2020 — a year in books

2020 was a difficult year for most of us. As there were fewer opportunities to go out with friends or attend happy hours with co-workers, I got to spend more time at home, reading. This likely explains how I found the time to read 40!! books this year. Instead of a list of stats, here is a list of moments I remember best from the past year that were defined by what I was reading at the time.

• Girls in White Dresses: in Hawaii, on my last airplane ride since
• City of Girls: on the tiny balcony of my apartment in the first week of the lockdown, spending more time in that space than I had in the past two years
• Elena Ferrante: through the adjustment period of moving back home with my parents, reading in the quiet suburban backyard
• Ten Thousand Doors of January: during the week I spent working from San Luis Obispo with friends, when the heat was oppressive and the air was full of smoke
• Behold the Dreamers: from the brief camping trip to Mendocino — on the beach, by the fire, and in the early mornings
• Brandon Sanderson: well-timed recommendation from a friend that got me through the holidays and rekindled my teenage love of fantasy/science fiction

Full list at the very bottom.

Audiobooks:

Each year, I’ve identified what changed the game for me in terms of my reading habits and practices, (2018 was the Kindle, and 2019 was my book club) and this year the Game-Changer award goes to audiobooks!

I’ve never been able to read and enjoy audiobooks. They never seemed to get the pace right, they weren’t able to skim the boring parts like my eyes do, and I found it annoying to pause and have to find paper to jot down a quick note. On my commute to work, I preferred a podcast that would be one and done in a neatly wrapped 30 minute package at 1.25x speed. This year, I’ve realized that it’s not the format that I have a problem with, it’s the books that I’ve been attempting to listen to.

To me, a good audiobook is a meandering, meditative work of non-fiction that can accompany a (meandering, meditative) walk. I’ve found essays to work best, which can be paused at natural stopping points, that are thoughtful and reflective and well-contained, and where I can tune out for a couple minutes and not miss an entire character arc or plot detail. The four audiobooks I listened to this year (and which I highly recommend for your next neighborhood walk or day hike) are The Architecture of Happiness and The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton, Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl, and The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka.

This pairing of book and format continues to be promising in the new year, as I’ve already completed 3 audiobooks (small spoiler for next year, but listening to Braiding Sweetgrass on my morning walk has infused every day this week with grace and gratitude).

Best Overall Fiction:

Circe, Madeline Miller

This one was hard. There was fiction I read that was better written (A Long Petal of the Sea) and fiction I read this year was more moving (Bel Canto). But Circe was exactly the fantastic, adventure-packed escapism that I needed when it was becoming clear that there was nowhere to escape to this past summer. As someone who grew up reading Percy Jackson and loved stories about the ancient Greeks, I was already intrigued by the premise: The book gives a full life to Circe, a minor, “witchy” goddess in Greek mythology, often characterized as a misandrist who turned men into pigs for sport, and whose claim to fame is that Odysseus is stranded on her island after the Trojan War.

Circe is assumed to have no power or skills to bring to the table outside of her beauty. When the first men from the Trojan war are shipwrecked on her island, she is actually overjoyed that they are there and showers them with food and gifts, as is her true nature. However, after they attempt to rape her, she becomes bitter, distrustful, and violent in order to stay alive as crew after crew arrives at her island. This led me to question how many women either try to stay true to themselves and are punished for it or have to fundamentally change themselves in order to survive.

The part of her journey I found most compelling was her search to find somewhere to belong. This process of home discovery had to happen before a homecoming could be possible. When she meets her first love interest, Glaucos in Okeanos, she has no idea that there is a world beyond that of her lived experience ,which is callous, neglected, and shallow. When she is exiled to her island and develops her craft, she begins to feel more at home. When her son is eventually born, she finds a home in their shared existence. But most of all, she realizes that she has never truly felt at home in an immortal, unchanging body.

I’d recommend this to anyone who loves Greek mythology for the way in which it humanizes gods and provides a commentary on mortality — and for anyone interested in a subversive take on Circe’s role in the events of the Odyssey.

