Beth’s Best Books of 2020 (and How You Can Read More This Year)

Despite 2020 being a challenging year in countless ways, books continued to be a source of comfort for me. 

I’m a voracious reader, and thanks to a lot of time at home and a great digital library program that lets me borrow audiobooks and Kindle books for free, I’ve been able to read 66 books this year.

Yes, I keep a list of the titles I read each year – a tip I got several years ago from a book about how to enjoy reading even more!

I’m going to share a small sampling of my favorites below, but first I wanted to share my best suggestion for anyone who wants to read more in 2021. 

Here’s How to Make More Room for Reading in Your Life

In mid-September, as I mourned the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg and continued to watch the media circus about the upcoming election, I made a big move: I gave up social media, cold turkey.

I used to spend an inordinate amount of time on Facebook and Twitter, but I knew that doom scrolling through my feeds wasn’t going to improve my mental health or productivity through the end of the year. So I just…stopped.

I also cut down my news consumption to a tiny trickle, which was equally difficult. For years, I had been tied into a constant stream of emails, alerts, podcasts, and television shows to try to stay on top of every aspect of the news. 

But this fall, I got rid of my mainstream media subscriptions, unsubscribed from my favorite podcasts, and turned off all my email and text alerts. Suffice it to say it was very, very quiet – at my house, as well as in my head.

I filled in all the newly-available time with other things that gave me far more satisfaction, like reading.

The result? I read 30% more books in the last quarter of 2020 than I did in the first three quarters, and I read 20+ more total books this year than I had in any single previous year.

If you’re interested in exploring the idea of cutting down on (or eliminating) the time you spend on social media to make time for other things, I recommend reading Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life and/or Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked.

Now, let’s get to my reading recommendations!

My Top Business Reads

Three business books I recommend for shedding new light on your business, your career, and your skills:

Atomic Habits (James Clear) – James Clear’s practical advice for creating systems and habits will change your life and help you grow your business, get healthier, be more productive, or anything else you want to accomplish. This is the perfect book to read in January, and it starts out with a story that will absolutely blow your mind.

The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact (Chip Heath and Dan Heath) – I am a huge fan of the Heath brothers – authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. This book is loaded with ideas for how you can create memorable experiences for your customers. It’s also a fun read.

Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career (Scott Young) – As a lifelong learner who loves to soak up information, I enjoyed this book on mastering hard skills quickly, so you can future-proof your career, scale your company, or expand your personal interests.

Riveting Novels That Helped Me Survive the Pandemic Shutdown (and One I Hated)

I don’t read a ton of fiction books, but this year I really enjoyed these four novels:

The Dutch House (Ann Patchett) – Novelist Ann Patchett shows her brilliance once again! This audiobook is narrated by Tom Hanks, and I highly recommend listening to it.

Body and Soul (Frank Conroy) – This is actually my favorite novel of all time, and I re-read it again at the beginning of the shutdown because I needed something familiar and comforting. If you choose to read it, I hope you love it as much as I do. If you don’t, lie to me and tell me you did. 🙂 

Little Fires Everywhere (Celeste Ng) – I couldn’t put this arresting novel down, and stayed up way too late for several nights in a row to finish it. It’s now a television series starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, but I recommend reading the book before you watch it.

The Vanishing Half (Brit Bennett) – This novel was named a “Best Book of 2020” by the New York Times. An epic story about twin sisters who end up choosing to live in two very different worlds – one black and one white.

Novel that I hated that everyone else seem to love: Where the Crawdads Sing. I was halfway through the audiobook before I realized I didn’t like this book, so I went ahead and finished it because I’m weird that way– but this much-lauded novel didn’t do much for me. Cheesy storyline that strains credulity. 

Two Books That Made Me Look at the World in a Different Way:

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (Robin DiAngelo and Michael Eric Dyson) – I still have a lot of work to do to educate myself about systemic racism in our country, but I thought this book was a good step in the vital process of learning about my own ingrained habits that maintain racial inequality. Highly recommended.

The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in America (Helen Thorpe) – This book follows 20 immigrant teenagers during the course of one school year in a Colorado high school. Many of these students don’t know a word of English before stepping into their first classroom on day one, and in many cases they’ve survived unthinkable trauma and upheaval in their home countries. This book about extraordinarily brave young people might just change the way you look at immigrants in America.

Four Memoirs I Absolutely Loved

I adore memoirs, so narrowing down this list was difficult. But here are my top four favorites from this year:

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (Trevor Noah) – Comedian and Daily Show host Trevor Noah shares stories from the earliest years of his life in apartheid South Africa. I recommend the audio version of this book, which is read by the author.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory (Caitlin Doughty) – This one’s not for the faint of the heart, so don’t read it if you’re squeamish about death and dying, but I enjoyed this behind-the-scenes look at the mortuary profession. Darkly funny and highly educational.

Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things (Jenny Lawson) – The Bloggess is one of the biggest and most popular personal blogs on the web, and this collection of essays from Lawson are quirky, hilarious, and surprisingly inspirational. I particularly appreciated her unflinchingly honesty about her own mental health struggles. You’ll laugh and you’ll cry, but you’ll fall in love with Lawson’s addictive essays.

The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir (Samantha Power) – Despite my news and social media moratorium this fall, I’m still an international political junkie at heart, so I absolutely loved this memoir by former American U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power. This story will teach and inspire you in equal measure.  

Three Captivating Nonfiction Favorites

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family (Robert Kolker) – A heart-wrenching but fascinating story of a midcentury Colorado couple that had twelve children – six of whom were eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia. By allowing researchers to conduct interviews and document their struggles, this family ultimately helped the American medical community shift their understanding of mental illness.

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (Patrick Raden Keefe) – I’ve been interested in the history of Northern Ireland for as long as I can remember, so I got lost in this narrative about the devastating impact of The Troubles. 

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World (Clive Thompson) – I started learning to code this year, so I fell into this book with enthusiasm and learned a ton. A great history of how the coding culture began, how it has shifted over the past few decades, and how the tech community is responding to their ongoing internal struggles with sexism and racism. 

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Whew! That’s my list! Leave a comment below and tell me what books you loved this year…or let me know if you’d like to make more room for fantastic books in 2021.