Mel's Best Books of 2020

Mel Ann Rosenthal
Dec 29, 2020
5 min read

In my reading life this year:

I finally embraced revisiting my favorite genre of my youth: contemporary romance— and have gone out of my way to accumulate dozens by some of the genre’s most well-known/most-prolific writers.
I caught up to the end of Karin Slaughter’s Will Trent series.
I dove deeper into current events books, especially political memoirs and histories as was inevitable, for me, in an election year.
I volleyed back and forth between weighty topics like civil rights and back to fiction plots that followed, for example, an overworked professional who isn’t looking for a relationship but falls into one anyway.
I didn’t get bogged down with what I didn’t read and I stopped judging myself for what I wasn’t reading or for reading too slow.

Though I wasn’t sure I’d achieve comparable numbers to years past, I just closed my 201st book with two more weeks left to go. For a brief period in the spring I could barely clock 20 pages at a time without getting distracted by my phone, or my anxiety, and I assumed I’d be lucky if I got through 100 books in total, which would be the least I’d read in four years (since I’ve been keeping track). Instead, my mental health stabilized enough during the longer days of summer sun, allowing me to get back into reading and writing more regularly which gave me the confidence I needed to up the pace of both. Taking ever longer walks and enthusiastically doing chores allowed me extra audiobook time as well. Despite an uncertain future for me professionally, I was doing okay. Half way through the year I had “only” consumed 86 titles, but my new job allowed me much more meditative time alone with the memoirs and essay collections I craved on audio, and I easily caught up to where I could achieve last year’s goal of 200.

I haven’t yet accepted that this wasn’t the year it was supposed to be, but if I come too close to examining why I am filled with too much dread to proceed. Instead I choose to revel in the amount of time I spent at home without feeling guilty about it, either curled up against the bracing cold or relaxing in my air conditioned oasis, tucking into another book, and another, smacking my demons away with a thick paperback to their metaphorically horned foreheads.

That was, quite simply, the only way I managed to cope with the year that was 2020. I never want to bury my head in the sand and ignore the reality of America and the world at its present, though I know that many people have had to in order to get through to the next day. And, I am not trying to hand out judgment on anyone not “keeping up,” but I need balance and I think that is what I have achieved. There’s pressure online in the #bookstagram community to read as much as you can as quickly as you can and, specifically, all of the newest books–and that becomes overwhelming if you buy into the stress of trying to do so while maintaining an active presence there. I’ve found that reading according to my mood and not spending too much time on Instagram makes it so that I can keep up in a different way, one that is far more satisfying. I picked up some books I didn’t know I’d enjoy, some books I’d been putting off for too long, and only a few I wished I’d skipped altogether. Yet every minute spent between the pages was another minute that I retained a hold on myself and my sanity. And for that I am damn proud.

Without being too nostalgic for something that wasn’t, I am openly sad about how the year began but relatively fine with how it is ending. The credit goes entirely to books and the friends I’ve been lucky enough to connect with because of a shared joy for the same story. This list is a thank you note to them, the hardbacks and the galleys and people IRL or in my phone who have made a difference in my life this year. I’m cautiously optimistic that 2021 will bring us even better prose and tighter friendships. 🤓📖📚😘