2020 in Books

Although I am, at this point, really dragging, unable to get back to any emails in a reasonable amount of time, and needing to lie down multiple times a day, I am gritting my teeth and making myself write this post, because it is February 2021 and if I don’t get around to this now, I never will.

2020 was a real [obscene hand gesture] of a year—I won’t bore you with details because, well, it communally sucked for everyone, didn’t it? If you’re interested, I wrote a whole piece over on Substack that is my best attempt at describing the suspended state of despair I think we were all in, and specifically describes the futility of making music in that state.

If you missed it, I also put together a blog post in August summarizing the things I had managed to accomplish; for the highlights of what else I was able to do after that, kindly see the press page on my website.

My reading goal in 2020 was to read more new books than I had the year before; since I finished 64 new books in 2019, my goal for 2020 was 65. I ended up blowing past that number in August, and by the end of December had finished a nice round 100. I have no idea what my reading goal is for this year, if any, since a goal of 100+ gets you into the realm of reading for the sake of reading, which goes against everything I stand for, so for now I’m just 🤷🏻‍♀️ about my reading goal for this year.

Before I get into my list, several observations I took away from a year of reading:

Premises are the worst way to pick books. All the worst books I read (some of which I didn’t finish) last year were ones I picked solely on the basis of a catchy or intriguing premise, while the absolute best experiences I had reading were books where 1) I didn’t know the premise beforehand and 2) when I did read the premise/synopsis afterwards, it sounded utterly uninteresting to me. I’ve also found that premises have a sneaky way of reinforcing hidden biases; I am fully guilty of picking books because their setting or time period was more familiar or attractive to me, and I ended up learning so much from books I wouldn’t have picked based on their descriptions.

My sincere advice for picking books is to read as much as you possibly can from a variety of recommended sources, which takes a while but will help you figure out whose recommendations are most solid for you. I follow a bunch of my favorite authors on Twitter and read everything they recommend, there is no shortage of book roundups and lists all over the internet, and there are a few friends whose recommendations I will read without any research or hesitation. Which gets into my next point:
Reading is a social activity, and the experience is infinitely more wonderful with reading buddies. I am indescribably lucky to have friends who also enjoy reading, whose tastes overlap with mine, and—even if we haven’t caught up in months—can jump right into discussing books without going through the motions of required social pleasantries. In particular, Stephanie of @cozyreadingclub has the most similar reading taste to mine of any person I know, is a fellow theme-overanalyzer, and reads at a similar pace to me, so it’s easy for us to tear into books together and discuss them ad nauseam (this is especially rewarding as we do a lot of comparisons between the scores of various books that we’ve both read).

I honestly don’t think I would get as much as I do out of reading if it weren’t for these literary friends who are always a text or DM away. There’s something truly, fantastically wonderful about discussing books with friends (and the insightful, deep conversations about life and humanity that arise out of book discussion). If you’re having trouble reading for pleasure, I strongly recommend posting your current reads (and thoughts) on social media and following whatever discussions come out of there; you might find yourself with some reading buddies who make the journey more worthwhile.
Libraries are the best and e-readers aren’t evil. I would not be able to read at the volume that I do if it weren’t for my local library—however many of my tax dollars it’s getting, it’s not enough. I especially appreciated my library’s e-offerings last year, as physical branches shut down and physical book checkouts were suspended. For Christmas 2019 I’d requested and received a Kobo e-reader—yes, I used to boo-hiss! e-readers and scream that you would have to pry physical books from my cold dead hands, but after several years of nonstop travel, even I had to admit that lugging a stack of hardback books around the world was ridiculous, particularly as I’m capable of knocking out several books on one flight alone and the fact that I couldn’t buy souvenirs because of the stack of books in my carry-on was just objectively absurd.

I ended up loving my Kobo (which I picked for the sake of its not being part of the Amazon ecosystem—AWS notwithstanding—as well as its native support for Pocket, which I use religiously) for the few trips I took at the beginning of 2020, and then ironically it ended up being the real lockdown MVP. I think it actually enabled me to read more than I would have even if the libraries had remained open and I’d been able to check out physical books, because the 24/7 aspect of e-book checkouts meant that I could move through books much more quickly.
Reading books feels infinitely better than doomscrolling. Nothing more to say there.

Anyway, on to the 100 books themselves. Same rules as 2019—these are only new-to-me books in English that I actually finished, yadda yadda yadda. Stars (⭐️) indicate standouts, which frankly meant a little less in 2020, as some books which I acknowledged as being really outstanding reads somehow didn’t hit, and several books which really did don’t really stick out in my mind as being fully deserving of the star. I’ve chalked it up to the fact that 2020 was really an emotional flogging, and look fondly at the starred books as ones that, whatever their qualities, kept me afloat.

Also, in 2020 I started a reading-specific Instagram, @readingwithsharon, and wrote a review of EVERY SINGLE book I finished, so I’ve linked each title to the review I wrote.

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