I don’t have many encouraging words right now. I am in quarantine, unexpectedly, and the 8th anniversary of Dane’s death is approaching. The winds are high, and my anxiety is leveling up exponentially as we barrel full-steam into an unpredictable year. So I offer these words, to myself and to you, on this extraordinary inauguration day.

For this days, and all of the others to come, HOLD YOUR OWN.

Thanks to Gina Hogan Edwards for posting this extraordinary reminder today of what is important.

Every year, and KWeeks makes a little fun of me for this, I record all of the books I read. I do this for several reasons, not the least of which being that I have the short-term memory of a fruit fly, and I will literally forget what I have read from January to December.

That’s not such a big deal until the third time you think a book looks really good, so you buy it…and it’s already on your bookshelf. And you have already read it. Sometimes more than once.

This year I also began keeping track of how many male-identified and female-identified authors I read, plus how many writers of color I reach for without going out of my way. This year, I read:

My total number of books was 77. The discrepancy between my total and the above numbers is because I read multiple books by the same author. The percentage of authors of color is 25% of the total – in line with the demographics of the U.S., but not nearly enough, IMVHO. This past year I just kept reading like I do to get a baseline, and I hope to incorporate less white-centric books in 2021.

I won’t bore you with the entire list, some of which is completely forgettable, even written down, but here are my top 13 books, in the order in which I experienced them.

I was going to put stars by the ones I really recommend, but I just can’t. They were all so fucking good.

Salvage the Bones by Jessmyn Ward

Upstream by Mary Oliver

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

The Leftovers by Tom Perrota

The Nature Fix by Florence Williams

Walk Through Walls by Marina Abramovic

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deeshaw Philyaw

The History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

Transcendant Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth Asawa by Marilyn Chase

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

Top 13 for 2020 – a mix of non-fiction, one exceptional book of short stories, and fiction. Some stunning writing in this list, and I recommend each one of these unreservedly – purchased from your local bookstore, not Amazon, natch.

I already have a list longer than my arm, but tell me what I missed last year – what books should have been on my radar, and what should I look out for next year?

Happy reading!