I suppose there was a ton of screen usage and doom-scrolling our smartphones in 2020 — a hard year amidst covid for everyone. For me, there was much staring at written page emptily, and many many discontinued books. Most of my reading was done till April 2020, when I was moving at a fast clip. And then, where did all the time go?
Here are my 2020 recommendations with short descriptions, covering economic history, science, society, literary fiction, and poetry, mostly done in the first half of the year after which reading dropped off precipitously. I have linked to my reviews whenever I wrote one on this blog. I am thankful for all the company I found in books in the world now.
History/Economics
- The English and Their History by Robert Tombs. (Review) Delightful overview of English (not British) history covering the unique role of English cultural identity & language on democracy, slavery, the industrial revolution, colonialism, world wars (& Brexit).
- The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze. A compelling economic history of 1930s Germany. Posits that Germany fell behind in logistics (vs. Ford production line, etc) as the US abandoned to turn isolationist after 1929. Illuminating on agriculture labor and `lebensraum’.
- A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th century by Barbara Tuchman. A very dense pandemic read. Poor peasants in the 14th century were hopelessly bound by serfdom, simony, ruinous taxation, and the persecution of unbelievers as plague bounced for decades taking kith and kin.
Science and Nature
- Infinite Powers by Steven Strogatz. What a joyful book on the history of calculus, its beauty, and its impact. This book will enrich new learners’ views of our world. For more mathematically inclined, here is a delightful appendix from @stevenstrogatz on Fermat’s integration “by hand” proof for the area under the curve
. (Not in the book) - Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein. The thesis that generalists triumph to connect the world seems to appeals to “distracted” me. Range is also a parenting book in disguise. Don’t over plan. Just let children explore and try many things on their own.
- The Peregrine by J A Baker exemplifies the best in nature writing in this NYRB edition. Ornate original writing adorns the description of lives in the woods — a great book for walks in solitude this year. I came to it from the brilliant H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald.
China and India
- The Anarchy by William Dalrymple. Was there ever a “too big to fail” corporation as powerful, nimble, and unregulated as the East India Company? Insightful book on the fall of Bengal, Marathas, and Mysore to EIC, culminating in the fall of Delhi in 1803.
- Age of Ambition Evan Osnos captures through detailed observations of individuals, the competitive landscape, enterprise, and ambitions wrapped in ostensible “central planning” in China. I wonder what the poet, Qi Xiangfu, is up to now.
- Billionaire Raj In a parallel exploration of nouveau riche in India, James Crabtree covers the rise of modern Indian billionaires. He uses Samuel Huntington’s thesis of corruption and political order to argue how profit-skimming politics aids growth in South India.
- Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train Through China by Paul Theroux. In the 80s China, Theroux took rickety trains (that contrast with the Shanghai-Beijing Bullet train now), making curmudgeonly but sharp observations of a bygone land. (An 80s Bollywood cult song pops up on the trip to Tibet).
Society and Self
- Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie M Cottom. Witty, delightful, and searing commentary covering a spectrum of issues: race, beauty, womanhood, and higher education. Girl 6 on how mundane mumblings from male columnists are often mistaken for wisdom, is lit.
- How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett. A short book written in 1920 to an audience of London commuters stands quite relevant today. Arnold Bennett, with his turn-of-the-century mustache (and an omelet named after him), is quite a writer.
- A Grief Observed by CS Lewis is a remarkable book. We read it for a specific deeply personal and untransferable reason. I read through Lewis’s The Problem of Pain and Abolition of Man, and Eknath Easwaran’s book on the Gita, during the long decade of 2020.
Translated Fiction
- Kristen Lavransdatter (Norwegian) by Sigrid Undset (Lovely translation by Tiina Nunnally). I completed it (just as the pandemic arrived, like in the book) after a slow read over 2yrs. Feminist and religious. I love the evolution of characters over time.
- Chess Story (German) by Stefan Zweig. Translated from German. I love my Zweig. Written in his last days, this is a short book on incandescent and terrific descent into madness and obsession in chess (contra queen’s gambit by Tevis, which also I liked).
- Samskara (Kannada) by UR Ananthamurthy. I read the NYRB edition translated from Kannada by AK Ramanujan. The book brims with the complexity of 4 stages of Hindu life progression. How do we square our eternal self-doubts born from learning with the resolute confidence of ignorance?
- The Vegetarian (Korean) by Han Kang. Han Kang is a fresh, extraordinary voice like no other. I will say very little. Ostensibly begins with vegetarianism, but like the best Korean movies, the pleasure is in going along the mystifying story arc.
- Italian Folktales (Italian) by Italo Calvino who collected these 200 tales (with his delightfully sourced endnotes) which have been a bonding exercise with my tween during the difficult months of covid home school.
Literary Fiction
- Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. Deftly threads poverty, war, Christianity, identity, xenophobia, heartbreak, and hope over multiple generations of Korean life in post-war Japan. My favorite character was Etsuko, imprisoned by her hopes for her children.
- Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. A stunning American novel follows the story of two separated half-sisters and their multiple descendants in Ghana and the USA, enmeshed in the canvas of slavery, colonialism, and the clash of civilizations.
- An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro. In 200 odd pages, Ishiguro paints nuances of memory and heartache of the inner world with hopes of the outer world. Ono bonds with his grandson, and ponders his devalued nationalist prewar life in a rapidly changing Japan.
- A Gentleman in Moscow. I love characters locked in their stoic intellectual pursuit. I finished it in early 2020, and now it makes me fondly recall quiet dinner conversations watching people, as time hushed by.
Science Fiction
- Exhalation Ted Chiang’s poetic Science Fiction stories are always worth the wait. I still remember reading his “Hell is the absence of God” in the 90s as a college student. My favorite is this collection, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate”, a wondrous and poignant time-travel tale set in medieval Baghdad/Cairo.
- Murderbot Mysteries (#1-3) Martha Wells. Fun novellas starring a hilarious misanthropic bot put in charge of saving human lives, but mostly it just wants to left alone to binge watch hours of sci-fi shows.
Poetry
Poems of Carolyn Forche particularly, the collection The Country Between Us, was a rare respite during the tumultuous summer of June 2020. The Colonel — the sparse imagery is ferocious and haunting.
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If you want the entire list of books finished for the year, it’s here: Books Read in 2020. Since I read books by choice, and not as a part of a “job”, by definition, completed books means that book was worth my time.