It’s one of my favorite things to discuss: great books! This year I blew my reading goal out of the water. I was striving for 50 books, but according to my Good Reads profile, I read 58 books in 2020. A silver lining of quarantine and isolation, I suppose.
My book selections this year skewed heavily toward nonfiction and classics. I have been struggling to get passionate about pop-fiction books. I find them wildly depressing. Not to say my nonfiction choices are uplifting, but something about these flowery novels where terrible things happen to people, complete with graphic scenes and first person accounts of unbearable pain and inequity, I just can’t stomach at this point. Life feels hard enough outside of books.
I share this so you can keep this in mind as you view the list below and as you friend me on Good Reads. I love books that help me learn, expand my horizons, understand the world in new ways, and put our current lives in context.
So here’s what resonated with me in 2020.
(Since you are here, be sure to check out the 2019 and 2018 lists.)Â
The 10 Best Books I Read in 2020:
Note: There are some affiliate links below, and you can read our disclaimer here.
How to Do Northing: Resisting the Attention Economy
By Jenny Odell
This book was not at all what I expected; and I daresay it isn't what anyone expected as the descriptions, book jackets and marketing blurbs can't seem to capture this book. It is beautiful. It is art. It is a challenge not to live off-screen or social media free, but a call to reclaim what we see and where we focus our lives. There is a lot of nature essay-style writing, a few practical tips, and a lot of inspiration.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent
By Isabel Wilkerson
This is a hard read but also worth it. It is honest, deals with some ugly truths, and is simply necessary. This book is a well thought and well researched addition to public dialogue and understanding. It expanded my perspective of history and taught me things that we never discuss or learn in America. This is a powerful look at how race formed America from its earliest years and a realistic look at how it still shapes us. Far from platitudes or generalities, this book will point to concrete ways in which we are still trying to move through a country that is facing a reckoning. It was fascinating and enlightening.
Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation
By Anne Helen Petersen
Full disclosure, I identify more as a GenXer than a Millennial, but I found this read really interesting. With everything from antidote, to economics, to social constructions, Petersen dissects how people in my current stage of life, or close thereto, have been affected by generations before, corporate trends, various pressures, and more. There were many "a-ha! that's exactly what I feel!" moments for me while reading this. And it has sparked some really great conversations among my family, too.
Animal Farm
By George Orwell
I know it's technically about Russia...but also eerily creepy when read against current political events. I hadn't read it since high school. It was quick, and I noticed way more as a politically active adult than as a teenager distracted by Tori Amos, baggy flannel shirts, and how to get out of doing any math homework.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
By Lori Gottlieb
I laughed. I cried. I was inspired by humans and relationships. I just read she is writing another book, and I can't wait.
Fierce, Free and Full of Fire: The Guide to Being Glorious You
By Jen Hatmaker
I will never not love her. Everything she writes just hits me. Her writing is familiar, it is funny, it moving, and it is freeing. I personally was a bit turned off by the name and the cover (it feels far too self-help). But I gave it a shot and am so glad I did. Her chapter on women and body perception made me cry. She is unashamedly a Christian writer, so know that going in.
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
By Susan Cain
This book deserves to be as popular as it is. What a wonderful consideration of the power of different personality types and a call to reconsider what we reward and honor in our culture. Incidentally, this book made me realize that I actually have more introvert in me than I acknowledge - it is just that our society, work environments and culture in general reward extroverts. Discuss.
Madame Bovary
By Gustave Flaubert
Much like my reading of Rebecca years ago, I was blown away by this book. It was sneaky and entrancing. We tend to believe that classics are too hard to read and "boring." But man, that is just not the case with this one. It also made me giggle that this book was banned as too dirty at the time... I mean, what in the WORLD would they say about 50 Shades!?
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
By Jonathan Haidt
If I could make a required reading list for being an American citizen, this would be on it (so would this ). It was so surprising and REALLY good. I can't even do it justice. (When I was reading this on an airplane, pre-COVID of course, the person sitting next to me put down his newspaper, told me that he had just finished the book, and that it completely changed his relationship with his in-laws. It's that powerful.)
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
By Simon Winchester
True crime meets history meets love of language... what's not to love!? The subtitle loses a lot of people at "making of the OED," but it is intriguing. There are dark, dismal London days with murder and insane asylums. There is also a healthy love and reverence for the OED, of course. As a girl who bought this Tshirt for herself, it was a perfect fit.
Whatever you decided to read in 2020, and whatever you decide to read in 2021, may it fill you, inspire you and help you go and grow to new places.
(And, of course, let me know your recent favorites below! I am always looking for good reads – especially if they can reintroduce me to pop-fiction.)