Honorable Mention: Bel Canto, Ann Patchett [Last year’s honorable mention for fiction also went to Ann Patchett for Commonwealth. If you had to pick an Ann Patchett book as introduction to her writing I’d recommend The Dutch House or Commonwealth before Bel Canto, which is operatic and slow and perhaps a bit difficult to get into]

Best Overall Non-Fiction:

Habeas Data, Cyrus Farivar

I continued reading about tech policy, in the midst of an unprecedented year for tech regulation and Section 230. Habeas Data, which breaks down ten of the most significant judicial decisions for privacy and surveillance, is my top recommendation for a comprehensive yet introductory guide to the space. Each case is significant and has a specific theme in its own right, but they chronologically build on top of each other to illustrate the evolution of precedent. Two of the most note-worthy cases are the following:

1. Katz v. United States, 1967: This case ruled that the 4th Amendment’s right against unreasonable searches and seizures does require the police to obtain a search warrant in order to wiretap a public pay phone. The key insight here was that the 4th Amendment protects people, not places, and its protections apply when a person may have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
2. Smith v. Maryland, 1979: This case built off of precedent from Katz, but the application of the reasonable expectation test resulted in a different decision. The question at hand was if pen registers, which telecomm companies used to use to collect phone metadata for quality control and record keeping, can be accessed without a warrant. It was ruled that reasonable expectation to privacy does not apply to information that is voluntarily given to third parties (such as telephone numbers being given to the communication provider. Justice Thurgood Marshall makes a notable dissent here, arguing that the judgement depends on an individual’s choice to voluntarily turn over information, but that choice is not valid if no practical alternative exists. This question of choice is significant when thinking about third parties like cell phone manufacturers and email providers today.

Honorable Mention: The Life and Death of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs

Best Pandemic Read:

Garlic and Sapphires, Ruth Reichl

I stumbled upon this gem entirely by accident, when browsing the Libby app for an audiobook for a long drive. Reichl has been a food writer and restaurant critic for The New York Times and Condé Nast among others, and has published a handful of books over the last two decades. Garlic and Sapphires focuses on her tenure at The New York Times and the various wild disguises she wore to eat unrecognized in the city’s best restaurants. Many of the restaurants in the memoir are long gone, or mere shells of their prime in the 90s, but that didn’t bother me. As a result of the pandemic, I hadn’t dined at a restaurant in months, and lived fiercely and vicariously through Reichl’s canny descriptions of dining partners and detailed notes about the many flavors of the many meals that she ate. I especially loved her takedowns of Le Cirque and Box Tree among others. Though there is some criticism that the book is too fanciful, it was less the hard facts I was after and more just the anticipation of sitting down to eat at a nice restaurant — that, she delivered with style.

Here’s to more of my new favorite genre, food memoirs, to come.

Honorable Mention: The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton [Continuation of the vicarious living vibe in teasing out what makes travel so important, meaningful, and restorative to humans]

Best Recommendation:

The Stormlight Archive, Brandon Sanderson

I was introduced to Brandon Sanderson’s body of work late last year by a friend who, while a bit tipsy, stated unequivocally that this might be the best book ever. He’d said it had all you could want from a book, high fantasy, science fiction, drama, romance, humor, and everything in between. I placed a hold on the first book in the series, The Way of Kings, and waited patiently for it to come in.

There’s too much intrigue and plot twists to spoil, so I’m just here to say that it did not disappoint. If you were ever a fan of Eragon, or more recently The Kingkiller Chronicle or Game of Thrones, you should check this series (and his other books) out immediately. Each book is insanely long and quite epic; each takes about a couple weeks to read, so be sure to block out some time — because you’re not going to want to put it down.

Miscellaneous

• If you liked Rules of Civility from 2019— you might like The Glittering Hour
• If you liked Bad Blood from 2019 — you might like Superpumped

Full Book List

Non-fiction

• Notorious RBG, Irin Carmon & Shana Knizhnik
• The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care — and How to Fix It, Marty Makary
• The Architecture of Happiness, Alain de Botton
• The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton
• Uncanny Valley, Anna Weiner
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
• Superpumped, The Battle for Uber, Mike Isaac
• Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, Beverly Daniel Tatum
• Habeas Data, Cyris Farivar
• Garlic and Sapphires, Ruth Reichl
• No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald
• Buddha in the Attic, Julie Otsuka
• The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg

Fiction

• Fleishman is in Trouble, Taffy Brodesser-Akner
• Girls in White Dresses, Jennifer Close
• Normal People, Sally Rooney
• City of Girls, Elizabeth Gilbert
• Cork Dork, Bianca Bosker
• The Nightingale, Kristin Hannah
• Circe, Madeline Miller
• Ask Again, Yes, Mary Beth Keane
• Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff
• The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin
• Writers & Lovers, Lily King
• My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
• The Story of A New Name, Elena Ferrante
• One Day in December, Josie Silver
• A Long Petal of the Sea, Isabel Allende
• In Five Years, Rebecca Serle
• Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
• If I Never Met You, Mhairi McFarlane
• The Glittering Hour, Iona Grey
• The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow
• Monogamy, Sue Miller
• Behold the Dreamers, Imbolo Mbue
• American Royals, Katharine McGee
• Majesty, Katharine McGee
• The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson
• Words of Radiance, Brandon Sanderson
• Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson