2020: My year in books

As with 2018 and 2019, keeping track of my reading was one of the simple pleasures of 2020, which for well-known reasons I won't get too deep into here was in most ways a quite miserable year. There was a moment where I envisioned reading more as a result of mostly-staying-home, and although I'm grateful for the safety and thoughtfulness of those closest to me, as evidenced by a few gaps in the reported dates on my list, my reading energy and focus ebbed and flowed.

Here's the list, followed by summative reflection. Re-reads are indicated by an asterisk*.

1. Post-Truth, Lee McIntyre (2018) - 01.05

2. The American Liberal Tradition Reconsidered: The Contested Legacy of Louis Hartz, Mark Hulling, Ed. (2010) - 01.13

3. Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine (2014) - 02.06

4. Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation, Jeff Blake & Sarah Knopp, Eds. (2012) - 02.07

5. Juicy and Delicious, Lucy Alibar (2012) - 02.11

6. Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward (2017) - 02.16

7. The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates (2019) - 02.26

8. The Celtic Twilight, William Butler Yeats (1893) - 02.29

9. Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education, Henry A. Giroux (2019) - 03.03

10. Paradise, Toni Morrison (1997) - 03.22*

11. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, Steve Brusatte (2018) - 03.25

12. Nosotras. Historias de mujeres y algo más, Rosa Montero (2018) - 03.25

13. Take Me to Your Paradise: A History of Celtic Related Incidents and Events, Liam Kelly (2019) - 03.29

14. Before the Dawn of History, Charles R. Knight (1935) - 03.29*

15. The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America, Sarah Kendzior (2018) - 04.03

16. The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic, Mahogany L. Browne, Idrissa Simmonds, & Jamila Woods, Eds. (2018) - 04.04

17. Freedom is a Constant Struggle, Angela Davis (2015) - 04.11

18. Unlucky, Zom Barber (2017) - 04.21

19. Neoliberalism's Demons: On the Political Theology of Late Capital, Adam Kotsko (2018) - 04.24

20. White Rage, Carol Anderson (2016) - 04.28

21. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber (1905) - 05.08

22. The Sickness Unto Death, Søren Kierkegaard (1849) - 05.10*

23. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (1939) - 05.16*

24. Philosophy in the Modern World: A New History of Western Philosophy, Vol. 4, Anthony Kenny (2007) - 05.24

25. Shine of the Ever, Claire Rudy Foster (2019) - 05.26

26. Poems of Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete, Emily Dickinson (2012, 1890) - 05.28*

27. Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?, Maya Schenwar, Joe Macaré, & Alana Yu-lan, Eds. (2016) 06.07

28. Ducks, Newburyport, Lucy Ellmann (2019) - 06.22

29. The Strange Bird, Jeff VanderMeer (2017) - 06.28

30. The Oxford Companion to Beer, Garrett Oliver, Ed. (2012) - 06.28

31. How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi (2019) - 07.03

32. The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert (2014) - 07.11

33. Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2020) - 08.13

34. Awful Archives, Jenny Rice (2020) - 09.04

35. National Parks of America, Lonely Planet (2016) - 09.23

36. Welcome to Hell World, Luke O'Neil (2019) - 09.27

37. Radicals in the Barrio, Justin Akers Chácon (2018) - 10.02

38. The Inheritance Trilogy, N. K. Jemisin (2010, 2010, 2011) - 10.21

39. In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West, Wendy Brown (2019) - 10.31

40. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving (1819) - 10.31*

41. The Hazel Wood, Melissa Albert (2018) - 11.05

42. Hiding in Plain Sight, Sarah Kendzior (2020) - 11.09

43. Refugees and Asylum Seekers: Interdisciplinary and Comparative Perspectives, S. Megan Berthold & Kathryn R. Libal, Eds. (2019) 11.14

44. Capitalism and Disability: Selected Writings by Marta Russell, Marta Russell; Keith Rosenthal, Ed. (2019) - 11.21

45. H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald (2014) - 11.22

46. Undoing the Demos : Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution, Wendy Brown (2015) - 11.24

47. The Travel Book: A Journey through Every Country in the World, Lonely Planet (2005) - 12.07

48. How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (2017) - 12.23

49. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens (1843) - 12.24*

50. The Bathroom Sports Almanac, Jeff Kreismer (2017) - 12.31

As usual, a number of reading tasks I took on over the past year were inspired by my professional work; McIntyre, Giroux, Blake & Knopp, Kotsko, Kolbert, Rice, Russell, and especially Brown have already emerged in my writing and teaching.  Relatedly, as the work/life demarcation softens, the job/work distinction ossifies. That is, I'm welcoming certain aspects of my work as more relevant to my personal life and identity, while others become more easily compartmentalized.

With similar intention, much of what I chose to read was informed by the political and public health conditions under which we spent much of the past year (Kendzior, Kendi, Anderson, Steinbeck). Others, I couldn't help but read (or re-read) through that same context (Dickens, Morrison, Foster). Directly related to that mission, my most visited publisher of the year was Haymarket Books —a "radical, independent, nonprofit" out of Chicago, Illinois — with seven completed titles on my list. Most of the HB books are edited collections of previously published material, augmented with updated essays and interviews. In the case of Davis Taylor, I learned that much of what I thought were new ideas about politics and justice were ones that have been developed and tested over decades, often by Black women. Unfortunately, a trend I've noticed over the past year involving folks of predictable political and demographic slants (re: leftist white dudes) is that some of them seem to think that the policies and procedures they're advocating for are brand new and that anyone who doesn't agree with their all-or-nothing approach is an enemy. Now, the "didn't do the reading" criticism is open to critique itself on classist and racist grounds, but when folks come after Angela Davis, as did happen in the lead up to the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, then the fact that they didn't do the reading is problematic.

While it would be disingenuous to suggest that this year was worse politically than previous years — more accurate to say that things became less comfortable for the privileged — there was a palpable recognition of how much our communal experiences and societal expectations are precarious and require defense. The National Parks travel guide was a literal and figurative illustration of this. Throughout that slow reading, my mind was moved to Albert Camus's The Plague (on the re-read list for 2021), which begins by observing that a pestilence — which I'm interpreting as a pandemic — as that "which rules out any future." For a long time, I've been wanting to purchase a National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands annual pass, to dedicate time traveling to our shared spaces and encountering the places in between. This upcoming year seems at once like the one it would be least pragmatic yet most needed.

Let's bring this to a close with that slight spirit of optimism. Along with the absolutely lovely Wingspan and my own backyard, The Strange Bird and H is for Hawk formed a multifaceted thematic I hope to build upon moving forward. Related only in title, Ducks, Newburyport was my most rewarding read of the year, and many of you can expect to be gifted that doorstop in the future, hopefully in person. Combining much of the above, along with recent conversations over how schools and teachers should function and what students should read, Sing, Unburied, Sing was my book of the year.