2020

Here are all the books I read in 2020:

January 2020

• The Holy Bible: New American Standard Version
• Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl, by Donald Sturrock

February 2020

• The End Is Always Near, by Dan Carlin
• For Lancelot Andrewes, by T. S. Eliot
• Means of Ascent, by Robert Caro

April 2020

• Absolution; or the Forgiveness of Sins Established by the Holy Scriptures, by John Humberger
• James: The Apostle of Faith, by David P. Scaer

May 2020

• Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville

June 2020

• Lost Horizon, by James Hilton
• The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin (family read)

July 2020

• Streets of Laredo, by Larry McMurtry
• Pandora's Lab, by Paul A. Offit, M.D
• Providence, by Max Barry
• The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist, by Adrian Tomine

August 2020

• The Wheel on the School, by Meindert DeJong
• Masters of Doom, by David Kushner

September 2020

• Tap Code: The Epic Survival Tale of a Vietnam POW and the Secret Code That Changed Everything, by Carlyle S. Harris, Sara W. Berry
• The Long Ships, by Frans G. Bengtsson

October 2020

• Theodore Rex, by Edmund Morris
• If It Bleeds, by Stephen King
• The Great Divorce, by C. S. Lewis
• Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, by Carl Wilson

November 2020

• Working, by Robert Caro
• Elevation, by Stephen King

December 2020

• Talking to Strangers, by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Innocent Anthropologist, by Nigel Barley
• Exhalation, by Ted Chiang
• The Duplicate, by William Sleator (family read)

Summary:

28 total books: 10 audio, 18 print; 12 fiction, 16 non-fiction.

I chose not to finish John Dies at the End, by David Wong. On May 1, I started reading the Bible again (same translation), although I’m going a little slower this time. I’m in 1 Kings right now.

This was a lighter year for a few reasons. I listened to fewer audio books (10 this year, versus 15 in 2019), and I read some longer print books (Moby-Dick especially, and The Long Ships). I spent several months devoting my free time to learning the React and React Native frameworks for some side work (which didn’t materialize in the end).

I enjoyed most of these books, but the highlight was probably The Innocent Anthropologist, in terms of my own enjoyment, at least. Moby-Dick was rewarding but a slog (as advertised). Exhalation is a collection of sci-fi short stories that were right up my alley. Everything by Robert Caro seems to be excellent. I didn’t write entries for the two “family reads” in this list – I enjoyed them both, but I forgot to write them up at the time and don’t have that much to say about them. The Westing Game is a favorite from when I was a kid.