Quarantine led many people to read more books than they’ve read in a long, long time, with so much time freed up and a re-dedication to supporting local bookstores. Book clubs were a big thing this year for staying social, too, as reading became a lot more trendy in the social media circles I follow.
Well, for me… my commute remains my primary dedicated reading time and space, so when I stopped having a commute in March, I stopped reading for a long time, too.
Needless to say, it was another year of falling disappointingly short of my books goal, coming up shorter on my Goodreads challenge than ever before. It stings a bit to think of the years that I far surpassed the number of books I aimed to read, and that those numbers far exceed how many I got through this year. But I’m not too beat up about it, I know how difficult this year was and the only reason I read as much as I even did was because of many bouts of stressed and anxious insomnia. Probably half of my reading was done between 2-6am this year, hours that I am usually not awake for at all.
Here was 2020 in books completed:
- The Goldfinch
- Brotopia
- Siege and Storm
- Ruin and Rising
- Normal People
- The Invention of Wings
- The Night Circus
- Supernova Era
- Queen’s Shadow
- Good Talk
- Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
- The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
- Ninth House
- Know My Name
- The Vanishing Half
- Minor Feelings
- The Last Wish
- Six of Crows
- Crooked Kingdom
- Sword of Destiny
What were your favorite reads in 2020? Mine were:
- Brotopia by Emily Chang
- The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
- Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
- The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
- Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
(I thought about calling out books that got a lot of critical acclaim/social media hype that I was really disappointed by but this isn’t really the place for that kind of negativity and pettiness.) (If you’re curious, I usually leave a review out of 5 stars on Goodreads, and those books didn’t do well.)
What books do you recommend I read in 2021? I am likely to continue reading Witcher books after getting into Andrzej Sapkowski’s world in The Witcher 3 this year. Also, despite most of my reading being done on ereader now, I have a small stack of physical books I haven’t finished reading yet so my big goal for 2021 is to get through those!
Sip of Starrshine 