I won’t get into all that’s happened in 2020 (nevermind the chaos of 2021 already) so I’m just posting my book list here. It’s incomplete since my laptop died in April, towards the beginning of the pandemic (see first sentence), and took my records with it, so I definitely read more than 25 books! But here’s what I can remember and the books I read after April—a few childhood favorites, some nonfiction (Sanmao was a fave) and translated work, and a bunch of novels.
1. Our Colony Beyond the City of Ruins- Janalyn Guo
2. The Golden Compass- Philip Pullman (reread)
3. The Subtle Knife- Philip Pullman (reread)
4. The Amber Spyglass- Philip Pullman (reread)
5. The Nightworkers- Brian Selfon
6. And the Walls Come Crumbling Down- Tania De Rozario (NF)
7. Costalegre- Courtney Maum
8. Pee Wees- Rich Cohen (NF)
9. Desert Oracle- Ken Layne (NF)
10. Sabriel- Garth Nix (reread)
11. Crown/Court Duel- Sherwood Smith (reread)
12. More Miracle Than Bird- Alice Miller
13. The Book of M- Peng Shepherd
14. H Is For Hawk- Helen Macdonald (NF)
15. Flights- Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft
16. How Much of These Hills Is Gold- C. Pam Zhang
17. Stories of the Sahara- Sanmao, translated by Mike Fu (NF)
18. Eat to Beat Disease- Dr. William Li (NF)
19. Monkey King: Journey to the West- Wu Cheng’en, translated by Julia Lovell
20. Painting Time– Maylis de Kerangal, translated by Jessica Moore
21. On Restless Waves- E. Lily Yu
22. Piranesi- Susanna Clarke
23. What We Lose- Zinzi Clemmons
24. Ulirát: Best Contemporary Stories in Translation from the Philippines
25. Mostly Dead Things- Kristen Arnett