In 2020, a lot of my reading was for comfort. I liked sinking into a good but not too difficult read. I stopped reading some books with a dystopian/ creepy feel because it wasn’t what I needed in my reading life. Nearly all reading was done on my Kindle this year because it’s easy to hold and library books can “magically” appear on it.
Here’s what I read for the first time in 2020 (in no particular order):
- Expecting Better – Emily Oster
- What to Say Next– Julie Buxbaum
- A Life Less Throwaway- Tara Button
- What if this was Enough- Heather Havrilesky
- The Woman Who Walked In Sunshine– Alexander McCall Smith
- The Rest of the Story- Sarah Dessen
- Joyful- Ingrid Fetell Lee
- The Bertie Project– Alexander McCall Smith
- So You Want Your Kid to Learn Chinese– Virginia Duan
- The Lost Husband– Katherine Center
- *The Testaments- Margaret Atwood
- *The Alice Network- Kate Quinn
- Love for Imperfect Things: How to Accept Yourself in a World Striving for Perfection– Haemin Sunim
- Somewhere in France- Jennifer Robson
- *Maybe You Should Talk to Someone– Lori Gottlieb
- *The Giver of Stars- Jojo Moyes
- *Pachinko- Min Jin Lee
- The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down- Haemin Sunim
- Drop the Ball– Tiffany Dufu
- *Bird by Bird- Anne Lamott
- *Resistance Women– Jennifer Chiaverini
- Moonlight Over Paris- Jennifer Robson
- One Day in December– Josie Silver
- No Ordinary Time– Doris Kearns Goodwin
- The Bride Test- Helen Hoang
- Night of Miracles- Elizabeth Berg
- How to Walk Away- Katherine Center
- To the Land of Long Lost Friends- Alexander McCall Smith
- *Finding Sisu: In Search of Courage, Strength, and Happiness the Finnish Way- Katja Pantzar (I’m a sucker for these ___ the insert country here way books)
- The Kiss Quotient- Helen Hoang
- *Washington Black– Esi Edugyan
- *Becoming Mrs. Lewis– Patti Callahan
- Sex and Vanity– Kevin Kwan
- The Voting Booth- Brandy Colbert
- *Enchantress of Numbers- Jennifer Chiaverini
- *Break the Good Girl Myth- Majo Molfino (fun fact- I knew Majo in grad school. Also, you should totally check out her podcast.)
- Auntie Poldi and the Handsome Antonio– Mario Giordano
- A Long Petal of the Sea- Isabel Allende
- After the War is Over- Jennifer Robson
- All Adults Here– Emma Straub
- Range- Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World- David Epstein
- *The Pull of the Stars- Emma Donoghue
- The Vanishing Half– Brit Bennett
- The Bookshop on the Corner- Jenny Colgan
- The Bookshop on the Shore- Jenny Colgan
- 500 Miles from You- Jenny Colgan
- Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close– Aminatou Sow
- The New Corner Office: How the Most Successful People Work from Home– Laura Vanderkam (I’m a bit of a fangirl, but also much preferred her first book 168 Hours)
- Big Summer– Jennifer Weiner
- *City of Girls- Elizabeth Gilbert
- I Owe You One- Sophie Kinsella
- The Lost Girls of Paris- Pam Jenoff
- The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz- Erik Larson
- Work Optional: The Non-Penny Pinching Guide to Retiring Early- Tanja Hester (also love her podcast The Fairer Cents)
- The Year of Less- Cait Flanders
- Unsheltered- Barbara Kingsolver
- #Untamed- Glennon Doyle
A * means it was a favorite/ stuck with me.
A # means I listened to it instead of reading it.
Books I officially gave up on after starting but may go back to someday:
- Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea (too creepy for me for 2020, though I LOVED her book The Night Circus)
- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (too creepy for me in pandemic-times)
Books I’m slowly working my way through:
- The Bully Pulpit- Doris Kearns Goodwin
- This Is Where you Belong: The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Life- Melody Warnick (seems relevant since we moved earlier this year)
I’m also a big re-reader, and those books aren’t on here.
How about you? Any books you recommend? Are you a re-reader? Any reading themes for 2020?