If there is one thing I can say about my 2020 reading year, it’s that I was significantly better at reading in Spanish. Among my 17 overall reads were two in Spanish, the same as last year. But whereas last year it took me 71 and 60 days to read those two books, this year it was just 55 and 54 days, and the 2020 ones combined were nearly 200 pages longer. Bonus points for me.

Also compared to last year, getting through 17 books was a vast improvement from the 10 I managed in 2019. Looking back to my last end-of-year post, I see now that I had set a goal of 14 overall books and three in Spanish for this year. And unlike last year, I actually took the time to write at least something about every one of them. Here’s the 2020 list:

–The Electric Hotel by Dominic Smith
–Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli
–The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George
–The Library Book by Susan Orlean
–The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
–Prisoner by Jason Rezaian
–Homelands by Alfredo Corchado
–Buzz Saw by Jesse Dougherty
–El Peso del Corazón by Rosa Montero
–The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
–Little Fires Everywhere by Celest Ng
–Murder on the Red River by Marcie Rendon
–Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
–The Women Who Wrote the War by Nancy Caldwell Sorel
–Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh
–To a God Unknown by John Steinbeck
–El amor en los tiempos de cólera by Gabriel García Márquez

In terms of stats, 2020 turned out to be a slightly above average year across all categories for me. At least in terms of the stats I have, which go back to 2008.

One more book than usual, with an average of two more pages that I read an average of one day faster. I’ll take it. In all, it was my best statistical reading year since 2016.

Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was the longest book (702 pages), with Faces in the Crowd the shortest (146) as well as the fastest read (5 days). El Peso del Corazón took me longest (55 days), but that is quite expected since it was in Spanish and I also not smartly was jumping in with the second book in a series, so for a while I did not quite understand what the heck was happening.

I read six library books this year! Remember when we could go to libraries? That is high on my wish for a return to normalcy.

One thing I see looking back on this list is that I truly enjoyed most of my reading time this year. Last year was definitely not like that. So let’s talk about some favorites.

Six I would recommend: Faces in the Crowd, The Library Book, Prisoner, Homelands, Little Fires Everywhere, Pachinko. I originally wrote that as five but I couldn’t cut one of them.

Two I would skip: El Peso del Corazón and To a God Unknown. These were just okay.

Now it’s time for 2021 and like many people I’m already looking at my bookshelf and a few books that have been sitting there for a few years and I’m mentally pledging to read them. Some of them. At least one of them.

Please send any recommendations.