Books I Read in 2020 – Year in Review (Part 2)

Hello Readers! As much as I love blogging about literally anything, I also love blogging about these year-end review posts! Have you checked out the first one? So, this is the second post reviewing the books I read this year! It’s going to be a little different, because why not? I have become quite obsessive about analytics, which is why you are going to see some FUN stats on this blog! It’s quite basic, but I promise I will improve on this by next year!

So, this is going to be a long post, because BOOKS obviously! Most of you know that my 2020 Reading Challenge was to read 52 Books in 52 Weeks from 52 specific categories! While it was quite intimidating at the beginning, it actually was a slippery slope of fun, which made me increase my target to 75 BOOKS! So, I kept the 52 original categories & rest of the books were all random which gave me the freedom to pick up & read anything! According to Goodreads, I read 25106 pages this year! And, the average book length was 334 pages, which I feel is pretty good. Now, I know a lot of you loved my 2020 Reading Challenge, so I thought of editing that main image to tell you which books I read against each of those 52 categories! Check it out below!

Given the pandemic & subsequent lockdowns, I got a lot of time to read. You can clearly see that from this graph! I read the maximum number of books in May & June. The lowest has been in December because there is a lot of workload now & just about one hour’s time to read, if at all. I am truly blessed to have all these amazing people in my life because of whom I was able to dedicate so much time to reading in those early months of the lockdown! Thanks y’all! You know who you are!

~~BEST BOOKS OF 2020~~

Typically, I don’t fixate on reading ONLY the books published in the same year. I just go about reading whatever I want, new or old. Because of those 52 categories, I read a lot of books which I otherwise might not have. I also started to be more active on Goodreads, and this has heavily impacted my reading choices. You see one book on your timeline over & over with so many people rating it highly & naturally it makes you want to read it. And, in 99% of the cases, it is always a book published in the current year. I believe this was the primary factor how I ended up reading a lot of books published in 2020 & why I have a lot of those still on my TBR! These are the few books which I read this year which were also published this year!

Untamed by Glennon Doyle

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler

Pretty Things by Janelle Brown

Home Body by Rupi Kaur

Some books which were published in 2020 which are on my TBR are Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo, Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, Luster by Raven Leilani, The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, A Burning by Megha Majumdar, My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell, Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi & just SO SO SO MANY MORE!! Which were your favourites?

 

Before moving on to tell you about my ratings, check out this interesting statistic! 33 of those 75 books that I read were on e-book! I knew I read a lot of e-books, but I sure was shocked that the number was this HIGH! Well, one small action toward the climate crises! I still imagine the aesthetic of what could have been a 75-book pile photograph of all these books.

~~BOOKS I RATED AT 4.5 OR 5 IN 2020~~

I think ALL of you know that I am a picky reader & reviewer. My 5 star ratings are rare & almost endangered, while my 1 star rating are always on the rise. Well, not to sound more like a news reporter, I was SO GLAD that I rated TWELVE BOOKS at either 4.5/5 or 5/5 this year! Check out this sacred list!

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Untamed by Glennon Doyle

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Alboom

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

Light Filters In by Caroline Kaufman

 

Super proud of this list & I am hoping to read more 5-star worthy books in the next year. My absolute favourite from this list is of course A Little Life. I still cannot stop thinking about it or talk about it to every person I meet, over & over! I also read some books by authors I haven’t read before & really liked their writing, such as Kristin Hannah, Jhumpa Lahiri, Jodi Picoult & Hanya Yanagihara!

 

~~BOOKS I RATED 1 OR 2 IN 2020~~

As much as I hate reading bad books, I giddily ENJOY writing critical book reviews of them! I hold back nothing & it’s the only way I can imagine myself as a straight up assassin. Come to think of it, it is kind of my guilty pleasure! So even if the book is good or bad, I technically win! If any of the below books are your favourites, please feel free to reach out to me to have a full-on debate on it! Written debate though, because let’s face it, we are all introverts.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor by Hank Green

The Atlas of Reds and Blues by Devi S. Laskar

The Rhythm Section by Mark Burnell

Miguel Street by V.S. Naipaul

House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories by Yasunari Kawabata

If You’re Not Yet Like Me by Edan Lepucki

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

 

I said what I said! Isn’t it weirdly funny that this list is longer than the one above it?

 

Well, according to Goodreads, my average rating is 3.5/5, which seems perfectly plausible. Check out a detailed version of how I rated all these 75 books!

Another change in reading this year was that I read a lot of award-winning books. Be it the Pulitzer Prize or Booker Prize or JCB Literature Award or Goodreads Choice Award! I liked a majority of those, but also didn’t like a few, which is to be expected. I have about 25 unread books in my bookshelf which are going to be my priority to read in the new year! 

And finally, as if the post wasn’t long enough in itself, here is a small book photoshoot with my 42 copies of books I read this year!


 

Until next time,