The Best Books I Read in 2020
Cover photo by Susan Ying
A read a lot in 2020. I certainly had a lot of time to do so. Of course, I didn’t read as much as I should have or could have and wasted most of my quarantine periods playing League of Legends (I’m not even good at the game, I don’t know why I play). Despite this, I am still proud of the amount I read.
And I got lucky. I found some good ones. I read a couple of books this year that completely changed my world view. A few more made the quarantine that much easier. Here are a few of those books that were special.
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A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
This was by far my favorite book of the year and ranks pretty far up there on the all-time list. It is heavy on the details, takes a while to get into it, and there is not so much of a plot per se, but once you get over that hump, each page is its own story. It was written in 2016 but is fittingly topical for the year of lockdowns in 2020, as you will see within the first chapter. Highly recommend. (5/5)
The Black Swan and the rest of Incerto by Nassim Taleb
This is one of those books that has been sitting on the old bookshelf for a while. Over a year, in fact, ever since I moved into my house up in college. It has been on pretty much every book list, raved about by people I respect on the internet but has an intimidating number of pages, so it was constantly pushed aside in favor of easier books with bigger print. But with the amount of free time I had due to quarantine, I no longer had enough excuses to keep it waiting on that shelf. I was not disappointed. Every chapter is filled with revelations about the world that seem so simple yet so profound that you are forced to close the book for a while and walk around just to take it in. These books will change the way you look at the world. (4/5)
The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig was an author I was unaware of until this year, but in the 1930s and 40s, he had been one of the most popular authors in the world. The book is semi-autobiographical, half of it following his life though the 1900s, the other half giving his perspectives on those times from later in his life. This book is very much an ode to a time lost, and it can get a little sad because of it, but it is so well written that it is worth the read. (5/5)
The Red Rising Series by Pierce Brown
The day before the lockdown started in early March, I picked up this book at the local bookstore near my childhood home. I finished it that night and ordered the next two in the series off Amazon immediately. It’s the classic hero’s journey combined with a healthy dose of Hunger Games, instead in space rather than dystopian earth which can only make it better. The books reminded me of the Legend Series by Marie Lu that I enjoyed so much in my childhood and came at a great time. Before picking up Red Rising, I had been in one of the worst reading slumps of my life. This book reminded me why I love reading so much, something I was missing dearly in the pandemic. (4.5/5)
Those are the books I found most noteworthy. I have a full list here of all the books I read last year if that strikes your fancy. Thanks for reading about me reading and see you soon.