The Five Best Books I Read in 2020

...(and other random bookish info)

The year 2020 is wrapping up and boy, was it a doozy. It’s hard to avoid writing about the events that happened - events that will be marked in history books for generations to come - but let’s talk about the good parts. For me, I made a personal best of 24 books in one year!* I’m going to do something a bit unorthodox these days and cut to the chase at the beginning, and then ramble on at the end. Here’s my list:

1. A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor.

I can go on and on about this book. It’s so cliche to say, but it literally changed my life this year. I changed my career trajectory because of this book (and its sequel). More on that in a later blog... Anyway, in short, this book is about a guy who was kicked out of Oxford in the 1930’s and thought, “What the hey! I’m going to walk from England to Constantinople!” The first book in a trilogy, it mostly covers him walking across Germany (which is quite a large country) during the rise of Hitler. He covers many topics in the humanities while he’s at it, which is fascinating to read. Oh yeah, and he later became a war hero, is the father of modern travel writing, and inspired the character James Bond.

2. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

This book won the Pulitzer Prize for a reason - it’s amazing. Nay, it’s wondrous! To me, it’s the best example I’ve read since The Count of Monte Cristo (my favorite book) of so many literary tools used so expertly. It’s about a girl and boy growing from child to teenager on either side of the World War II conflict. It also has a myth tied beautifully into the main plot. Also, she’s blind. Also, he’s an orphan whiz kid. Just read the book.

3. Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer.

This one I listened to on the way home from Texas. It’s about a girl who entered herself into the world’s toughest race - across Mongolia on horseback. What I loved about it is that it’s a true story that plays out like a movie. She’s not a writer by profession, though it’s written well, but I loved that she tells you the end at the beginning (you could easily Google the ending if you wanted, so why bother keeping it a secret). I was somehow still at the edge of my moving truck seat wondering how it was all going to get to the end I knew was coming. I’d suggest this book as an audiobook because the British accent with the narrative made me feel part of the story. I’d recommend the book because it has a beautiful cover.

4. No Picnic on Mount Kenya by Felice Benuzzi.

I knew while reading this that it was going to make this list. It’s a true story about three Italians in a British POW camp in Kenya escaping, climbing Africa’s second highest mountain (and much more technical than Mt. Killy) and then sneaking back into camp. The story is straight-forward and still unbelievable. The picture of the POW camp was hilarious as the author’s biggest complaint was boredom (hence the epic adventure). The author later became a diplomat for the new Italian government and his daughter even married an Englishman. It’s a stark contrast to the POW camp in the next book...

5. The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris.

I didn’t know I was going to read so many WWII books this year, but I’m glad I did because they were all great. This is a fantastic story of two prisoners falling in love and finding each other after getting out. It’s also based on a true story. If you like period-piece stories complete with romance, heroism, espionage, and escape, read this book. It’s also a quick read… so there’s that.

***If you are looking to buy any of these books (or any books at all for that matter) please consider buying from www.bookshop.org which will help keep local bookstores open by giving a portion of the sale to a bookstore in your area! Amazon doesn't need your business, the people in your community do!

Now for the boring part:

I set a goal of 12 books to read this year, matching last year’s goal (which included the entire Game of Thrones series of around 5,000 total pages). If I read 12 books every year for the rest of my life, that would be hundreds more than I ever thought I’d get to. This year, I read a lot more than I thought I would. I could have read even more (maybe 30+) had I not also taken up knitting in January and spent hours and hours knitting when I would have otherwise been reading… but oh well, I don’t regret it.

