My 2020 Reading Challenge

It’s been another year of literacy and I’m so pleased I can still read (I’ve noticed as I hit middle age that my eyes are becoming more and more weak).

A great trend I learned about is: Jólabókaflóð — Iceland’s reading tradition on Christmas Eve. Are you on GoodReads? Join me there, my username is “monicadear”.

2020

15,615 pages read, 54 books read.

(update December 31, 2020: 15813 pages read, 55 books read.)

Average book length in 2020: 289 pages (update 287 pages)

This is my journey in books for 2020!

Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman

Shortest Book: 25 pages

The Historian: Elizabeth Kostova

Longest Book: 704 pages

Most Popular: 3,431,177 people also shelved

My average rating for 2020: 3.7

MY 2020 BOOKS

Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul 2, by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Patty Hansen and Irene Dunlap

The Furies, by Mark Alpert

It’s Trevor Noah: Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah

How About Never, Is Never Good For You? My Life in Cartoons, by Bob Mankoff

Fables: Book Five, by Bill Willingham

Fables, Book Six, by Bill Willingham

Tits Up in a Ditch, by Annie Proulx

The Deal of a Lifetime, by Fredrick Backman

The Hidden Kingdom: Fairest, by Lauren Beukes, Inaki Miranda, Bill Willingham

Fairest: Wide Awake, by Bill Willingham, Phil Jimenez

The Overstory, by Richard Powers

really liked it

The City of Folding Faces, by Jayinee Basu

Snow, Glass, Apples, by Neil Gaiman

Sandman: The Dream Hunters, by Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell

2018: The Best American Short Stories, edited by Roxane Gay

Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale (Graphic Novel by Renee Hault)

Born Knowing, by John Holland

Fairest in all the land, by Bill Willingham

Onibi, Diary of a Yokai Ghost Hunter, by Cécile Brun

After Atlas, by Emma Newman

A Warning, by Anonymous

I am Haunted, by Zak Bagans

The Divine, by Asaf Hanuka, Tomer Hanuka, Boaz Lavie

Before Mars, by Emma Newman

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

Atlas Alone, by Emma Newman

Fables Book Two, by Bill Willingham

Fables Book One, by Bill Willingham

Fables, Book Three, by Bill Willingham

Over Sea, Under Stone, by Susan Cooper

Let’s Pretend this Never Happened, by Jenny Lawson

Nebula Awards Showcase 2014, edited by Kij Johnson

The Art of Dying Well, by Katy Butler

Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury, by Sigrid Nunez

Spook Country, by William Gibson

The Arab of the Future, by Riad Sattouf

The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson

The History of the World in Fifty Dogs, by Mackenzi Lee, Illustrations by Petra Eriksson

Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

Honey and Venom: Confessions of an Urban Beekeeper, by Andrew Coté

The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell

A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. LeGuin

The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova

Ruins, by Orson Scott Card

Pathfinder, by Orson Scott Card

Visitors, by Orson Scott Card

Three Moments of an Explosion, by China Miéville

Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

Genocide of One, by Kazuaki Takano

The Vorrh, by B. Catling

Holes, by Louis Sachar

American Spy: Wry Reflections on my Life in the CIA, by H.K. Roy

The Erstwhile, by B. Catling

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon

The Erstwhile, by B. Catling

My Review of “The Erstwhile” “Second reading of this and it’s still eerie and evocative prose. Fantastical characters and their continued development including Bakelite robots, the cyclops, the formerly blind aristocrat, the soulless workers in the forest and various assorted other creatures. Fun read.”

I’m happy to have a stack of books that at I can get into for the new year, including finishing The Cloven (the third in the Vorrh trilogy by B. Catling), the rest of the books in The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper, 1984 by George Orwell, and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. There are also some presents under the tree including The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult, Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, The Hidden Reality by Brian Greene, and This is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar.

Send me your book recommendations for memoir, historical fiction, and sci-fi! Happy reading.

Update December 30, 2020: I just finished Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies” last night, so add that to my total.