Brittany's Year In Review 2020

My 2020 book list.  

By the Numbers

• 61 complete books read (7 nonfiction; 42 romance novels including YA; 1 poetry including YA; 8 total YA; no graphic novels, no audiobooks, 2 rereads)

• 44 authors (the repeated include Christina Lauren who are a writing duo, Courtney Milan, Talia Hibbert, Helen Hoang, Jenny Han)

• 37 women, 6 men, and 1 nonbinary person

• All living, none dead

• 27 authors who are not white, 17 authors who are white

• 3 authors who publicly identify as having a disability or being disabled and 4 books that feature a main character who has a disability or is disabled (and I believe they all pass the Fries Test)

• 9 books with queer main characters

Compared to previous years, this was a pretty average year in terms of the number of books I read which have ranged from 20-73 since I started tracking in 2013. Back then I was in a graduate literature program and thus 58% of my authors that year were men. The number keeps going down - this year only 14% of my authors were men which is a new low. After going through a traditional K-12 education, a traditional English education program, and a traditional English literature program, I am happy to spend a few years focusing on rebalancing my lifetime of reading. I only read one (or 2.2% of my total) nonbinary author which is an area I have known I need to expand for the past few years. 

This year, as usual, two thirds of my authors were people of color. I thought that I was going out of my way to read more people of color, but my numbers are about the same as they always are when I’m not in a graduate program (which tend to center men, white people, cis people, non disabled people, straight people, etc). Although I’ve always read a fair amount of LGBTQIA books, last year was the first year I tracked this (which for my reading is actually just LGBTQ to be honest) and this year it was the same: about 15%. Last year I also started tracking books featuring disabled characters or characters with disabilities - I went down from 9% to 6% but this year all the books were actually written by disabled authors or authors with disabilities and none seem to be problematic the way one of my books last year was (Everything, Everything). 

I don’t know if I feel comfortable doing a top 10 or top 10% book list as 2020 was a wild year where nothing and everything happened and my brain was not at its best and my emotions were all over the place every day. I have never read so much romance in my life, and yes they are formulaic to an extent, but I think my heart and my mind needed the familiarity and comfort of romance the way that making a familiar recipe feels good and is satisfying at the end even if it’s not terrifically exciting or life changing.

For 2020, I'll just list a few books I remember really enjoying include: 

Latinx Books

I tried to go out of my way to read more Latinx books this year, even participating in a Latinx Readathon where I read By Any Means Necessary, In the Dream House, The Worst Best Man, and Sabrina and Corina all in a row. Some of my favorite books were by Latinx authors and include:

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: This is wildly outside of my regular genres and I loved every minute of it, staying up way too late and then being too afraid to fall asleep. This book seems to be one that everyone loves no matter what their regular reading is, so I would recommend it to literally anyone. 

Sabrina and Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine: Like The Dream House, this was a book I kept checking out and not reading for some reason. I had a few misconceptions about it: I thought it was a lesbian novel, but it turned out to be a book of short stories. It was a National Book Award Finalist so I’m not saying anything new by saying it’s wonderful, but it truly is lovely and I hope to reread it some day. 

Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera: On almost every list of Latinx novels, especially for anyone looking to read about people crossing the border, it is as good as everyone says it is. I read it in English, and hope to some day return to it in Spanish.

Romance Novels

It is very hard to pick favorites because I read so many and I enjoyed almost all of them. At this point I have a very good idea of what I’m looking for in a romance (diverse characters who have relationships outside of their romantic one and are not self destructive and don’t accidentally get pregnant which somehow brings together two near-strangers into soul mate status which was a plot line I hated before I was a parent and now that I am a parent I absolutely do not understand), so it’s getting much easier for me to pick up what I like (the exception being Beach Read which everyone loved and I couldn’t finish).

The standouts include The Kiss Quotient and the Bride Test by Helen Hoang which weren’t on my top list of 2019 but I ended up rereading them in 2020 and I’m currently reading The Kiss Quotient in Spanish, so I think I have to say that they are some of my favorite romance novels.

Finally, everything by Courtney Milan is perfection, but Trade Me is an underrated book that doesn’t get mentioned a lot. As a person who spent a lot of my life fantasizing about being rich (these fantasies often relied on having a secret twin that I could change places with - I blame the movie It Takes Two), it was a real treat to read a romance novel where changing places didn’t rely on some kind of family tragedy but instead is the kick off for a romance. 

I wish I could recommend some of the romance novels I read by white writers, but I didn’t take notes on every one and the ones I did take notes on include things like “witty banter, cute clothes, great characters, but has too much fat shaming and a slur against Roma people” (The Hating Game by Sally Thorne) or “Meg must live in the same neighborhood as Friends and Girls since there are no POC in her New York City” (Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn), so I don’t want to send anyone to that part of Romancelandia on purpose.

Non-Fiction

And in my favorite non-fiction, all of my favorites were written by women of color. I read a few parenting books in 2020 as I became a mother, but parenting books don't have any kind of universal appeal and most are not that great (although the Bilingual Edge is absolutely necessary for anyone interested in raising a bilingual child).

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong: My husband has been reading a lot and thinking a lot in this area, and he had great things to say about this collection of essays by Cathy Park Hong (which I recommended to him without reading because I am a very good librarian). As a person who hasn’t read a lot of Asian American non-fiction, this book was a great starting point that explores a lot of different topics very well. 

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado: This is a book I knew I should read and kept checking out from the library and not reading. Abuse of any kind is hard for me as a reader, but everyone had such glowing reviews. I finally picked it up and it is just as good as everyone promises. It plays with form in a delightful and unexpected way, and I found myself often trying to explain the humor to Randy and then failing. 

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgo by Mikki Kendall: In my day job I spend a lot of time researching and reading about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and 2020 was the year of anti-racist book clubs (this is not a critique and I am not an exception - I joined a group of friends to read Policing the Black Man). Of the many books I’ve read that ended up as anti-racist book club reads, I wish this one would appear more, or at all, particularly in my profession which is predominantly made up of white women who, I believe, would identify as feminists.