I started the year with a book I bought off an airport sales rack that seemed like it would be mildly interesting. That book, Daughter of War by Brad Taylor, narrowly missed my top five list. It’s not Pulitzer Prize worthy, but it was a fast-paced spy/commando thriller with action that was more realistic than all but a few action movies. Fast-forward to today and I’ve read eight of Brad Taylor’s books (though, I’ll readily admit that two were novellas). His novels are all around 500 pages but I found that they were so well written and fast-paced that I found it also increased my reading speed. I used three other strategies to help me power through my books too. These are:

Three strategies to consume more books:

1. Reading more than one book at a time. What happens for me a lot is that I want to read books of substance each year, but when I’ve had a hard day, I don't want to read something that will take more energy to absorb. I also don’t want to miss important tidbits because my brain is too tired. That used to mean that I would just put off reading until I “felt like it”. Just like my waiting to see the movie Schindler’s List, sometimes I don’t ever “feel like it”. Reading a non-fiction (or two) and a fiction book at the same time alleviates this issue. I’ll flip-flop between the books, often reading two fiction books for every one non-fiction, it seems hard to remember what’s going on at any given time between the characters of the books, but I find I have that same issue while only reading one book. Also, once I’m reading, it’s easier to keep reading. Often I read 20 or so pages in my fiction book and then turn to my non-fiction book and read another five or ten pages of that. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but a little bit of progress is still progress.

2. Listening to audiobooks. Some people might say this is cheating, but I think it’s being efficient. I spent hundreds of hours in the car this year and I listened to seven books. That’s seven books more than I would have gotten to this year. That’s approximately 70 hours I would have otherwise listened to overplayed songs and commercials on the radio. Many of the books I listened to were on sale for a couple dollars through the app Chirp and I wouldn’t have otherwise ever bought the paper form of the book, but I’m glad I listened to them. I also found that sometimes audiobooks are the better form of media. For example: I am currently listening to Llama Drama: A Two-Woman, 5,500-mile Cycling Adventure through South America written and read by Anna McNuff. It’s a hilarious book and great story-telling. Listening to her read her own book is even more entertaining than my personal thought-voice would have been had I read the book. For one, she’s British. For two, she is acting out all of the dialogue. It’s a hoot that would get 6/5 stars on my Goodreads because of the extra talent it takes to be such an animated reader. Anyway, audiobooks are awesome and, though they don’t replace paper books, they have their place in the literary world all the same.

3. Replacing playing on my phone with reading. Here’s a big one. There are millions of articles online talking about how long the average person spends playing on their phone. Most I’ve seen place that time between 2.5 and 3 hours A DAY! That’s 38-45 days a year! Imagine what you could do with all the time wasted looking at social media. I downloaded some e-books this year on my phone and read while waiting in line, taking a break at work, or sitting around the house simultaneously watching football. I switched back to paper books because I have some ethical issues with e-books often costing the same as paper books (even though the printing and logistics of paper books are a large portion of the cost of a book; also, you can’t share e-books with friends). Now, I’m just the strange guy with the book. I’ve even been told this year that it’s not professional to read a book at work, because it seems like you are wasting company time, but when I read on my phone, it’s more socially acceptable… Dumb. However you like to read, do it instead of playing Pokémon Quest on your phone.

There’s a really great article about how to read more books here: https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/how-to-read-more-books/

Alright, last little bit of random information: A few themes I’ve found while looking at my list of books read this year:

• WW2 era books: 5

• Action thrillers: 9

• Women on a trek across...: 3

• Non-fiction: 10

• Books written by journalists: 5

Books I read this year:

• Daughter of War by Brad Taylor

• Tribe by Sebastian Junger

• Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer

• A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor

• The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

• Ring of Fire by Brad Taylor

• Euphoria by Lily King

• Swearing is Good for You by Emma Byrne

• One Rough Man by Brad Taylor

• The Bricklayer by Noah Boyd

• Wild by Cheryl Strayed

• Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor

• No Picnic on Mount Kenya by Felice Benuzzi

• All Necessary Force by Brad Taylor

• Enemy of Mine by Brad Taylor

• The Callsign by Brad Taylor

• Gut Instinct by Brad Taylor

• Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer

• The Widow’s Strike by Brad Taylor

• Everyone Communicates, Few Connect by John C. Maxwell

• The Adventure Gap by James Edward Mills

• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

• Llama Drama by Anna McNuff (currently reading)

• Born to Run by Christopher McDougall (currently reading)

*Well, I’m on par to finish 24 books this year. As I’m typing this, I’ve read 22.