For a good deal of my life as a reader, I have felt compelled to track my reading. In elementary school, I tracked pages for Book It and logged books on a handout for our library's summer reading challenge, eager to trade in my work for a personal pan pizza coupon or a free ice cream cone. For a while, I recorded favorite titles in a spiral-bound reading log my fifth grade teacher had given me, then switched over in seventh grade to a striped composition book. I fell out of the habit of logging my reading once I reached college, and only last year when I started regularly using my four-year-old Goodreads account did I establish a consistent method for keeping track of what I've read and what I've thought.
According to my records, I read a total of 70 books in 2020, averaging 1.3 books per week and 5.8 per month. Of those books, as you can imagine, some were fabulous and some forgettable. As I did last year (2019 year in reading post here), here are my most memorable reads of 2020 for your 2021 reading list consideration.
Best Reread
When I originally read On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books, I wasn't terribly impressed. It felt pedantic, even a bit tedious. But when my book club chose it for our January read, I gave it another go––and I'm so glad I did. Although I'm not sure how much I had matured as a reader in the year between my first reading and my second, I found that I was able to appreciate the book so much better when I reread it.
On Reading Well (a play on the classic title On Writing Well by William Zinsser) journeys through 12 classic virtues––the cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, justice, and courage; the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love; and the heavenly virtues of chastity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility––and shows how they are exemplified in 12 classic books or short stories. Grounded in thorough definitions of each virtue, Prior's thoughtful analyses shed new light on old favorites such as The Great Gatsby and The Road (which is literally one of the most compelling stories I have ever read) while also piquing interest in unfamiliar titles such as Silence and The Death of Ivan Ilych.
Most Inspiring
One of the best parts of being a humanities scholar is that the textbooks don't always feel like textbooks. Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling was assigned for my Writing as Cultural Engagement class this spring, and I had to force myself to follow the reading schedule rather than binge-read the whole thing (although that may be because it was one of the only good books I had access to as quarantine wore on).
Though culture as a concept is notoriously difficult to define, Crouch offers this neat definition: culture is whatever we as human beings make of the world. He encourages readers to understand culture in light of the creation, fall, redemption metanarrative of Scripture, and to make something good of the world where they find themselves. Naturally, Crouch deals a fair amount with traditional creative endeavors (e.g. writing, creating visual art), but his expansive definition of culture allows him to also touch on culture making in other spheres, such as the home and the public square. The book as a whole was a beautiful reminder that the work we do on earth has the capacity to be eternally meaningful, regardless of how "important" it is in human terms.
Best Vacation Read
As I've gotten older, I've had a hard time finding fiction I can really get into. Either the story is dull, or the writing is lackluster. The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street, however, is neither. I picked it up on a whim at the library before our summer vacation, and it was one of those blessed novels that took me back to the childhood feeling of binge-reading a book in a day.
Spanning decades, this story follows Lillian Dunkle's rise from an impoverished childhood in the slums of New York City to become the head of a wildly successful ice cream franchise. Although Lillian is not the most likable protagonist, she is a compelling and realistic narrator. Her American Dream story serves humor, grit, grief, and all the ice-cream-making trivia you could ever hope to learn.
Most Timely
If you were on the Internet at all in the last six months, you've seen a lot of conversation about social justice, and chances are that it was more confusing than illuminating. As soon as I saw Center for Biblical Unity share about the launch of Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth: 12 Questions Christians Should Ask About Social Justice, I knew I had to read this book to help me make sense of what I was hearing about what social justice looks like. After joining the launch team (this was one of three books I helped launch this year, actually), I eagerly started working through the advance PDF copy. I got my physical copy just before Christmas, and when my parents were visiting, I told my dad to flip through it. After reading the first chapter, he declared that he, too, needed a copy. It is just that good.
Throughout the book, Williams maintains a steady focus on the biblical definition and application of justice. His commitment to charitable discussion and action is so refreshing in this fraught field of scholarship, and readers on multiple points of the political spectrum are likely to find themselves convicted as they read (I know I did!). I am so grateful for this perspective (and the other voices who join Williams), and I trust it will be a profound blessing to the church in years to come.
Best Kick in the Pants
A few readers whose opinions I trust recommended The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure to me on separate occasions, so I decided to ask for it for Christmas (I wanted my own copy so I could annotate it as I read). I just finished it yesterday, and it was as excellent as I had hoped.
Because I am currently an educator and would one day like to be a parent as well, I have a vested interest in young people, and I've noticed many of the trends the authors discuss: increased mental health concerns, the elevation of safety at all costs, and learned helplessness being some of the more prevalent ones. Haidt and Lukianoff show how these traits, among others, have been perpetuated in a number of ways (and by a number of groups) to the detriment of an entire population. It challenged me to consider the ways in which I may be perpetuating their three Great Untruths (what doesn't kill you makes you weaker, always trust your feelings, and life is a battle between good people and evil people) and to help the young people in my care to develop a perspective that will help them navigate life effectively.
Although I don't really plan out my reading for the new year, I am eager to see what new books 2021 has in store for me. I trust that as I read, I will be educated, inspired, and steadily transformed into a better version of myself––after all, what else is reading for?