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