Early & Alone #45: Favorite Reads of 2020
In March, at the beginning of the pandemic, I naively thought that the extra time at home would mean I'd read SO MANY BOOKS. I'd already been working from home for more than a year, so I don't know why I thought I'd magically have tons of extra time—it wasn't as though I was giving up a commute. Also, my commutes were almost all my reading time, back in the old times, when I had a job that required my corporeal presence. Losing my commutes has actually meant less time reading, not more, in general. Now instead of built-in reading time, I have to make a conscious choice to carve out the time. Inevitably, I feel guilty for making time for reading, because it's my favorite thing to do, and when I'm reading, I'm worried about what I'm not doing: writing, working, cleaning, exercising, saving the world.
And then, 2020. I know I'm not alone when I say I read less this year than I have in a long time. For me, that still means I've read about 50 books. And look, I know that 50 books is a LOT for most people, and I know it's a lot! But it's just not as many as I'd hoped or expected to read. And I know it's because I was distracted and worried and spent a good amount of my time doomscrolling or just staring at my dog, trying to feel better, even if just for a minute. I definitely wasn't doing any of the other stuff like writing, cleaning, or exercising.
As easy as it would be to write 2020 off as a total failure, it wouldn't be true. In spite of the terrible things that happened, the collective swell of grief we are all caught up in even if we have personally been spared from actual loss of a loved one (knock on all the wood), the reckoning with our country's many, many, many flaws and wrongdoings, the ache of missing our friends and loved ones, of missing weddings and not holding a new baby and not hugging and not sharing a meal and not experiencing new places or new people...I still accomplished some big goals in 2020. I adopted my own dog, Gizmo, who has honestly made such a huge difference in my mental health this year. I got my own apartment and moved closer to my family. I took steps to move forward in my career, though that isn't going as well as I would like. I managed to do a fair amount of writing, all things considered, and even though none of it was really tied to any specific project, it still counts. I learned how to bake sourdough, I got an exercise bike, I donated and phone banked, I had a meaningful relationship, and I learned a lot about myself.
Anyway, every year I like to call out my favorite reads of the year. On top of not reading as much as I'd have liked to this year, I also didn't LOVE many of the books I read. Maybe one caused the other. Here are the books I enjoyed the most this year, in no particular order:
The Known World by Edward P. Jones: Read this if you haven't. Seriously. It's one of the best books I've ever read.
The Writing Life by Annie Dillard: This one picked me up out of a writing funk.
Here for It, Or How to Save Your Soul in America by R. Eric Thomas: This is a book of essays and it made me both laugh out loud and cry a little bit. It has everything.
The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio: I loved the irreverence and heart in this book about immigrants in America. Amazing reporting. Also, Obama loved it too.
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra: This was a novel I really got lost in. REALLY sad, about Chechnya, but beautiful and haunting.
An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken: I love Elizabeth McCracken's fiction. This is her memoir of a devastating loss of her first child and it's beautiful but also funny and sad.
Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin: Perfect pandemic read—fast and fun and...well, happy.
Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd: Hurston's life was more vivid and fascinating than one of her stories. Highly recommend this one to learn more about Hurston and her writing but also the landscape of the Harlem Renaissance.
Down City by Leah Carroll: This is a memoir about Providence, the city where I now live, about 20 minutes from where I grew up. I put off reading this one for a while because I assumed it was about the mafia but it's not—it's more of a coming-of-age story of a woman whose mother was murdered (by the mafia) and her relationship with her troubled father. It really hit close to home for me, literally, because the author grew up in the same place and time as I did by just a space of a couple of years and miles. It's a worthwhile story for anyone, but especially interesting for people familiar with Rhode Island.
Honorable mentions: My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh, The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha, The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg, and Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi.
As always, please, if you buy any books, buy them from an independent bookstore (or Bookshop, which is linked here). And let me know what your favorite reads were this year!
Happy New Year, friends! Stay strong. There's a light at the end of this tunnel.