The 100 Books I Read in 2020
Welcome back to my annual reading! Despite always being a voracious reader, last year was the first year that I tracked my reading. I set a formal goal for myself last year to read more and try to consume content more intentionally. The goal was to read 50 books and I closed out the year having read 63. This year, I was not reading books to satisfy a number, rather a diversity of books by following the checklist in Book Riot’s “Read Harder” book challenge journal. The challenges include:
A book about books (The Bookish Life of Nina Hill)
A book you would normally consider a guilty pleasure (Red White & Royal Blue)
A book about a current social or political issue (All The Good Parts - about fertility and immigration)
A book that was originally published in another language (Last Stop Auschwitz)
A book with an LGBTQ main character, written by an LGBTQ author (Naturally Tan)
Re-read a book you read in school (Twelfth Night)
An award-winning young adult book (Throne of Glass)
A book by an immigrant or with a central immigration narrative (I Was Anastasia)
A collection of short stories (Tomboyland)
A book about space
A book published by an independent press (Repentance by Andrew Lam - published by Tiny Fox Press)
A book by an author from another continent (Emma: A Modern Retelling - author was born in Zimbabwe and lives in the United Kingdom)
I’ll mark above the books that I read to satisfy each of the challenges and at the same time will track my full-year reading below. I’ll update this blog post on a monthly basis so that you have access to my ongoing record of books read. If you have recommendations for me, please comment them below!!
HOW I MANAGE MY READING:
I usually am traveling often and constantly on the move. With COVID-19 this year, access to books became even more scarce for me, as physical books continue to not be an option. Below are the way I gain access to books:
When I moved back to Chicago last year, I got a Chicago Public Library card and downloaded most of my books free to the Amazon Kindle app on my phone. (Want to know how? LakeshoreLady breaks it down in this blog post.)
I also use the Library Extension for Chrome which shows you if a book is available via the library when you’re browsing on Amazon (saving more money!).
If you have a library card, you also have access to the Hoopla Digital app which further extends the availability of ebooks and other digital media.
I also took advantage of Amazon’s FirstReads program for Prime members - you get one free ebook per month from a pre-selected list!
Scribd is also giving one month free access to all of their books / ebooks / audiobooks / magazines due to COVID-19.
Apple Books is also offering a collection of free books due to COVID-19.
Finally, for the times I did carry around a physical book, I got a book sleeve to keep it protected no matter where I was.
Between all of the above options, I’ve basically had non-stop access to books whenever I want and almost always have a handful of ebooks on hold at the library.
WHAT I ACTUALLY READ:
The books below show a full record of what I have read, starting with the book I began on New Year’s Day.
The books above take you through the end of my Q1 reading (for a total of 33 books read so far this year). On the bottom row, you’ll see that I also included my Winter 2020 textbook as a part of my doctorate degree, since I read textbooks cover to cover as a part of required reading. My favorites thus far this quarter include the two Emily Belden books (she’s a Chicago author and they were such easy reads!), Red White & Royal Blue, and The Perfect Wife (a very weird book but just weird enough that I loved it). I also loved I Was Anastasia, The Underground Railroad, and The Whispers of War, although they were all devastating reads.
The books above take you through the end of my Q2 reading (for a total of 66 books read so far this year). This quarter saw a lot of romance novels and “women’s self help” books. The books I loved most were Untamed, Tomboyland, and In Five Years. I wanted to love Dear Girls and even tried the audiobook version but I just couldn’t get into it. The Librarian of Auschwitz was unsurprisingly a heart-wrenching but truly phenomenal read.
The books above take you through the end of my Q3 reading (for a total of 83 books read so far this year). This quarter was full of the Throne of Glass book series (the first two of which I devoured in under 48 hours) as well as a couple new releases from friends (Dirt and Be.). Well Met was also a sleeper hit for me, truly a well written book. Blue Ticket shook me to my core (too similar to Handmaid’s Tale, perhaps?) but really good overall. Finally, the second book from Katharine McGee came out in September and I finished it about 16 hours after it came out. So good.
The books above take you through the end of my Q4 reading (for a total of 100 books read so far this year). As I round out the year and start to focus on goal setting, my doctoral dissertation proposal, and so much else, my reading started to slow this quarter. But I was really close to 100 total books and so I made a commitment to myself to push for at least 16 books in this three month period!
In the meantime, to see what I read in 2019, click here.