Reflecting on My 2020 Reading

My reading journal

Now that 2020 is behind us and I’ve caught my reading journal up, I’m ready to reflect on what my reading life looked like last year. As with most other people, I have been at home a lot more than normal. While I continued to work from home for most of my regular hours, my commute shrunk to nothing for half the year and is still only a couple of times a week vs. every weekday.

Back in August, I did a reading goals check in on how my reading was going. At that point, I was reading almost 78% fiction and hoping to get to about 30%-70% nonfiction books to fiction books. I ended up reading 106 fiction and 30 nonfiction by the end of 2020. That’s 72% fiction and 28% nonfiction, which isn’t quite 30% but still the highest percentage I’ve read in recent years.

I did manage to squeeze another poetry book in, but because it was one that followed the Christmas calendar and didn’t end until Epiphany, I can’t count it for 2020. I’d like to bump the number of poetry books up to at least one a quarter or, even better, one every other month in 2021.

Audiobooks were so low–only five for the year. Losing my commute did a lot for my exercising and cooking, but killed my listening time. I ended up listening mostly to sermons and podcasts during my walks each day and dropped audiobooks altogether from March on. However, I have hopes for a better listening year in 2021. I’ve already downloaded Hilary Mantel’s third Cromwell book. I loved listening to Bring Up the Bodies on audio so I have high hopes for finishing The Mirror and the Light, too.

The biggest jump was in rereads: 64 of the 139 books I read were ones I had read before. That’s almost 50%! I put that down completely to compulsive comfort reading during the lockdown, pandemic, and political shenanigans throughout the year. I reread several mystery series, including Deborah Crombie’s Kincaid-James series and much of Charles Todd’s Ian Rutledge series. At the end of the year, I gulped down many of Agatha Christie’s Poirot novels and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Here are the books I appreciated or enjoyed this most. Many of them were nonfiction.

Voices from the Past, Volume 2: Puritan Devotional Readings, edited by Richard Rushing – The deep devotion and theology of the Puritan theologians kept me grounded during this difficult year.

Life Path: Personal and Spiritual Growth Through Journal Writing by Luci Shaw and Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation by Ruth Haley Barton – I read both of these with a group of women and the discussions made the reading so much richer.

Beholding and Becoming: The Art of Everyday Worship by Ruth Chou Simons – The combination of the gorgeous artwork and theological truth made this a great book to read this autumn.

What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done by Matt Perman and Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport – Both of these books on living a productive life were helpful although from completely different places theologically.

Jenny Walton’s Packing for a Woman’s Journey by Nancy Lindemeyer – I had forgotten how much I loved this book. This is one of two rereads that made my best of 2020 list. It’s filled with beauty–both in writing and subject matter–and I enjoyed every essay.

My fiction reading wasn’t nearly as rich, probably because I did so much rereading for comfort. However there were a few that rose to the top:

Sorcery & Cecelia: or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia C. Wrede – For sheer fun, this was a winner. It’s an epistolary novel (my favorite kind!) and clever, witty, and full of the best kind of magic.

The Windsor Knot by S.J. Bennett – This mystery set in Windsor Castle and involving Queen Elizabeth II and her secretary won’t be out until March 2021, but when it comes out, read it if you love mysteries and/or the royal family. It was a fun, fun book. I sped through it in two days and wasn’t sorry at all. I’m already looking forward to the sequel.

The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin – I read the first two of The Broken Earth Trilogy last winter. They are filled with amazing world-building and an intricate plot. Now that things are settling down again, I’m ready to pick up the final book in the trilogy to see how Jemisin ties it all up. She’s inventive and clever, and I recommend these to anyone who likes science fiction/fantasy.

The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge – A reread but a very special one. This story about mental illness and new beginnings is healing and beautiful.

