My Year in Books – 2020

As I do every year, I want to recap some of the books I’ve read this past year. (In case you’d like to check them out, here are my previous years’ posts for 2018 and 2019.) I always set a goal or challenge on Goodreads, and once again, I not only met but slightly exceeded my goal. Goodreads is basically just a way to track books you have already read, or want to read. You can read reviews, and rate the books you’ve read, and follow favorite authors or friends. I’ve been using it consistently since 2014, and I love being able to track my progress! Lists are a big part of my life. (Other Enneagram Type 1’s can agree with me on this point, I’m sure.) I thought I would set a lower goal around 50-75 this year, but then I ended up reading more once the pandemic hit, so I upped it to my usual 100 books. My final total? I read 102 books this year!

And since I love lists and details and stats so much, I’m starting out with all the stats for 2020. (You can see all of my 2020 Goodreads stats here.)

• I read 102 books this year. (Some of them were “short stories,” anywhere from 4 to 100 pages.)
• I read just over 33,000 pages.
• The longest book I read was “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” by J.K. Rowling at 870 pages. (This is book #5 in the Harry Potter series. This was my 2nd time reading it, but this time I listened to it on audio, and still rated it 5 stars.)
• The most popular book I read this year was “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” which 8.9 million Goodreads users have read. And the least popular book I read this year was the 1994 movie-tie-in-version of “Little Women,” which only 456 other Goodreads users have read.
• The highest-rated book I read this year was “A Court of Mist and Fury” by Sarah J. Maas (which is book #2 in that series), with a 4.6-star average. (Just for comparison, the first Harry Potter book has a 4.5-star average.)
• The first book I finished this year was “Dreams of Joy” by Lisa See; and the last book I finished this year was supposed to be “The Assassin’s Blade” by Sarah J. Maas (which is a collection of 5 novellas, and the prequel to her “Throne of Glass” series), but I didn’t finish it in time, so my actual last book was “One by One” by Ruth Ware.

Here are my favorites from this past year. (It’s hard to narrow it down when I read so many, but since this is my blog, I’ll do what I want, and include as many books as I want!) These are in chronological order of when I read them, not in order of how much I liked them. But these are all of my 4-star (I really liked it a lot) or 5-star (it was amazing/I loved it) reads:

1. Dreams of Joy by Lisa See – 4 stars
2. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott – 5 stars**
3. The Scent Keeper by Erica Bauermeister –  4 stars
4. The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes – 4.5 stars
5. Conviction by Denise Mina – 4 stars
6. Make Something Good Today by Ben & Erin Napier – 5 stars (read for the 2nd time, on audio)**
7. Lovely War by Julie Berry – 5 stars**
8. Harry Potter (books 1-5 in series) by J.K. Rowling – 5 stars (read for the 2nd time, on audio)**
9. The Dressmaker’s Gift by Fiona Valpy – 4 stars
10. The Greatest Love Story Ever Told by Megan Mullally & Nick Offerman – 4 stars
11. The River Widow by Ann Howard Creel – 4 stars
12. White Chrysanthemum by Mary Lynn Bracht – 4 stars
13. The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal – 4 stars
14. The Last Guest House by Megan Miranda – 4 stars
15. The Winemaker’s Wife by Kristin Harmel – 4 stars
16. The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner – 4 stars
17. The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff – 4 stars
18. Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn – 4 stars
19. Watch Me Disappear by Janelle Brown – 4 stars
20. Tweet Cute by Emma Lord – 4 stars
21. A Court of Thorns and Roses (books 1-3.1 in series) by Sarah J. Mass – 5 stars**
22. The Whisper Man by Alex North – 4 stars
23. The Happily Ever After Playlist by Abby Jimenez – 4 stars
24. The Marriage Game by Sara Desai – 4 stars
25. The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow – 4 stars
26. Artemis by Andy Weir – 4 stars
27. Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton
28. Every Heart a Doorway (books 1-5 in series) by Seanan McGuire – 5 stars (read for 2nd time, on audio)**
29. The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman – 4 stars
30. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd – 5 stars (read for 2nd time)**
31. A Great Reckoning (book #12 in series, and also read books 13-15 this year) by Louise Penny – 4 stars
32. The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis – 4 stars
33. The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah – 5 stars (read for 2nd time, on audio)**
34. The Dating Charade by Melissa Ferguson – 4 stars
35. Josh & Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren – 4 stars
36. Three Hours in Paris by Cara Black – 4 stars
37. Code Name Helene by Ariel Lawhon – 4 stars
38. Throne of Glass (book #1 in series) by Sarah J. Maas – 5 stars**
39. Little Women (1994 movie-tie-in-version) adapted by Laurie Lawlor, written by Louisa May Alcott – 5 stars**
40. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens – 4 stars
41. One by One by Ruth Ware – 4 stars

Now, even though I did very much enjoy a large majority of the books I read (that’s roughly 40%!), there were still plenty of books that were “just okay,” with a rating of 3 stars. Not terrible, but not great, but I did at least finish reading them… So, here are a few of my 3-star reads from 2020: The Light Over London, The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted, Not the Girl You Marry, The Wife Between Us, Waiting for Tom Hanks, The Flight Attendant, Little Fires Everywhere, Would Like to Meet, Meet Cute and China Rich Girlfriend.

I feel like I’ve gotten better at choosing which books to read, but also I’ve gotten better at abandoning books that just aren’t for me. I used to be a strict had-to-finish-the-book kinda gal, but why?? (Because that’s just my personality.) But now, I can let myself off the hook, if I’m just not that into it. But even so, I still read & finish some books that just weren’t that great, like these 2-star books. What’s interesting here to me is, I’ve previously read and enjoyed other books by 4 of these 5 authors.

1. Searching For Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok
2. The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez
3. The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
4. The Red Lotus by Christ Bohjalian
5. The Chill by Scott Carson

And in addition to the few books I finish but didn’t really like, I still started and quit about 5-10 other books, that were put on my “abandoned” list, and never to be returned to again… But I won’t even list those here.

So last year, I thought I was going to set a lower goal for 2020, but I ended up changing it back to 100 like I’ve done for the past couple of years. I feel like at this point, I might as well go ahead and plan to make my goal for 2021 the same 100-book-goal as always right? Except, I’m going to have a baby in 2021, and that will definitely effect things. Even though I’ll be home on maternity leave for a couple of months, anyone who’s birthed a child knows that it’s not exactly two months of free reading time. So now that I’m thinking it through, maybe I’ll try setting my goal lower this year, around 50-75 books for the year. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea…

Tell me, what were some of your favorite books you read in 2020?!