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Even though we’re discussing our favorite 2020 reads with you today, we do of course have favorite 2020 re-reads! What collection of books is always number one on that list? If you guessed next month’s Virtual Book Club titles, Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series of books, you would be right on the money! Don’t forget to sign up here to join us for an evening filled with spoilers as we prepare for the next book in the series. It’s on Friday, February 12th at 7:30pm Central Time, so don’t be late, or we might just have a riddle for you to solve!

Last January, a whole 2020 ago, Nikki and I did a choose your own adventure 2019 year in review blog post – can can find it HERE – but this year we have covered a lot of books in our weekly blog posts so there may not be as much to say about each title as there was last year, and that’s OK. We want to try to give equal coverage to all of our favorite 2020 books but that may not be possible. 

You may be surprised, dear readers, when I admit that I made my top list in one sweep of my 2020 GoodReads Reading Challenge. I read 127 of 100 books for the year. After taking a secondary perusal, I found a few honorable mentions, but all of them have blog posts where you can find out exactly what I felt about them closer to real time. I say this because I have been feeling a little jaded over my reading life the past few months, and reaching back through those feelings to remember how I felt reading each book in the moment has been a struggle. Honestly, the majority of my favorite books this year have been books that have been emotionally heavy with an all-consuming plot that makes me keep wanting more. So, my reading life reflects my real life and I didn’t shy away from doing the hard inner work. There were also a lot of romance novels read so it’s not like there wasn’t balance in my reading life, but all of those met expectations and the following exceeded them on some level.

Ashley’s Top 5:

• Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia which we posted about in December
• City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert is a double favorite we talked about in July
• The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom is my only nonfiction favorite, also from July
• Circe by Madeline Miller is a throw back to this April post.
• The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E.Harrow is one of the first books we read in 2020, even though we didn’t share it until this post from March.

Non-Fiction Honorable Mention

• The Only Woman in the Room by Ashley L. Wilson
• Spying on the South by Tony Horwitz

Fiction Honorable Mention

There are only two books on the entire list that haven’t had an entire blog post about them this year and I want to focus on why those two have made the Honorable Mentions list. Overall, my favorite books of 2020 have mostly included women who have overcome an almost insurmountable obstacle of internal or external pressure. Poor Tony (and his buddy Fred) were the only main ‘characters’ on this list that are male, and Tony dealt with the hard truths of classism and racism on his travels from West Virginia to Mexico. See more in our blog post about Spying in the South.

The Only Woman in the Room by Ashley L. Wilson is a collection of stories from twenty active women real estate investors. The impetus for the writing of this book was from when in 2018 the author was at a real estate investing conference and all of the women in attendance were invited to have lunch at the same table. There were 16 women out of 400 attendees. Wilson says in the introduction: “I promised myself, at that very moment, that I would write a book around the concept of being the only woman in the room. I wanted this book to highlight what I had failed to see, spotlight badass real estate women investors, provide knowledge, inspiration and most importantly give examples of female real estate investing role models that could inspire anyone (woman or man).” And she delivers. I can not tell you how many times my eyes got moist as I read these women’s stories. If you need a book filled with modern female role models that are business women rather than politicians or celebrities, pick this book up. Even if you’re not involved or interested in real estate, you will probably see yourself in one of their stories and can take heart and inspiration from it. We no longer have to be the only women in the room. It’s currently available for free through Kindle Unlimited.

I covered American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins in my March 2020 Reading Life Review as it was that month’s Barnes & Noble Book Club pick. The meeting happened just days before the United States started shutting down because of the pandemic that shall not be named. Of course it’s a book about a strong woman. I’m not even ashamed of this theme for 2020 or my life in general. I don’t want to give away all the spoilers because this book is so poignant when you don’t know anything going in except that it is a book about modern Central and South American immigration to the United States. One learns the myriad reasons why people are fleeing the land of their birth for a land of freedom and prosperity.

~Ashley

How does one pick the top books of the year?  Well, I look at my Reading Challenge page on Goodreads and then make a list of the books I adore the most from it, and use that list to narrow further.  Going in to make my list this year, I wasn’t sure what was going to end up on it.  Some titles from early in the year feel like I read them more than a year ago, so I’m delighted to have a chance to revisit them.  I’m usually shooting for a top five list, so when the initial first pass landed me at 13 titles, I was quite pleased.  A top listing with less than 10% of the total feels like a solid start.  From there, I just reviewed the list and considered what I loved about each of the titles and debated if it still had a spot on the list of top titles I’ve read this year.  

