Here are the books I’ve read during this very strange year of 2020. I keep these lists every year as a record for myself, but I post them in invitation for fellow readers to talk about books both read and overlooked. If you want to chat about these or if there are books you think I should read, please email me! Sometimes I write short notes (I hesitate to say “reviews”) over on my Goodreads page.
I’ve put ** next to my absolute favorite reads of the year.
Selected 2020 Reading (by genre, then alphabetical by author/editor last name)
Fiction/Novels/Novellas
- The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
- Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison**
- Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
- To the Wedding by John Berger
- Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
- The Stranger by Albert Camus
- O Pioneers! by Willa Cather**
- Trust Exercise: A Novel by Susan Choi**
- How to Catch a Coyote by Christy Crutchfield
- The Maytrees by Annie Dillard**
- Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
- Heartburn by Nora Ephron
- The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter
- The Guest List by Lucy Foley
- Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
- Empire City by Matt Gallagher
- Cleanness by Garth Greenwell
- Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
- Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
- Suicide Club by Rachel Heng
- The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
- Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane**
- Writers & Lovers by Lily King
- Passing by Nella Larsen
- The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
- Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli
- Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
- Sula by Toni Morrison**
- Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
- The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
- Weather by Jenny Offill
- The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa**
- Last Night at the Lobster by Steward O’Nan**
- The Dive from Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer
- The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
- Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid**
- My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
- The Ancestry of Objects by Tatiana Ryckman
- Self Care by Leigh Stein
- Real Life: A Novel by Brandon Taylor**
- Women Talking by Miriam Toews
- We the Animals by Justin Torres
- Distant Dead by Heather Young
- Drifts by Kate Zambreno
Nonfiction/Essays
- Art of Subtext by Charles Baxter
- A History of My Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt
- On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss
- Art of Perspective by Christopher Castellani
- All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
- A Mind Spread Out on the Ground by Alicia Elliott
- The Blue Jay’s Dance by Louise Erdrich
- Abandon Me by Melissa Febos**
- Things That Helped by Jessica Friedman
- The Unreality of Memory by Elisa Gabbert**
- Make it Scream, Make it Burn by Leslie Jamison
- In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
- Ongoingness by Sarah Manguso**
- Before and After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum
- So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
- My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland **
- No Visible Bruises by Rachel Louise Snyder
Short Story Collections
- Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close
- Animal Wife by Lara Erlich**
- We Had No Rules by Corinne Manning**
- Wild Milk by Sabrina Orah Mark
- Buckskin Cocaine by Erika T. Wurth**
Lit Mags and Anthologies
- Always Crashing Issue Three
- The Best Small Fictions: 2019 Anthology
- The Lascaux Review Prize Vol 6
Poetry
- Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz
- Bone by Yrsa Daley-Ward**
Zines/Chapbooks/Interviews
- One More For the People by Martha Grover
- Claim Your Space by Minyoung Lee
- Women at Work: Interviews from The Paris Review by The Paris Review
