2020 in the books

 With so much pandemic time at home, I had more time to read this year, so here's my 2020 reading list.

1. American Dirt - Jeanine Cummins
2. Wonder - R.J. Palacio
3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - C.S. Lewis
4. Prince Caspian - C.S. Lewis
5. The Horse and His Boy - C.S. Lewis
6. The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
7. The Magician’s Nephew - C.S. Lewis
8. The Jetsetters - Amanda Eyre Ward
9. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism - Robin DiAngelo
10. Rodham - Curtis Sittenfeld
11. Heavy: An American Memoir - Kiese Laymon
12. Today Will Be Different - Maria Semple
13. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling
14. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling
15. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J.K. Rowling
16. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - J.K. Rowling
17. Mary Coin - Marisa Silver
18. Always and Forever, Lara Jean - Jenny Han
19. P.S. I Still Love You - Jenny Han
20. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before - Jenny Han
21. Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive - Stephanie Land
22. Nomandland: Surviving American in the Twenty-First Century - Jessica Bruder
23. All the Ugly and Wonderful Things - Bryn Greenwood
24. Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale - Adam Minter
25. Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens
26. The Tattooist of Auschwitz - Heather Morris

Yes, some are "children's books" because I read them at bedtime each night with Calvin, namely Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia. Revisiting books you read as a kid is interesting as I hadn't understood why C.S. Lewis was considered a "Christian author." In third grade I was missing the allusions and taking the story at face value as an imaginative fantasy tale. As an adult reading The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe it was so completely obvious. I read Wonder while he read it with his class.

A few are young adult fiction (Jenny Han): a guilty pleasure, easy reading for a year that begged for escape. And to be fair, I read those on a cruise which seems like the place to do it.

In counterbalance, many are complicated, addressing subjects that hit the headlines this year: White Fragility, Heavy (authored by an Oberlin classmate), American Dirt and Rodham. Even Nomadland and Maid talked about the economy and how hard can be to scrape out a living - despite a lifetime of hard work.

I had a few abandoned books this year too. I don't like to waste time on books I'm not enjoying or learning from: Untamed by Glennon Doyle, Anna Kendrick's bio, The Hidden Life of Trees and Wow, No Thank You. That title was prophetic.

I am currently reading three books:

• The Silver Chair - C.S. Lewis
• The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator (This one is a long haul.)
• The Flight Attendant - Chris Bohjalian (I was planning to watch the television series until a friend tipped me off that this started as a novel. Reading the book before watching the movie is one of my all-time favorite hobbies.)