Last, but definitely not least was Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell – I don’t know if I have the words, with which to praise this book. The plot was simple–a story about a wife of a famous man and their relationship before and after the loss of a child. It was how O’Farrell wrote it–the descriptions were lush, the characters were so well-drawn that you felt that you knew them personally, the plot of tight and held together, and the emotional punch was gut-wrenching and tear-inducing but yet I couldn’t put it down. There is a bit of magical realism and the Black Death, and Shakespeare. If you love any of those things or if you just want a “Thumping Good Read”, pick this one up.

As I reflect on my reading year in 2020, I can see gaps, but overall I’m happy with what I read last year, even if a lot of it was rereading. What was your favorite book from 2020 and what do you hope to read next?

Reading Goals Check-in

After listening to the latest podcast episode of What Should You Read Next, I realized that I wanted to do a check-in on my reading goals before September hits. Since 2020 ended up being far different than anything we could have imagined, I wanted to see if I was keeping up my with my original reading goals, did I need to tweak my goals and reading trends, or did I want to throw out my goals altogether?

As of mid-August, I have read 59 of 75 books, listed on my Goodreads 2020 Reading Challenge. I’ve actually read more this year, but I don’t list everything on Goodreads, particularly those books that I reread for comfort. Here are my current stats, as of mid-August 2020:

  • Fiction – 46 (78%)
  • Nonfiction – 13 (22%)

One of my reasons for having a smaller number of books in my 2020 challenge was to have more to read a larger percentage of nonfiction. Even with a couple of months of reading only murder mysteries in order to cope with quarantine, I’m almost at 25% nonfiction, which makes me happy. I’d like to bump that up to 30% by the end of the year, which would require my reading ten more nonfiction books in the next four months—an achievable goal!

Tweaking my goals – While I’ve read a couple of Christian living books, I haven’t finished even one theology book this year. I’d like at least two of my ten nonfiction books to be theology books. If I put my mind to it, I could probably read one a month to give me four for the year, but I’m going to shoot for two theology titles in my final count.

I’ve read one poetry book and would like to squeeze one more in before the end of the year.

Fiction is going well. I’ve read some good new fiction, and I have several more waiting on my ereader for me, thanks to ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies–there are perks to working at a library!). I’ve also reread a few favorites and in December, I am very likely to reread a few more of my favorite Christmas books.

If I had to choose favorite books so far this year, I’d have to choose This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing by Jacqueline Winspear in nonfiction, Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens in fiction, and Tales from the Perilous Realm by J.R.R. Tolkien in audio.

Winspear’s memoir comes out this fall and is a real, sometimes enchanting, often difficult, story of her family and growing up years. It gives the reader a lot of background understanding for her Maisie Dobbs mystery series, and I enjoyed reading about her youth in mid-20th century Britain.

Everybody loved Where the Crawdads Sing when it came out in 2018, and I am late to that party. For the longest time, the hold list was so long at the library that I had decided to wait until it died down. A couple of months ago, I was poking around our library ebook selection, and it was available to borrow, so I snatched it up. It’s a beautiful, heart-wrenching story about a young girl, abandoned by everyone, who somehow makes a life for herself in the marshes of North Carolina. There’s nature, family, a murder, and more. I loved every minute of it.

Finally, who can resist listening to stories, written by J.R.R. Tolkien and read by Sir Derek Jacobi. This was a commute listen before the pandemic hit. Every story is enjoyable and the audio version is definitely the way to go because of Derek Jacobi’s first-rate retelling.

I am currently reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, a classic that has long been on my TBR list; What’s Best Next by Matthew Aaron Perman, a Christian productivity book; Union with God by Rankin Wilbourne, a theology book about living the Christian life through our union with Christ; a couple of ARCs that are due out later this fall, and I just downloaded a YA novel about magic in regency England by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer , which should be sheer fun.

How are your reading goals going at this point in the year? What has been your favorite book (or least favorite)? Do you want to tweak some of your reading goals? I’d love to hear about how your reading is going in the comments.
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