If talks with friends are any indication, I’m not the only one whose reading was impacted by the pandemic. For some, reading became the ultimate comfort, devouring books by the tote bag. For others (raises hand) whole months of 2020 became readerly voids, our attention spans so completely shot it was hard to finish a single book.
I still managed to finish 79 books so far (we’ve got a week left of 2020 as I type these words) and many of them were excellent. I’ve gotten exceedingly nerdy this year and tracked my reading on a spreadsheet (thank you Kaytee!) so I can tell you that 47.44% of the books I read were 5-star reads, which is pretty amazing. Among my most-loved books, these 10 are the ones I can’t stop thinking about and recommending, in reverse order.
10. The Stationary Shop by Marjan Kamali - Set in Tehran in 1953, this may be a love story, but what I really swooned for were the descriptions of mouth-watering Persian food, poetry, and culture.
9. The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal - This big-hearted midwestern novel is populated with women brewmasters, rad old ladies, and plenty of characters you can root for.
8. Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave - This WWII novel centers around a group of smart, witty friends in wartime England. While the language is gorgeous, and Cleave tackles some big themes, it’s the small domestic details (like a particular jar of homemade jam) that most stand out in my memory.
7. Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughan - Officially a comic, now collected into graphic novel-size books, the art, sci-fi storyline, and badass girls on bikes are what catapulted this onto my favorites list. Perfect for fans of Stranger Things. Good news: it’s going to be a show on Amazon!
6. City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert - I’ll just leave you with the first two sentences: “In the summer of 1940, when I was nineteen years old and an idiot, my parents sent me to live with my Aunt Peg, who owned a theater company in New York City. I had recently been excused from Vassar College, on account of never having attended classes and thereby failing every single one of my freshman exams.“ Fantastic on audio.
5. The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow - A lush, transportive fantasy novel about a strange book and secret doors that even non-fantasy readers will enjoy. Excellent on audio.
4. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell - I listened to Odell’s extremely interesting and hard to pin down nonfiction book on audio while taking neighborhood walks during the pandemic, and always came home with new things to write about in my journal or look up online, from the behavior of crows to the history of old trees to unusual performance art.
3. The House in the Cerulean Sea by T. J. Klune - Klune’s sweet fantasy novel almost reads like middle grade fiction, has all kinds of Harry Potter vibes, and was so good on audio I had to immediately re-listen to it, the second time round with my son. While shelved in the adult section, this story makes a great family listen for older tweens and up.
2. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith - I put this beloved coming of age novel set in turn-of-the-century New York under the heading “books I really wish I had read as a child”. Tween Laura would have felt so seen in Francie Nolan — I literally hugged this book to my chest when I finished.
1. Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend - For my son to say this is “better than Harry Potter”, and for me to almost-maybe-probably agree is all you really need to know about this fantastic series from Australian author Jessica Townsend. Spectacular on audio.
What were your favorite books of 2020?
