2020 Books

Well, 2020 was certainly a year. I read a lot, and I’m grateful for all the time I had to escape into these books. This year, I’m celebrating a decade (what!!!) of book blogging. And as I’ve done for the last six years, here are the books I read in 2020 (* = author interview, and a ^ means the book is out in 2021) (You can see all my author interviews here):

1. Dept. of Speculation - Jenny Offill

2. Agent Running in the Field - John le Carré

3. Godshot - Chelsea Bieker

4. Nobody Will Tell You This But Me - Bess Kalb*

5. Afterlife - Julia Alvarez

6. The Glass Hotel - Emily St. John Mandel

7. We Ride Upon Sticks - Quan Barry

8. The Book of V. - Anna Solomon*

9. The City We Became - N.K. Jemisin

10. Conditional Citizens - Laila Lalami

11. Temporary - Hilary Leichter

12. Chosen Ones - Veronica Roth

13. How Much of These Hills Is Gold - C Pam Zhang

14. Girl, Serpent, Thorn - Melissa Bashardoust

15. All My Mother’s Lovers - Ilana Masad*

16. Anna K - Jenny Lee

17. Out of Darkness, Shining Light - Petina Gappah

18. Amnesty - Aravind Adiga

19. The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care - Anne Boyer

20. Book of the Little Axe - Lauren Francis-Sharma

21. Boys of Alabama - Genevieve Hudson

22. Such a Fun Age - Kiley Reid

23. The Beauty of Your Face - Sahar Mustafah

24. A Novel Bookstore - Laurence Cossé

25. Take Me Apart - Sara Sligar

26. The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida - Clarissa Goenawan

27. Vera Kelly is not a Mystery - Rosalie Knecht

28. The Hand on the Wall - Maureen Johnson

29. Exit West - Moshin Hamid

30. Edinburgh - Alexander Chee

31. Thirst: 2,600 Miles to Home - Heather Anderson

32. The Cassandra - Sharma Shields

33. You Never Forget Your First: a Biography Of George Washington - Alexis Coe

34. TransAtlantic - Colum McCann

35. The Book of Koli - M. R. Carey

36. The Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett

37. Thin Places: Essays From In Between - Jordan Kisner

38. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas - Gertrude Stein; illustrated by Maira Kalman

39. New Waves - Kevin Nguyen

40. The Magical Language of Others - E.J. Koh

41. My Dark Vanessa - Kate Elizabeth Russell

42. Followers - Megan Angelo

43. The Mere Wife - Maria Dahvana Headley

44. The Lightness - Emily Temple

45. Untamed - Glennon Doyle

46. The Ten Thousand Doors of January - Alix E. Harrow

47. Sharks in the Time of Saviors - Kawai Strong Washburn

48. Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women the Movement Forgot - Mikki Kendall

49. Head Over Heels - Hannah Orenstein

50. You Exist Too Much - Zaina Arafat

51. The Happily Ever After: A Memoir of an Unlikely Romance Novelist - Avi Steinberg

52. Mother Daughter Widow Wife - Robin Wasserman

53. Pizza Girl - Jean Kyoung Frazier

54. A Burning - Megha Majumdar

55. Sad Janet - Lucie Britsch

56. I Hold A Wolf By the Ears - Laura Van Den Berg

57. The Heir Affair - Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan

58. Afterland - Lauren Beukes •

59. Party of Two - Jasmine Guillory

60. The New Queer Conscience - Adam Eli

61. The Argonauts - Maggie Nelson

62. Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing - Allison Winn Scotch

63. Parakeet - Marie-Helene Bertino

64. Migrations - Charlotte McConaghy

65. Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel

66. Empire of Wild - Cherie Dimaline

67. The Book of Atlantis Black: The Search for a Sister Gone Missing - Betsy Bonner

68. The Dragons, The Giant, The Women - Wayétu Moore

69. Scorpionfish - Natalie Bakopoulos

70. Self Care - Leigh Stein*

71. The Death of Vivek Oji - Akwaeke Emezi

72. The New Wilderness - Diane Cook

73. Mother Land - Leah Franqui

74. Tomboyland - Melissa Faliveno*

75. The Sprawl - Jason Diamond

76. Unspeakable Acts - Sarah Weinman

77. How to Build a Girl - Caitlin Moran

78. The Idea of You - Robinne Lee

79. Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family - Robert Kolker

80. Infinite Detail - Tim Maughan

81. The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree - Shokoofeh Azar

82. The Influence of Soros: Politics, Power, and the Struggle for an Open Society - Emily Tamkin*

83. The Moroccan Girl - Charles Cumming

84. The Book of Lost Saints - Daniel José Older

85. Arthur Ashe: A Life - Raymond Arsenault

86. Parable of the Sower - Octavia E. Butler

87. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness - Michelle Alexander

