According to Goodreads, I read 190 books in 2020. I also keep a list sorted by category in the Notes app on my iPhone from which this list is compiled.
A couple notes: The format I read the book is indicated within square brackets. If no format is indicated, I read a hard copy. Whom I read the book with is indicated within curly brackets. A list of the groups or persons mentioned is included at the bottom of this post.
Without further ado, here is the list.
Devotional
- Sara Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance [624 pages]
- Nathaniel Bluedorn, Fallacy Detective [Kindle 266 pages] {Joe}
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is on the Cross [Kindle 112 pages]
- Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity [Kindle 370 pages] {Ben}
- Emily P. Freeman, The Next Right Thing [Kindle 220 pages]
- Joshua Gibbs, The 25th: New & Selected Essays [149 pages]
- George Hodges, Saints and Heroes [Kindle 310 pages] {Joe]
- Elizabeth Lev, How Art Saved the Catholic Faith [Kindle 321 pages] {Well Read Mom}
- C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce [Kindle 128 pages] {Literary Life}
- C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory [Kindle 106 pages]
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea [Kindle 146 pages]
- Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child [Kindle 193] {Pelican Society}
- Jean-Charles Nault, The Noonday Devil: Acedia, The Unnamed Evil of Our Times [207 pages] {Well Read Mom}
- Julian of Norwich, Revelation of Divine Love [Kindle 430 pages] {Well Read Mom}
- Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son [Kindle 190 pages] {Ben}
- Tsh Oxenreider, Shadow and Light: A Journey into Advent [Kindle 151 pages]
- Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ [Kindle 304 pages] {Ben}
- St. Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection [Kindle 217 pages] {Well Read Mom}
- A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God [Kindle 90 pages] {Joe}
- Simone Weil, Waiting for God [192 pages]
- Baltimore Catechism IV [Kindle 334 pages]
History
- Dee Alexander Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee [Kindle 482 pages] {Ben}
- Winston Churchill, Birth of Britain [Kindle 343 pages] {Joe}
- Greg Grandin, Fordlandia [Kindle 436 pages]
- David V. Hicks & C. Scot Hicks, The Lawgivers: the Parallel Lives of Numa Pompilius and Lycrugus of Sparta [167 pages] {Morning Time}
- Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created [Kindle 679 pages] {Joe}
- Theodore H. White, The Making of a President 1960 [Kindle 434 pages] {Ben}
- Colin Woodward, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America [Kindle 386 pages] {Ben}
Biography/Memoir
- St. Augustine, Confessions [423 pages] {Ben}
- Ilene Beckerman, Love, Loss, and What I Wore [Kindle 144 pages] {Happiness Project}
- Saroo Brierley, A Long Way Home [Kindle 271 pages] {Boomerang}
- Adrienne Brodeur, Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me [Kindle 256 pages] {Happier podcast}
- Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House: A Memoir [Kindle 304 pages]
- Glennon Doyle, Love Warrior [Kindle 274 pages]
- Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals [Kindle 292 pages]
- Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone [Kindle 433 pages]
- Lucy Knisley, Relish [Kindle 91 pages] {MMD}
- Ann Mah, Mastering the Art of French Eating [Kindle 270) {MMD}
- Terese Marie Mailhot, Heart Berries: A Memoir [Kindle 140 pages] {Now Read This}
- Ruth Reichl, Save Me the Plums [Kindle 269 pages]
- Tim Severin, The Brendan Voyage [Kindle 292 pages] {Joe}
- Will Schwalbe, The End of Your Life Book Club [Kindle 354 pages]
- Simone Troisi & Cristoiana Paccini, Chiara Corbella Petrillo [Kindle 177 pages]
- Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle [Kindle 305 pages]
- Richard Wright, Black Boy [Kindle 400 pages] {Ben}
Nonfiction
- Scott Adams, Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America [Kindle 255 pages]
- James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time [Kindle 128 pages]
