tackling the downsides of free speech in the digital age, and for some, the answer is cancelling free speech. Nossel, who’s the CEO of Pen America, an organization working for the rights of journalists and writers, made a compelling case for the value of free speech today, and offered approaches that could appeal to people across the political spectrum. While dense in some places, this book is so crucial for our cultural moment. I got a lot out of it.

The Death of Vivek Oji ~ Akwaeke Emezi
Emezi’s book shattered me. But it was also one of the best, most intimate books I read in 2020.

Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming ~ Paul Hawken
Climate change coverage can often be depressing, but it doesn’t have to be. Drawdown offers a hopeful, holistic approach, grounded in viable tools.

Elegy for the Undead ~ Matthew Vesely
I heard about Vesely’s debut through a Goodreads giveaway. I didn’t win, but I was sold on the concept, so I preordered the book — and am so glad I did. Vesely’s genre-defying debut was smart and heartbreaking. I’m excited to read more from him in the future.

The Girl with the Louding Voice ~ Abi Daré
Daré wrapped kindness and pain into one searing, immensely well-written debut.

Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others ~ Barbara Brown Taylor
I loved the vision Taylor offered of a true coexistence, one encompassing respect and understanding.

How to Resist Amazon and Why ~ Danny Caine
Caine’s 15-page zine laid out exactly why it’s so important to purchase books from independent bookstores instead of Amazon. Even if you don’t have a local bookstore nearby, in this pandemic era, many are shipping books, so, for example, you can support the awesome ones in DC. I guess it’s easy to see I found Caine’s zine incredibly persuasive.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness ~ Michelle Alexander
The New Jim Crow was one of the most rigorous books I read in 2020, and also one of the most important. I offer it up as a must-read for this moment in history, as we reckon with the continued damage of racism.

Red, White & Royal Blue ~ Casey McQuiston
I read this book last January, and I’m still thinking about it almost a year later. I’m so excited for McQuiston’s second novel this year.

Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place (A Transgender Memoir) ~ Jackson Bird
Honestly I feel like this book is a gift Bird gave to the world. I’m so grateful for his willingness to get real and honest about his journey.

The Starless Sea ~ Erin Morgenstern
This book was pure fun. It was magical and so romantic and the structure was brilliant and I absolutely loved the experience of being utterly swept away.

Transcendent Kingdom ~ Yaa Gyasi
Gyasi offered a thoughtful exploration of the tug between faith and science, and of internal growth through pain. And my writer brain often paused to dissect her brilliant writing.

The Vanishing Half ~ Brit Bennett
Bennett’s novel would have made any 2020 list I put together, of any length. She writes flawed characters and then doesn’t judge them, enabling her stories to hit harder than they would if she subtly indicated she thought a character was right or wrong. In her telling, they’re just people. Readers, too, are invited not to judge, but to experience.

Writers & Lovers ~ Lily King
King’s book felt very personal, and her meditations on writing were so meaningful. I keep struggling to put into words just how much this book meant to me, so suffice it to say I was obsessed.

I’ve been releasing these book lists since 2012! You can check them out if you’re curious: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019.


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