88. Leave the World Behind - Rumaan Alam

89. Real Life - Brandon Taylor

90. A Duke, The Lady and a Baby - Vanessa Riley

91. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab

92. The Office of Historical Corrections - Danielle Evans

93. The Most Precious of Cargoes - Jean-Claude Grumberg trans. Frank Wynne

94. The Lost Shtetl - Max Gross*

95. Memorial - Bryan Washington

96. Where the Wild Ladies Are - Aoko Matsuda trans. Polly Barton

97. Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land - Toni Jensen

98. Transcendent Kingdom - Yaa Gyasi

99. Evening - Nessa Rapoport

100. Bestiary - K-Ming Chang

101. Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison

102. When No One Is Watching - Alyssa Cole

103. Bound In the Bond of Life: Pittsburgh Writers Reflect on the Tree of Life Tragedy ed. Beth Kissileff and Eric Lidji

104. True Believer: the Rise and Fall of Stan Lee - Abraham Riesman

105. The Talented Miss Farewell - Emily Gray Tedrowe

106. Likes - Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum

107. The Thirty Names of Night - Zeyn Joukhadar

108. What Are You Going Through - Sigrid Nunez

109. Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy - Talia Lavin*

110. A Girl is a Body of Water - Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

111. Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate - Daniel Mendelsohn

112. World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments - Aimee Nezhukumatathil

113. The Orchard - David Hopen

114. His Only Wife - Peace Adzo Medie

115. High as the Waters Rise - Anja Kampmann

116. Plain Bad Heroines - emily m. danforth

117. Tell Them of Battles, Kings & Elephants - Mathias Énard

118. Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family - Omid Scobie & Carolyn Durand

119. Racquet Magazine: the Book - Ed. David Shaftel & Caitlin Thompson

120. The Country Girls - Edna O’Brien

121. The Lonely Girl - Edna O’Brien

122. Girls in Their Married Bliss - Edna O’Brien

123. Gilead - Marilynne Robinson

124. Homeland Elegies - Ayad Akhtar

125. Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back: Dilemmas of the Modern Sports Fan - Jessica Luther & Kavitha A. Davidson

126. Mitz - Sigrid Nunez

127. Go Tell It On the Mountain - James Baldwin

128. Magic Lessons - Alice Hoffman

129. Outlawed - Anna North^

130. Rest and Be Thankful - Emma Glass

131. Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America - Ijeoma Oluo

132. Aquarium - Yaara Shehori, trans. from Hebrew by Todd Hasak-Lowy^

133. We Run the Tides - Vendela Vida^

134. Infinite Country - Patricia Engel^

135. Milk Blood Heat - Dantiel W. Moniz^

136. Bride of the Sea - Eman Quotah^

137. The Witches - Roald Dahl

138. The Echo Wife - Sarah Gailey^

139. Cheeky: A Head-to-Toe Memoir - Ariella Elovic*

140. A Certain Hunger - Chelsea G. Summers*

141. The Inland Sea - Madeleine Watts^

142. The Absolute Book - Elizabeth Knox^

143. Love Is an Ex-Country - Randa Jarrar^

144. A Swim in the Pond in the Rain - George Saunders^

145. Hades, Argentina - Daniel Loedel^

146. Milk Fed - Melissa Broder^

147. Detransition, Baby - Torrey Peters^

148. Everybody Else Is Perfect: How I Survived Hypocrisy, Beauty, Clicks, and Likes - Gabrielle Korn^

149. Fake Accounts - Lauren Oyler^

150. I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are - Rachel Bloom

151. The Blade Between - Sam J. Miller

152. Dog Flowers - Danielle Geller^

153. The Divines - Ellie Eaton^

154. How to Order the Universe - Maria José Ferrada (trans. Elizabeth Bryer)^

155. The Prophets - Robert Jones, Jr.^

156. Black Buck - Mateo Askaripour^

157. Moonflower Murders - Anthony Horowitz

158. Dead Girls - Selva Almada (trans. Annie McDermott)

159. Farewell, Ghosts - Nadia Terranova (trans. Ann Goldstein)

160. Men We Reaped - Jesmyn Ward

161. The Lost Book of Adana Moreau - Michael Zapata

162. Yes No Maybe So - Becky Albertalli & Aisha Saeed

163. Stormbreaker (Alex Rider #1) - Anthony Horowitz

164. The Windsor Knot - SJ Bennett^

165. American Utopia - David Byrne & Maira Kalman

166. The Good Lord Bird - James McBride

167. Fiebre Tropical - Juliana Delgado Lopera

168. Hurricane Season - Fernanda Melchor (trans. Sophie Hughes)

169. Love in Color: Mythical Tales From Around the World - Bolu Babalola^

170. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life - Anne Lamott