- Shane Bauer, American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment [Kindle 366 pages] {Now Read This}
- Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson [Kindle 220 pages] {Ben}
- Alan Jacobs, Breaking Bread with the Dead [Kindle 192 pages]
- Alan Jacobs, The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis [Kindle 280 pages]
- Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: and Other Essays [Kindle 235 pages]
- Daniel J. Levitin, This Is Your Brain on Music [Kindle 344 pages]
- Karl Pillimer, Fault Lines [Kindle 288 pages]
- Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays [Kindle 224 pages]
- Will Schwalbe, Books for Living [Kindle 289 pages]
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable [Kindle 444 pages]
- Paul Tough, Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why [Kindle 145 pages] {Now Read This}
Poetry
- W.H. Auden, For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio [136 pages]
- Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric [Kindle 158 pages] {Now Read This}
- William Shakespeare, Sonnets
- Matthew Zapruder, Why Poetry [Kindle 256 pages]
Classics
- Jane Austen, Emma [Kindle 480 pages] {MMD}
- Jane Austen, Sense & Sensibility [Kindle 375 pages] {Well Read Mom}
- L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz [Kindle 136 pages] {Joe & Caroline}
- Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year [Kindle 195 pages] {Guardian}
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment [Kindle 621 pages] {Close Reads}
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles [Kindle 206 pages] {Morning Time}
- George Eliot, Silas Marner [Kindle 209 pages] {Ben}
- Roger Lancelyn Green, King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table [Kindle 420 pages] {Caroline}
- Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd [Kindle 452 pages] [Audible 14:52] {Ben}
- G.A. Henty, In Freedom’s Cause [Kindle 322 pages] {Joe}
- Homer, The Iliad [608 pages] {Apprenticeship}
- Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow [Audible 2:14] {Caroline}
- Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe [Kindle 464 pages] {Joe}
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It [Kindle 320 pages] [Audible 2:27] {Morning Time}
- William Shakespeare, Coriolanus [Kindle 402 pages] {Morning Time}
- William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice [Kindle 306 pages] {Morning Time}
- William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale [Audible 2:52] {Literary Life}
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein 1818 edition [Kindle 124 pages] {Close Reads}
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped [Kindle 239 pages] {Joe}
- Virgil, The Aeneid [442 pages] {Ben}
- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest [Kindle 76 pages] {Literary Life}
Modern Classics
- Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Lost Prince [Audible 11:06] {Joe}
- Albert Camus, The Plague [Kindle 320 pages]
- Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop [Kindle 145 pages] {Ben}
- Willa Cather, Paul’s Case and Other Stories [Kindle 66 pages]
- Willa Cather, Song of the Lark [Kindle 246 pages] {Well Read Mom}
- Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None [Kindle 258 pages] {Morning Time}
- John Christopher, The Pool of Fire [Kindle 272 pages] {Joe}
- Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim [Kindle 359 pages] {Ben}
- John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman [Kindle 394 pages] {Guardian}
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby [Kindle 76 pages] {Ben}
- E.M. Forster, A Passage to India [Kindle 326 pages] [Audible 11:03]
- Graham Greene, The End of the Affair [Kindle 196 pages] [Audible 6:28] {Close Reads}
- Harry Harrison, Make Room! Make Room! [Kindle 285 pages] {Guardian}
- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises [Kindle 256 pages] {Close Reads}
- Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God [Kindle 288 pages] [Audible 6:44] {WRM}
- Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go [Kindle 272 pages] {MMD}
- John Toole Kennedy, A Confederacy of Dunces [Audible 13:32]
