Books read in 2020

[sophia_sol]

As always, here's my list of all the books I read in the previous year! Only a little late posting. Stars are from one to five in terms of my enjoyment of the book, italics mean the book is a reread, all links are to my reviews of the books. If you have any questions about the books I didn't review (or the ones I did tbh!), please let me know and I can share some thoughts!


January

**** Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott (annotated by John Matteson)
**** The Ghost Bride, by Yangsze Choo
*** Lord of the Last Heartbeat, by May Peterson
**** Tales the Elders Told: Ojibway Legends, by Basil H Johnston
*** Tales from the Igloo, edited & translated by Maurice Metayer
**** Black Folktales, by Julius Lester
**** Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
*** The Bird Who Cleans The World, And Other Mayan Fables, by Victor Montejo
***** The Magnolia Sword, by Sherry Thomas


February

*** Prisoner of Love, by Beverly Jenkins
*** In The Vanishers' Palace, by Aliette de Bodard
***** To Be Taught If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers
**** The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South, by Michael W. Twitty - nf
*** Tempest, by Beverly Jenkins
**** Rebel, by Beverly Jenkins
***** The Black God's Drums, by P Djeli Clark
**** The Adventures of Nanabush: Ojibway Indian Stories, by Emerson Coatsworth and David Coatsworth


March

**** Gods of Jade and Shadow, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
***** An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon
*** The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever, by Jamie Wright - nf
***** The Wolf and the Girl, by Aster Glenn Gray
***** The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics, by Olivia Waite
* The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets, by Lloyd Biggle Jr


April

**** Paul Bunyan, by Esther Shephard
* The Naked Anabaptist, by Stuart Murray - nf
***** The Threefold Tie, by Aster Glenn Gray
*** The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions: The Leading Liberal and Conservative Jesus Scholars Present the Heart of the Historical Jesus Debate, by Marcus J. Borg and N.T. Wright - nf
*** Black Maria, by Diana Wynne Jones
*** After Many Days: Tales of Time Past, by LM Montgomery
** The Convenient Marriage, by Georgette Heyer
*** The Best of Robert Service, by Robert W Service
*** Songs of a Sourdough, by Robert W Service
*** Ballads of a Cheechako, by Robert W Service
** Rhymes of a Rolling Stone, by Robert W Service
** Rhymes of a Red Cross Man, by Robert W Service
** Ballads of a Bohemian, by Robert W Service
*** Bar-Room Ballads, by Robert W Service


May

**** Stories from Pangnirtung - nf
*** A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
*** Xeni: A Marriage of Inconvenience, by Rebekah Weatherspoon
*** Zel, by Donna Jo Napoli
**** Shadow Spinner, by Susan Fletcher
*** A Mountain of Gems: Fairy Tales of the Peoples of the Soviet Land, translated by Irina Zheleznova
**** Flatlanders and Ridgerunners: Folktales from the Mountains of Northern Pennsylvania, by James York Glimm
*** The Merlin Conspiracy, by Diana Wynne Jones
**** Paladin's Grace, by T. Kingfisher
*** Driven to Distraction, by Edward M. Hallowell
* Fake Marriage to her Best Friend, by Kat Cantrell
***** Thick as Thieves, by Megan Whalen Turner
*** Conrad's Fate, by Diana Wynne Jones
*** The Privilege of the Sword, by Ellen Kushner
*** The Worst Best Man, by Mia Sosa
**** Network Effect, by Martha Wells
*** The Door in the Hedge, by Robin McKinley
*** After Hamelin, by Bill Richardson


June

**** If I Never Met You, by Mhairi McFarlane
***** Work For It, by Talia Hibbert
**** Damaged Goods, by Talia Hibbert
**** The Proposal, by Jasmine Guillory
*** Operation Atonement, by Talia Hibbert
**** A Girl Like Her, by Talia Hibbert
*** Dragon Pearl, by Yoon Ha Lee
*** Minor Mage, by T Kingfisher
***** The Haunting of Tram Car 015, by P Djeli Clark
***** The Deep, by Rivers Solomon
**** Playing House, by Ruby Lang
***** Open House, by Ruby Lang


July

**** Consolation Songs, edited by Iona Datt Sharma
**** The Wedding Date, by Jasmine Guillory
** This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
***Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom, by Ted Chiang
*** In an Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire
***** Deeplight, by Frances Hardinge
** House Rules, by Ruby Lang
**** Girl Gone Viral, by Alisha Rai
**** Royal Holiday, by Jasmine Guillory
** Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus
***** Riverland, by Fran Wilde
***** Empire of Sand, by Tasha Suri
***** A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking, by T. Kingfisher
**** Get a Life, Chloe Brown, by Talia Hibbert
*** The Kiss Quotient, by Helen Hoang
***** The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows, by Olivia Waite


August

**** The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, by Zen Cho
** The House in the Cerulean Sea, by TJ Klune
** The Princess Tales Volume One: The Fairy's Mistake, The Princess Test, & Princess Sonora and the Long Sleep, by Gail Carson Levine
**** Summer Pony, by Jean Slaughter Doty
*** Born to Race, by Blanche Chenery Perrin


