Books I read in 2020
I have a confession to make: I don't actually remember the vast majority of the books that I read. For example, I know that I read A Tale of Two Cities in high school and enjoyed it - but I can't even name one character from the book right now. Yet I'm still reading. Why bother?
This year I came across a quote that captures how I feel:
"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
That being said, reading this year was a bit different. Nothing can really simulate the experience of just wandering up and down the aisles and picking out a random book that catches your eye - and due to COVID-19, I haven't been to a library all year. So, this year's books tend towards well-known books, the kind that show up on lists of books to read.
The other difference is that I read some books with the CMU TEBA book club. This was fun - I found that I read more critically in anticipation of our meetings. It's also been nice to see how other people interpret the same words differently, and learn about how their personal experiences shape their perspective. After a few months of meetings, book club attendance fell off (including my own, oops) but I'm hoping that we can get together again in 2021.
In 2020, I read 27 books, mostly on Kindle (and mostly paid for with a generous reimbursement from my employer). This is less than I read last year despite having more free time working from home. I think this is a combination of no library access and increased time spent on music projects - there's definitely about a month or so towards the end of the year when I wasn't reading much because I was working on the Christmas album instead.
In the list below, books marked with an exclamation mark (!) are the ones I enjoyed especially.
(!)Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America - Chris Arnade- The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
- Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams - Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister
(!)Maybe You Should Talk to Someone - Lori Gottlieb- The Burnout Society - Byung-Chul Han
- Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain
- Metaphors to Live By - George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
(!)The Most Human Human - Brian Christian- Ubik - Philip K. Dick
- Why We're Polarized - Ezra Klein
- Blue Like Jazz - Donald Miller
(!)Chinatown Pretty - Andria Lo and Valerie Luu- The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (translated by Constance Garnett)
(!)John Dies At The End - David Wong- The Common Good - Robert Reich
- The Making of a Manager - Julie Zhuo
- The Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu)
(!)The Dark Forest - Cixin Liu (translated by Joel Martinsen)(!)Severance - Ling Ma- Death's End - Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu)
- On Writing - Stephen King
- Start with Why - Simon Sinek
(!)The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden - Jonas Jonasson (translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles)- A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear - Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
- Discrimination and Disparities - Thomas Sowell
- Samsung Rising - Geoffrey Cain
- The Yiddish Policemen's Union - Michael Chabon
Note: I've decided to include books that I've re-read only if they haven't appeared in these lists yet. This is pretty arbitrary - it's just easy for me to check if I bought a book this year and hard for me to keep track of re-reads.
Thanks to the members of the CMU TEBA book club, especially Ken, Tiffany, Gurpreet, and Bingrui. Thanks also to everyone who gave me recommendations this year, including Lois, Sam, Yee Aun, Ishraq, and Aurora.
If you have any book recommendations, especially fiction, please let me know!