- Louis L’Amour, The Lonesome Gods [Kindle 570 pages] {Morning Time}
- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird [Kindle 331 pages] {Ben}
- C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet [160 pages] {Ben}
- C.S. Lewis, Perelandra [192 pages] {Ben}
- W. Somerset Maugham, Moon and Sixpence [Kindle 244 pages] {Bookening}
- Jean Merrill, The Pushcart War [Kindle 232 pages] {Morning Time}
- Walker Percy, The Moviegoer [253 pages] {Close Reads}
- Ann Petry, The Street [Kindle 435 pages] {Now Read This}
- Charles Portis, True Grit [Kindle 228 pages] {On Reading Well}
- Chaim Potok, The Chosen [Kindle 301 pages] {Ben}
- Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front [Kindle 164 pages] {Ben}
- J.D. Sallinger, The Catcher in the Rye [288 pages] {Close Reads}
- Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night [Hoopla audio 15:30] {Well Read Mom}
- Dorothy Sayers, Whose Body [Kindle 199 pages] [Audible 6:54] {Ben}
- Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels [Kindle 370 pages] {Pelican Society}
- Georges Simenon, Pietr the Latvian [Kindle 165 pages] {Guardian}
- Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose [Kindle 674 pages] [Audible 22:09] {WRM}
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit [Kindle 322 pages]
- J.R.R. Tolkien, Leaf by Niggle [Kindle] {Literary Life}
- J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy Stories [Kindle] {Literary Life}
- William Trevor, Felicia’s Journey [Kindle 240 pages] {Guardian}
- Walter Wangerin Jr., The Book of the Dun Cow [Kindle 258 pages] {Morning Time}
- Walter Wangerin Jr., The Second Book of the Dun Cow: Lamentations [Kindle 339 pages]
- Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence [Kindle 325 pages] {Guardian}
- Richard Wright, Native Son [Kindle 490 pages]
Contemporary Fiction
- Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half [Kindle 350 pages] {MMD}
- Julie Berry, Lovely War [Kindle 480 pages] {MMD}
- Chanel Cleeton, The Last Train to Key West [Kindle 320 pages] {MMD}
- Tara Conklin, The Last Romantics [Kindle 362 pages]
- Leif Enger, Peace Like a River [Kindle 324 pages] {Close Reads}
- Tayari Jones, Silver Sparrow [Kindle 353 pages] {MMD}
- Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop [Kindle 321 pages]
- William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land [Kindle 465 pages] {MMD}
- Valeria Luiselli, Lost Children Archive: A Novel [Kindle 401 pages] {Guardian}
- Madeline Miller, Circe [Kindle 353 pages] {Now Read This}
- Daniel Nieh, Beijing Payback [Libby audio 8:39]
- Ann Patchett, The Dutch House [Audible 9:53] {Happier Podcast} {One Book One Lincoln}
- Orhan Pamuk, Snow [Kindle 480 pages]
- Helen Phillips, The Need [Kindle 273 pages]
- Julia Philips, Disappearing Earth [Kindle 262 pages] {Now Read This}
- Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones and the Six [Libby audio 9:03]
- Marilynne Robinson, Gilead [Audible 8:54]
- Marilynne Robinson, Home [Kindle 333 pages] {Close Reads}
- Marilynne Robinson, Lila [Audible 8:57]
- Sally Rooney, Normal People [Kindle 279 pages]
- Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge [Kindle 280 pages]
- Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow [Kindle 466 pages] {On Reading Well}
- Anne Tyler, Redhead by the Side of the Road [192 pages]
- Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones [Kindle 272 pages]
- Carlos Ruis Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind [Kindle 506 pages]
Children’s and YA
- Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X [Kindle 365 pages] {MMD}
- Kwame Alexander, The Crossover [Kindle 245 pages]
- Judy Blume, Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself [Kindle 385 pages] {Caroline}
- Peter Brown, The Wild Robot [279 pages] {Joe & Caroline}
- Peter Brown, The Wild Robot Escapes [Kindle 305 pages] {Joe & Caroline}
- Joseph Bruchac, Children of the Longhouse [160 pages] {Joe & Caroline}
- Alfred J. Church, The Aeneid for Boys and Girls [Kindle 162 pages]
- Alfred J. Church, The Iliad for Boys and Girls [Kindle 121 pages]
- Diana Harmon Asher, Sidetracked [256 pages] {Waverly library}
- Madeline L’Engle, