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Books of 2020
Jan. 3rd, 2021 04:58 pm2020 was not a great year for reading, as many people have been pointing out for months now. For me, I managed to finish a fair number of books, but am horrifyingly behind in writing them up.
I had a couple of different themes to my reading this year. On my trip to India (late Feb-early March), I focused on books set in or written by people from the specific cities I visited. After the pandemic set in and quarantine became mandatory, I decided to tackle the massive pile of books that I own but haven't read, also known as Mount TBR. And "Mount" is really the right word, given that I'm now eight months into that task and it's still at an intimidating size. On the one hand, my girlfriend is extremely happy to have fewer stacks of books in our apartment. But on the other hand, this focus means I did very poorly at my goal of reading books by authors of color – I'm kind of stuck with what I purchased years before or was given as gifts. I also pick up a decent number of books from stoops (in my neighborhood, it's extremely common for people to leave books out on the sidewalk/in a cardboard box/some other public location as a signal that they're done with them and the books are looking for a new home. It's common enough that I easily acquire several books a month this way). A free book is hard to resist, but the selection does tend to lean toward white authors.
I also read plenty for research related to my work. I generally don't include those on my official "books read" list, both because I frequently don't actually read them cover-to-cover but skim for relevant information and because it always seems so pointless to write up reviews of academic texts or PhD theses; I mean, no one's checking out “The Decision to Hire German Troops in the War of American Independence: Reactions in Britain and North America, 1774-1776” for its readability anyway. And if I include my research books, what do I do about articles or chapters? See, it just all gets very complicated.
Ah, well. My reading goals going forward are about the same as always: continue to diminish Mount TBR, read more by people of color, read more by women. Hey, they're good goals!
My Statistics
Total Read: 76 books
By women: 48 books, 63% of the total
By People of Color: 16, 21%
Mount TBR: 37, 49%
Reviews written: 24, 32%
( Complete List of Books from 2020 )
I think it would be overly optimistic to promise that I'll write a review of everything from 2020; it's probably more reasonable to start with a clean slate going forward in 2021 and try to review everything from here on out. But that said, if any of these titles look interesting to you, please let me know and I'll give you a brief review based on my months-old memories!
I had a couple of different themes to my reading this year. On my trip to India (late Feb-early March), I focused on books set in or written by people from the specific cities I visited. After the pandemic set in and quarantine became mandatory, I decided to tackle the massive pile of books that I own but haven't read, also known as Mount TBR. And "Mount" is really the right word, given that I'm now eight months into that task and it's still at an intimidating size. On the one hand, my girlfriend is extremely happy to have fewer stacks of books in our apartment. But on the other hand, this focus means I did very poorly at my goal of reading books by authors of color – I'm kind of stuck with what I purchased years before or was given as gifts. I also pick up a decent number of books from stoops (in my neighborhood, it's extremely common for people to leave books out on the sidewalk/in a cardboard box/some other public location as a signal that they're done with them and the books are looking for a new home. It's common enough that I easily acquire several books a month this way). A free book is hard to resist, but the selection does tend to lean toward white authors.
I also read plenty for research related to my work. I generally don't include those on my official "books read" list, both because I frequently don't actually read them cover-to-cover but skim for relevant information and because it always seems so pointless to write up reviews of academic texts or PhD theses; I mean, no one's checking out “The Decision to Hire German Troops in the War of American Independence: Reactions in Britain and North America, 1774-1776” for its readability anyway. And if I include my research books, what do I do about articles or chapters? See, it just all gets very complicated.
Ah, well. My reading goals going forward are about the same as always: continue to diminish Mount TBR, read more by people of color, read more by women. Hey, they're good goals!
My Statistics
Total Read: 76 books
By women: 48 books, 63% of the total
By People of Color: 16, 21%
Mount TBR: 37, 49%
Reviews written: 24, 32%
( Complete List of Books from 2020 )
I think it would be overly optimistic to promise that I'll write a review of everything from 2020; it's probably more reasonable to start with a clean slate going forward in 2021 and try to review everything from here on out. But that said, if any of these titles look interesting to you, please let me know and I'll give you a brief review based on my months-old memories!
