Books read in 2020

I read 34 books in 2020, tying my personal record from 2019. It feels a bit illegitimate since almost half of them were graphic novels and/or juvenile lit. Not that those aren't legitimate books, just that they often take a lot less time to read and so it feels like I'm padding my total by including them. 

At the end of 2019 I decided that in the coming year I wanted to read a lot of nonfiction, sort of stretch my brain a bit, ya know? Oh boy did I NOT end up doing much of that in 2020. My attention span for several patches of the year was much more suited, as I mentioned above, to graphic novels and juvie lit. I did read four nonfiction titles: The Joys of Homemaking (read mostly for kitsch value), Why We Write (so good if you are interested in how writers get it done), Catch and Kill (excellent and disheartening and infuriating), and Siblings Without Rivalry (a parenting book that I finished two weeks ago and am already failing to implement even though I know it would be helpful).

I spent a lot of time in the spring reading classics written by and mostly about women: Pride & Prejudice, Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, and Little Women. Perhaps this was a form of self care as I settled in for a year of quarantining with four men. If you are friends with me in real life, I might have already recommended this, but I'll say it again: I really, really enjoyed watching/listening to Jennifer Ehle do a chapter at a time of P&P on youtube. She's charming as heck and you should check it out.

I read memoirs by these women who all happen to be white and over 50: Rachel Dratch, Nell Scovell, and Meredith Maran. They're like my ghosts of Christmas very-near-future, I guess.

I read a few books that reminded me of the damage that a dirtbag man can do when he holds any amount of power: Catch and Kill being number one, but also Just the Funny Parts and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (the latter being not through the story itself, but through my subsequent reading about the author's behavior).

I read two well-written stories about young(ish) women trying to figure out their place in the world that also left me thinking about relationships: Writers & Lovers and Such a Fun Age.

Finally, these don't fit in a category together, but I highly recommend Good Talk, News of the World, and The Dutch House. All three are so good.

Happy New Year, fellow book lovers!