2020 in a Bookshelf

2020 is not the kind of year I want to write a wrap-up about.

Not because it’s been unkind to me. As the world has roiled and grieved and absorbed unthinkable quantities of loss, Emmett, Finnegan, and I have been alright. Our bodies are intact. Our home is warm. Our lives go on, albeit cloistered and indoors. We try to be good, and grateful, citizens.

But others, it goes without saying, haven’t been as lucky. Even those whose pains are “mundane and surmountable” have it bad. All year, any time things have gone well ­– when I published an article or Finnegan behaved adorably or we finally got our green cards after years of uncertainty – I’ve struggled to talk about it without worrying I’ll sound oblivious or, even worse, smug.  

So instead of recapping my year, I’ll recap my books. 2020 in a bookshelf, if you will. In some ways, the two are related. Although this year wasn’t quiet professionally – I just brought my usual quantity of work home to my bedroom “office” – it was quiet in just about every other way. Without book clubs or dinners or exercise classes, I had time to myself every night once Finnegan went to bed. I used it to write. To hang out with Emmett. To beat back existential dread. And, more often than not, to read. 

I read 48 books last year. 39 of those books were written by women, and 17 by women of color, which I’m proud of. As someone who grew up reading a ton of ‘the Jonathans’ (Franzen, Safran Foer, and Lethem) and spent years obsessed with David Foster Wallace and Jeffrey Eugenides, it’s been a revelation to really explore a world beyond the literary equivalent of the Seattle grunge scene.

Of those 48 books, one was poetry, and while it surely would have greatly moved a decade-younger version of me (and perhaps would have also inspired a tattoo mimicking Rupi Kaur’s line drawings – eek), it felt a bit twee for my 35-year-old self.

Two were novelty books – Other Wordly, which lists delightful words in other languages (my favorites were aeolist and tsundoku) and Every Person in New York, the late Jason Polan’s lovely illustrations of thousands of New Yorkers.

30 were nonfiction, of which 17 were memoir and two of those – Mira Jacob’s Good Talk and Lucy Knisley’s Kid Gloves – were graphic memoirs. Many of those memoirs were deeply moving – probably half of the tears I shed in 2020 were over Jayson Greene’s Once More We Saw Stars – but the three that stuck with me most were Stephanie Land’s Maid, T Kira Madden’s Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, and my friend Dakshana Bascaramurty’s This Is Not The End of Me.

The remaining 15 books were fiction, of which only two – Lauren Mechling’s empty How Could She and Ben Lerner’s inadvertent paean to male privilege, Leaving the Atocha Station – were memorably underwhelming. The rest, from Idra Novey’s Those Who Knew to Ling Ma’s Severance to Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation, were transporting and original and fascinating.

This year, inspired by Nicole Zhu’s meticulous accounting of her book-a-week reading practice, I’m setting my Goodreads goal at 52 books. I’ve never read that many books in a year before, and I have no idea whether I’ll be able to, but it can’t hurt to try. Unlike competitive betting or eating, competitive reading seems like all upside, whether or not you win.

And as I read, I’ll be crossing my fingers for a 2021 that feels nothing at all like the year before.