September

** The Last Emperox, by John Scalzi
***** The Duke Who Didn't, by Courtney Milan
*** I Wish You All The Best, by Mason Deaver
**** The Wedding Party, by Jasmine Guillory
***** Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
*** The Search for Delicious, by Natalie Babbitt
** Prairie Princess, by Margaret Epp
**** The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl 12: To All the Squirrels I've Loved Before, by Ryan North
**** The Music of Dolphins, by Karen Hesse
*** Folktales of Israel, edited by Dov Noy
**** The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, by Mary Seacole - nf
**** The Pilgrimage of Etheria, by Etheria, translation and commentary by ML McClure and Charles Lett Feltoe - nf
**** The Midwife's Apprentice, by Karen Cushman
** Glimpses of Bengal, by Rabindranath Tagore - nf
*** Where The Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin
**** Take a Hint, Dani Brown, by Talia Hibbert
**** The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner
**** The Queen of Attolia, by Megan Whalen Turner


October

***** The King of Attolia, by Megan Whalen Turner
*** A Conspiracy of Kings, by Megan Whalen Turner
*** Return of the Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner
*** Papa's book - nf
***** The Blue Castle, by Lucy Maud Montgomery
*** Untouchable, by Talia Hibbert
**** That Kind of Guy, by Talia Hibbert
**** Division Bells, by Iona Datt Sharma
***** Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke
**** Stories from a Ming Collection: The Art of the Chinese Story-Teller, by Feng Menglong, translated by Cyril Birch
**** Letters to a Young Housekeeper, by Jane Prince - nf
**** Letters from Egypt, by Lucie Duff-Gordon - nf
*** Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir


November

** Cinderella is Dead, by Kalynn Bayron
**** The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo - nf
*** The Kingdom of Back, by Marie Lu
***** No More Dead Dogs, by Gordon Korman
**** Spoiler Alert, by Olivia Dade
**** The Picts and the Martyrs, by Arthur Ransome
*** The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker
***** The Broken Kingdoms, by NK Jemisin
*** The Capricorn Bracelet, by Rosemary Sutcliff
*** The Satapur Moonstone, by Sujata Massey
*** Pissing in the Snow, and Other Ozark Folktales, by Vance Randolph


December

***** Burning Roses, by SL Huang
* The Angel of the Crows, by Katherine Addison
***** Scandinavian Folktales, translated and edited by Jacqueline Simpson
*** A Duet for Invisible Strings, by Llinos Cathryn Thomas
** Sparks Fly, by Llinos Cathryn Thomas
*** The Winter Duke, by Claire Eliza Bartlett
**** The Untended Rue, by Caroline Ratajski


And now it's stats time! As always, stats are to be taken with a grain of salt, as I may have made mistakes in my counting or misunderstood/misremembered an author's identity or straight-up forgotten what genre a book was.

Books read: 137
Rereads: 26 (19% of total)

Fantasy: 43
Romance: 41
Historical fiction: 26
Kidlit: 24
Science Fiction: 15
Nonfiction: 12
Folk/fairy tale collection: 11
YA: 10
Poetry: 7
Old books: 7
Short Stories: 7
Literary Fiction: 6
Memoir: 4
Famous/Classic: 3
Mystery: 2
Graphic novels: 1

Books with male authors: 37 (27% of total)
Books with female authors: 97 (71% of total)
Books with nonbinary authors: 4 (3% of total)

Books with authors of colour: 53 (39% of total)

This has been a record breaking year for my reading. Thank you pandemic, I guess. I read just so many books this year, well above my previous record since I started keeping records. 137 books! When the average number of books I read per year for the last five years was only 82! Sometimes books are what sustain you through the hard times, and I'm very grateful for it. Especially since I know some people found themselves unable to read as much as usual due to everything going on, and that could have easily been me as well.

I have been working over time to improve the number of books I read by authors of colour, and this is the first year I feel like I really got somewhere with that. I'm pleased that I read over 50 books by poc this year, and significantly improved my percentage too. (39% of total, when last year was 23%.) Still room for continued work on this though, of course!

Since a lot of my reading comes from the library, I found myself repeatedly frustrated to see that the books I wanted to read by authors of colour or queer authors were stocked in lower proportions. So I had to balance my book buying budget against my desires to read more diversely, unfortunately. Something to keep considering. Though this may improve once the pandemic is over and I can easily and safely access the library's physical book collections as well as their ebooks, since they have more selection in hard copies, I think.

Usually in my year-end book roundup I discuss my fave and least fave new-to-me book of the year, and most years I complain about how hard it is to choose a fave, and this year is NOT an exception. I read so many incredible books this year! Idk, just look at the five-star books on the list above and they're all my faves, ok? I'm not going to choose between them this year.

Least fave....that's a little easier. I only have a few one-star books to choose between. The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets I think would be the winner in this race to the bottom, though it does have competition.

But overall my thesis for the year is Books Are Good, Actually.

Comments

[chestnut_pod]

Books are good, actually! That's a fine thesis.

[sophia_sol]

♥books!♥

[genarti]

A very good thesis!

[sophia_sol]

one I have put significant effort into proving! :D

[pauraque]

I was one of those people who couldn't read this year, but reading your reviews felt like living vicariously, at least a bit. :)

[sophia_sol]

I'm glad my reviews could help even a little, and I hope you'll be able to pick back up on reading soon!

[lokifan]

Sometimes books are what sustain you through the hard times, and I'm very grateful for it.

Yep! I only got to 61, but that's still sustaining and way more than my average has been for yeeeears.

I haven't got to Deeplight yet but I ADORE Frances Hardringe's work so much!!