Nikki’s Top Five, in order of when I read them, starting with the most recent:

• Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan
• The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi
• The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
• The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

Non-fiction Honorable Mention:

• Look me in the Eye by John Elder Robison
• Motherhood So White by Nefertiti Austin

These books are honorable mentions, but I also want to call out that I had five non-fiction titles on my initial list, which feels fantastic for someone who was reluctant to read non-fiction a couple of years ago.  Both these memoirs receive honorable mentions because they took something I was familiar with, motherhood and Autism, and presented them from a new, previously unexplored perspective.  They were well done, eye-opening, and I highly encourage readers to consider both of these amazing titles especially because the texts stayed with in some really beneficial ways.  Bonus points if you have a buddy to discuss them with afterwards (I volunteer as tribute!).  I talked more about Look me in the Eye in this post from October.

Fiction Honorable Mention:

• A Well-Behaved Woman by Therese Anne Fowler
• The Witches of New York by Ami McKay
• Circe by Madeline Miller

I seriously considered whether these titles deserved a spot on the favorites list or the honorable mentions and they landed here because I love them all for the same reason.  These are tales of unconventional women making the best of a situation ranging from strange to horrid, and doing it while finding herself.  While our witches (who we discussed in October) had each other, Circe (who we visited here) and Alva (who we adored here) were very much on their own, one way or another, and in the end they did quite well as such.  I love a tale of found inner strength and perseverance with a happy ending, and (sorry not sorry to spoil) all three have that (although I do need to read Ami McKay’s follow up novella Half Spent Was the Night for a more thorough ending).  

Now, about my favorites, they weren’t necessarily the best examples of writing from my year, but they were books that I think are statements of my year, but also, they’re all worthy of a reread, maybe not soon, but eventually.  They all were just what I wanted them to be, some in unpredictable ways, and others just more so than I was expecting.  Without further adieu:

Mexican Gothic:  I thought I knew where this story was going, and I sort of did, but whoa was it so much stranger (and grosser) than I expected.  The writing was engrossing and atmospheric, the plot was creative with fabulous pacing, and there was just enough at the end that I wasn’t mad about the lack of more.  There was also the issue of colonialism, culture, and gender issues at hand, which made the tale so much richer.  Thanks to a special friend for sending me a copy!  It has a well-earned spot on my (physical AND electronic) bookshelf!  See also our post from December. 

The Bookshop on the Corner: I received this from a Goodreads Giveaway, and dear readers, it was the right book at the right time.  This is a bookish book with a librarian turned bookseller who’s on a journey to transform herself and her life, and finds romance in the process.  Here’s the deal with this book, it’s quiet, calm, and not dramatic.  There’s action and things happen, but it’s not over the top, but (almost completely) perfectly normal.  The idea of rural Scotland has stayed with me, and the second book in the series definitely helped, and I hope #3 will too, as it’s currently on my nightstand (yes in dead tree form, ugh).  See also my comments in the November Reading Life Review. 

The Lazy Genius Way:  Some of you might call me obsessed, and you know what?  I. Don’t. Care.  I waxed poetic about this book in the August Reading Life Review.  And this is another book that I own in both dead tree and electronic forms (the e-book is a free ARC because I was on the launch team, but I paid my money for the hard copy), and I should also add that my third grader stole my print copy the day I brought it home, and y’all, I was fine with it.  My people now expect me to ask them to “name what matters” and it helps!  If you need a new organization guru, I propose Kendra Adachi because she can help you be a genius about the things that matter TO YOU and lazy about the things that don’t.  She can tell you more about why herself on this episode of That Sounds Fun.  I listened to it twice, because I needed more of this great content (body shape is a construct… chores are stupid…It’s SO GOOD).  

The Color of Law:  Yes darlings, I realize the irony of adoring a book by a white person about how the government at all levels in the United States created segregated communities in our country, I do.  HOWEVER, so many things make so much sense now that I have a better understanding of the history behind it.  I have been in a few professional sessions over the last year about topics related to diversity and race and in all but one, a speaker has suggested this book as further reading.  In order to move ahead to a better place, we need to understand how we got here.  Without that understanding, it’s going to be more challenging to build a better future.  There is a lot that I didn’t understand, a lot that I didn’t have to because it wasn’t a part of my community, but if I’m going to love my neighbors and be a better person, I need to understand the things that I’ve been blind to because I didn’t have to see them.  This book has helped me to see more of the depth and breadth of the issues we have to tackle.  I talked more about this book in this post from July.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January:  Be still my beating heart!  I want to reread this book and I want to read Once and Future Witches which is FINALLY in my holds list!  Also, I want Alix E. Harrow’s words and stories to go straight to my kindle, please and thank you!  January’s story is creative, layered, and gorgeous.  There are class and race issues, and also just a girl figuring out who she is and where she belongs while she struggles to unravel this amazing mystery.  I’m still dreaming of this book, and wishing I had a door I could go through to the pre virus that shall not be named world, but sadly I can’t find it.  We talked more about this book in this post from March! 

What were your favorite titles of 2020? Let us know in the comments!

~Nikki

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