WHAT I READ IN 2020

I read 66 books this year, more than any year since 2011.  A pandemic will do that for you, I guess.  That said, given I read 60 books last year, I’m surprised this year isn’t more.  I seem to have had nothing but time, so I’m not sure what I filled it with.  Some serious wall staring, probably. 

I’m half half male and female writers this year, so that’s a positive.

My favourites:

CHERRY, by Nico Walker.  A wonderfully hilarious and strangely poetic story of military service and heroin addiction.  The girl he has a crush on, who was “either a slut or just real down to earth;” the starling with big dick energy; the time he vomited down the front of his shirt while trying to rob a bank.  Amazing. 

THE COPEHAGEN TRILOGY by Tove Ditlevsen.  I’ve never read a memoir so totally without justifications or excuses.  Creepy but brilliant.  Covers her life from childhood rickets to poetry to drug addiction.

SOLITARY by Albert Woodfox.  The only non-fiction on the list. It is not a book about which it my business to say if it was ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but rather just to be astonished at what Albert Woodfox has achieved, which is surviving forty years in solitary confinement with his sanity intact. 

NOTHING TO SEE HERE by Kevin Wilson.  A near miraculously clever, bleak book, about a poor girl who “isn’t destined for greatness but is figuring out how to steal it from someone stupid enough to relax their grip on it.”  Also involves children who bust into flames.

NOTES ON A SCANDAL by Zoe Heller.  A taut and exciting book about loneliness.  Let me quote at self-indulgent length: 

Being alone is not the most awful thing in the world . . . You visit your museums and cultivate your interests and remind yourself how lucky you are not to be one of those spindly Sudanese children with flies beading their mouths.  You make out To Do lists – reorganize linen cupboard, learn two sonnets.  You dole out little treats to yourself – slices of ice cream cake, concerts at Wigmore Hall.  And then, every once in a while, you wake up and gaze out of the window at another bloody daybreak, and think, I cannot do this any more.  I cannot pull myself together again and spend the next fifteen hours of wakefulness fending off the fact of my own misery.

And that’s the perfect ending I think for a roundup of this plague year, during which, more than ever, my books have been a delight, a consolation, and an escape. 

The list:

THE GLASS CASTLE by Jennette Walls

CREATE DANGEROUSLY by Albert Camus

SEA WIFE by Amity Grainge

WRITERS & LOVERS by Lily King

COOL FOR AMERICA by Andrew Martin

HOUSE OF HUNGER by Dambudzo Maruchera

MR SALARY by Sally Rooney

SEVERANCE by Ling Ma

MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION by Ottessa Moshfegh

LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND by Rumaan Alam

EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LOVE by Dolly Alderton

TOPEKA SCHOOL by Ben Lerner

AUGUSTUS by John Williams

THE ROOMMATE by Rosie Dannan

THE GREENGAGE SUMMER by Rumer Godden

THE NONESUCH by Georgette Heyer

LEOPARD IS A NEUTRAL by Erica Davies

ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner

OHIO by Stephen Markley

THIS MOURNABLE BODY by Tsitsi Dangarembga

HONS AND REBELS by Jessica Mitford

SATISFACTION by Gillian Greenwood

THE CONFESSIONS OF MAX TIVOLI by Andrew Sean Greer

THE YELLOW HOUSE by Sarah M Broom

CHERRY by Nico Walker

INTO THE WILD by John Krakeur

THE HUMAN STAIN by Philip Roth

THE GREAT BELIEVERS by Rebecca Makkai

I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS by Maya Angelou

THE DIARY OF A NOBODY by George and Weedon Grossmith

THE UNKNOWN AJAX by Georgette Heyer

THE BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN by Wallace Stegner

WHEN YOU ARE ENGULFED IN FLAMES by David Sedaris

EXCITING TIMES by Naoise Dolan

NOTHING TO SEE HERE by Kevin Wilson

THE THORNBIRDS by Colleen McCullough

NIGHT BOAT TO TANGIERS by Kevin Barry

CARRIE by Stephen King

A GIRL’S STORY by Annie Ernaux

RUNNING WITH SCISSORS by Augusten Burroughs

NOTES ON A SCANDAL by Zoe Heller

 A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR by Daniel Defoe

MAGICAL TIHNKING by Augusten Burroughs

HALF EMPTY by David Rakoff

AND QUIET FLOWS THE DON by Mikhail Sholokhov

DEPENDENCY by Tove Ditlevsen

I WAS TOLD THERE’D BE CAKE by Sloane Crowley

TO CALAIS, IN ORDINARY TIME by James Meek

MY MISSPENT YOUTH by Meghan Daum

HOW COULD SHE by Lauren Mechling

ON WRITING: A MEMOIR OF THE CRAFT by Stephen King

YOUTH by Tove Ditlevsen

THE SECOND SLEEP by Robert Harris

PRIESTDADDY by Patricia Lockwood

I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK by Nora Ephron

A PERFECT SPY by John Le Carre

INDONESIA by Elisabeth Pisani

CHILDHOOD by Tove Ditlevsen

CALYPSO by David Sedaris

EXPECTATION by Anna Hope

THINGS WE DIDN’T TALK ABOUT WHEN I WAS A GIRL by Jeannie Vanasco

SOLITARY by Albert Woodfox

COST OF LIVING by Deborah Levy

LUCKY JIM by Kingsley Amis

MOUNTAIN LION by Jean Stafford