Best Books I Read in 2020
January 11, 2021
Reading has always been one of my #1 hobbies, alongside cooking, gardening, and sitting with my thoughts & a cup of hot earl grey. In 2020 (year one of covid-19 & quarantine) I had more time at the beginning of the year and it really set a new bar for my lust for knowledge and consuming books.
Related: 10 Things You Haven’t Done Yet During Quarantine
I read mostly non-fiction, across genres ranging from the fanatic cult following of Tr*mp to autobiographies of hip hop artists. Learning other people’s ideologies and lifestyles is fascinating to me. Toward the end of the year, I started sprinkling in some fiction to lighten it up.
In no particular order, these are a dozen of my favorite books I read in 2020, out of 70 books. Every single one of these books I rented from the local public library.
Visually fun, ‘Feck Perfuction’ is full of provocative short stories based on James Victore’s life experiences that will make you want to get up off your ass and create or do something daring, like right now, without worrying about it.
Related: On Living a Creative Life
I can’t shake off ‘Eating Animals.’ Foer likens eating cows, chickens and pigs to eating our pets and presents a gruesome, yet beyond necessary, account of the typical life of each of these animals from conception to our dinner plates. After reading this book, my husband and I have fully committed to only eating grass-fed meat that has been grown and slaughtered by small local farms — truly life changing! And yes, I have read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” “The Face on Your Plate,” “The Future of Food,” among other books, but this one really hit hard.
I found out about this book through Amanda’s The Heavy Flow Podcast, where she so thoughtfully interviews other womxn & feminists on reproductive health issues. In her book, she describes her experiences with unruly, painful periods and it changed my understanding of my own biology and has given me a new outlook on period pain and how to manage it.
I spend a lot of time reading books about world religion, specifically Christianity, as I am surrounded by people who follow this particular doctrine. Before reading “Grace Without God,” I had never been able to put a name to what it is that I “am,” in terms of spiritual belief. When I read this book, I felt like I made a new best friend and came to comforting realizations about holding belief that is different from those around you.
Written in the mid-1990s, “Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice” is ethnographer Mark Plotkin’s story of navigating the dangers of the Amazon Rainforest while creating kindred ties to the native communities in order to discover their ancient plant medicines. I was engrossed with his descriptions of these peoples and their land, all while feeling remorseful of the exploitation that has occurred since. His experiences connecting with these peoples and gaining mutual respect was fascinating.
My favorite farming book of 2020, this one documents farmers across the world that have perfected growing highly productive, small plots of land, with no machinery. This book inspired me to start sheet mulching and confirmed to me that my previous approach of “lasagna” gardening is just what I should be doing! Definitely read if you are a gardener.
Related: How to Start a Sheet Mulch Garden
I was so impressed and positively changed by “Essentialism” that I wrote an entire blog post about it. Read here on How to Become an Essentialist - with a downloadable worksheet.
Arguably one of my favorite subjects, I learned so much in “The Fate of Food” about the future of our global food system as the climate continues to head in the hotter direction. There are so many new, interesting technologies being developed — this book was fascinating to read as this subject directly effects everyone on Earth!
If you’ve never read “Shadow of the Wind,” you must! It’s an immersive, thrilling, captivating novel with beautiful language. I can’t wait to read the rest of the series.
Following the murder of George Floyd, like so many other White people I went on a crusade reading as many books about Black history and racism as possible so I could educate myself on how to be a better anti-racist white person. “White Rage” is one of the best books I read in this genre, namely because it is an entirely historical account, completely devoid of opinion, of what happened between Black people and White people from the abolition of Slavery in the 1860s to the inauguration of Tr*mp in 2016. It is written by a Black female professor, unlike “White Fragility” that is written by a White female (and truthfully I found that book to be lacking in depth and understanding on the subject as a whole). THIS book, “White Rage,” should be required reading for every single person in the United States.
Isabel Wilkerson is masterful with words. Her tale of the Great Migration, which follows three Black people during three different decades moving from the South to three different parts of the North, is unbelievably captivating. Sadly, I am ashamed of and maddened by the public education system in this country, that this crucial story of our country’s history was never taught to us in school. I look forward to reading her new book, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” this year.
Dare I say this book made me “feel” a bit more for angry, frustrated, seemingly High-T men. The Feminist Movement, whether it meant to or not, has evolved the entire conversation of equality of the sexes around the female, completely forgetting that males suffer, too. When they suffer, we suffer. This book is important in understanding that and cultivating compassion where it might not seem necessary nor fair, but is.
