I Read 86 Books in 2020 And All I Got Was This T-Shirt

The books I read + loved in 2020.

Note: Books are not stack ranked within their categories.

Top 6

• Real Life…Brandon Taylor
• Women Who Run With the Wolves…Clarissa Pinkola Estés
• Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was A Girl…Jeannie Vanasco
• The Fifth Season…N. K. Jemisin
• Drifts…Kate Zambreno
• Your Silence Will Not Protect You…Audre Lorde

Books I Am Still Thinking About (They Are Very Powerful)

• Good Morning, Destroyer of Men’s Souls…Nina Renata Aron
• Magical Negro…Morgan Parker
• Weather…Jenny Offill
• On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous…Ocean Vuong
• The Friend…Sigrid Nunez
• In the Dream House…Carmen Maria Machado
• Emergent Strategy…adrienne maree brown
• Sacred Economics…Charles Eisenstein
• The Answers…Catherine Lacey
• The Stone Sky…N.K. Jemisin

I Keep Recommending These Books

• Luster…Raven Leilani
• The Undying…Anne Boyer
• The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness…Sarah Ramey
• Circe…Madeline Miller
• The Fire Next Time…James Baldwin
• My Year of Rest and Relaxation…Ottessa Moshfegh

Book That Gave Me Permission As A Writer

• The Other Side…Lacy M. Johnson
• Small Fry…Lisa Brennan-Jobs
• Places I’ve Taken My Body…Molly McCully Brown
• New Waves…Kevin Nguyen
• Against Memoir…Michelle Tea
• Good Morning, Midnight…Jean Rhys
• Intimations…Zadie Smith
• The Collected Schizophrenias…Esme Weijun Wang
• Certain American States…Catherine Lacey
• A Star is Bored…Byron Lane
• False Papers…André Aciman
• My Husband…Rumena Buzarowska
• Mother Winter…Sophia Shalmiyev
• Not That Bad…Ed: Roxane Gay
• Make It Scream Make It Burn…Leslie Jamison
• Future Sex…Emily Witt
• Uncanny Valley…Anna Wiener
• Big Friendship…Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman

I’ll Take Engrossing Novels for 500, Trebek

• My Dark Vanessa…Kate Elizabeth Russell
• Coventry…Rachel Cusk
• We The Animals…Justin Torres
• Such a Fun Age…Kiley Reid
• The Immortalists…Chloe Benjamin
• An American Marriage…Tayari Jones
• Stoner…John Williams

These Were Just Really Good Books

• Educated…Tara Westover
• Passing for Human…Liana Finck
• In the Field Between Us…Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison
• Exhalation…Ted Chiang
• The Obelisk Gate…N.K. Jemisin
• The Paper Menagerie…Ken Liu
• Go Tell It On The Mountain…James Baldwin
• So We Can Glow…Leesa Cross-Smith
• Deluge…Leila Chatti
• The Crying Book…Heather Christle
• Just Mercy…Bryan Stevenson
• Stories of Your Life and Others…Ted Chiang
• Saga Vol 1–9…Brian Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Books That Taught Me Something(s) Necessary

• Before And After The Book Deal…Courtney Maum
• Beating Endo…Iris Orbuch and Amy Stein
• Eyes of the Gorgon…Jaffa Vernon Frank
• The Gift…Lewis Hyde
• Writing Down the Bones…Natalie Goldberg (reread)
• If the Buddha Dated…Charlotte Kasl (reread)
• Making the Gods Work for You…Caroline Casey
• How To Be An Antiracist…Ibram X. Kendi
• The Smell of Rain on Dust…Martín Prechtel
• Recollections of My Nonexistence…Rebecca Solnit
• Funny Weather…Olivia Laing
• The Power of Receiving…Amanda Owen
• Tell Me How It Ends…Valeria Luiselli
• Come As You Are…Emily Nagoski
• Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race…Reni Eddo-Lodge
• Mating in Captivity…Esther Perel

Books That Kind of Broke My Brain But In A Good Way (I Think…)

• The Art of Cruelty…Maggie Nelson
• Indelicacy…Amina Cain
• Dear Friend, From My Life I Write To You In Your Life…Yiyun Li
• Taipei…Tao Lin