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2020 was my best year for reading – my recommendations
Homepage Feature Letterbox ProcessI’m still gathering my thoughts on what 2020 meant to me. I really enjoy reading peoples’ end of year blog posts and have started mine a few times, from a few angles. I’ll have to see where those musings take me.
In the meantime, here’s my full 2020 reading list, separated into fiction, memoir and other non-fiction and listed in the order they were read. I’ve marked my mind/heart/life-changing titles in bold and italicised any others I would heartily recommend. If I’d read any I thought were absolutely rubbish, I wouldn’t have listed them here – but I got something from everything I read last year.
For stats lovers: I read 52 books in 2020, compared to 28 in 2019 and only a handful in 2018, 2017, 2016 and further back. I wasn’t aiming for quantity of books over quality of experience, but I did make a conscious effort to read more. Keeping a list of every book I finished in the back of my diary helped – it spurred me on to keep finding interesting things to read, and to dedicate time to reading them.
My top 3 books of 2020: this is really hard, but if I was pressed I would recommend “Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngoze Adichie, “A Godawful Small Affair” by J.B. Morrison (aka Jim Bob) and “Amusing Ourselves To Death” by Neil Postman.
Which books made a difference in your heart, brain or both in 2020? Are you trying to read more, or are you convinced you could never finish a book? Let me know in the comments!
Fiction
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
The Testaments – Margaret Atwood
Wonder Boys – Michael Chabon
The Last – Hanna Jameson
The First Bad Man – Miranda July
My Sister, The Serial Killer – Oyinkan Braithwaite
Monkey Grip – Helen Garner
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
Middle England – Jonathan Coe
Nine Perfect Strangers – Liane Moriarty
Life After Life – Kate Atkinson
Vox – Christina Dalcher
A Godawful Small Affair – J.B. Morrison – listen to Jim Bob on my podcast!
Conversations With Friends – Sally Rooney
Normal People – Sally Rooney
The Runaways – Fatima Bhutto
Q – Christina Dalcher
Harvey King Unboxes His Family – J.B. Morrison
Americanah – Chimamanda Ngoze Adichie
Weirdo – Cathi Unsworth
Unsheltered – Barbara Kingsolver
Never Mind – Edward St Aubyn
The Man In The High Castle – Philip K. Dick
The Summer Everything Happened – Jane Bradley (unpublished)
Memoir
The Salt Path – Raynor Winn
My Thoughts Exactly – Lily Allen
Home – Julie Andrews
Home Work – Julie Andrews
My Name Is Why – Lemn Sissay – listen to Lemn on my podcast!
On The Road Not Taken – Paul Dodgson
Man’s Search For Meaning – Viktor E. Frankl
Carry On, Warrior – Glennon Doyle
Love Warrior – Glennon Doyle
Untamed – Glennon Doyle
Broken Greek – Pete Paphides
I Choose This – David Ford
No Time Like The Future – Michael J. Fox
Hunger – Roxane Gay
Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris
Other Non Fiction
Three Women – Lisa Taddeo
Urban Watercolour Sketching – Felix Scheinberger
This Is Marketing – Seth Godin
Platform – Michael Hyatt
Mindful Thoughts For Stargazers – Mark Westmoquette
Louder And Funnier – P.G. Wodehouse
The Curve – Nicholas Lovell
Social Media Is Bullshit – B.J. Mendelson
Syllabus – Linda Barry
Watcha Mean, What’s A Zine? – Mark Todd and Esther Pearl Watson
Amusing Ourselves To Death – Neil Postman
Essentialism – Greg McKeown
Hit Makers – Derek Thompson

THANK YOU for visiting my website! I’m Laura Kidd, a music producer, songwriter and podcaster based in Bristol, UK. It’s great to meet you.
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