100 Books in 2020

Like much of the world, I spent most of 2020 confined to my home. I was out of work for several months of last year, and pretty much only left my house to walk the dogs, and for my weekly trip to the grocery store. With so much time at home, I had a lot of quarantine projects. I got really into baking. I started painting again. And I read a lot. I mean, a lot.

One of the goals on my bucket list was to read 100 books in a year. I try to read at least 52 every year, and usually finish around 60. But the jump from 60 to 100 is a big one, and I just never have had enough time in my schedule to increase my reading time by that much.

Enter Covid.

Sometime around April, I realized I had been averaging about two books a week during the first quarter of 2020. Then when the world shut down, I was reading even more. I knew that if there was ever going to be a year for me to read 100 books, this was it. I had never had so much time or so few places to go.

Well, I’m very happy to say that I did, indeed finish 100 books in 2020, an accomplishment I am not likely to repeat any time soon, but that I will always take great pride in.

Here’s the list:

• 1. The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig
• 2. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
• 3. The Woman Who Would Be King by Kara Cooney
• 4. The Glittering Hour by Iona Grey
• 5. A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle
• 6. Things in Jars by Jess Kidd
• 7. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
• 8. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• 9. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
• 10. Jeremy Poldark by Winston Graham
• 11. Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• 12. Lords of the North by Bernard Cornwell
• 13. The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré
• 14. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
• 15. Recursion by Blake Crouch
• 16. Villette by Charlotte Brontë
• 17. Euphoria by Lily King
• 18. Stories of a Bitter Country by Ninotchka Rosca
• 19. Naked by David Sedaris
• 20. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• 21. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
• 22. The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson
• 23. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• 24. The Children of Hurin by J.R.R Tolkien
• 25. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
• 26. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• 27. Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson
• 28. The Library of Legends by Janie Chang
• 29. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon
• 30. The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
• 31. The Municipalists by Seth Fried
• 32. Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R.R. Martin
• 33. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
• 34. Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak
• 35. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
• 36. The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd
• 37. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
• 38. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
• 39. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
• 40. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
• 41. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
• 42. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
• 43. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
• 44. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
• 45. The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay
• 46. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
• 47. Five Feet Apart by Rachel Lippincott
• 48. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
• 49. A Burning by Megha Majumdar
• 50. The Iliad by Homer
• 51. Warleggan by Winston Graham
• 52. Wild by Cheryl Strayed
• 53. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• 54. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
• 55. Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
• 56. Circe by Madeline Miller
• 57. Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery
• 58. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
• 59. I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley
• 60. The Plague by Albert Camus
• 61. Head Over Heels by Hannah Orenstein
• 62. Snobs by Julian Fellowes
• 63. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire
• 64. The Vintage Caper by Peter Mayle
• 65. Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes
• 66. Cleopatra’s Shadows by Emily Holleman
• 67. The Circle by Dave Eggers
• 68. The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby
• 69. Atomic Love by Jennie Fields
• 70. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• 71. The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen
• 72. Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
• 73. Dubliners by James Joyce
• 74. Barrel Fever by David Sedaris
• 75. The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
• 76. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
• 77. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
• 78. The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
• 79. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
• 80. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
• 81. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
• 82. Gifts by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 83. Candide by Voltaire
• 84. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
• 85. A Man Called Oved by Fredrik Backman
• 86. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• 87. Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield
• 88. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
• 89. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
• 90. The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany by Lori Nelson Spielman
• 91. Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery
• 92. The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer
• 93. Love Does by Bob Goff
• 94. The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins
• 95. Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
• 96. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• 97. Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris
• 98. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• 99. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
• 100. Lady Susan and Other Stories by Jane Austen.

I was very proud of my list of books and that I was able to complete this goal. Most of my books came from Goodwill and Book of the Month, plus a few re-reads and a few from other bookstores or Amazon. Two of my unofficial reading goals for 2020, which I think I accomplished, were to read more books written by authors of color and more books set in other countries. (I had to scratch the travel itch somehow, and since I couldn’t actually go anywhere, traveling through books was the next best option.)

I read a few really excellent books and a few duds. I don’t think I can pick a favorite. (I generally have a hard time picking favorite anythings.) But the sheer amount of reading I did will always be one highlight in the train wreck of a year that was 2020.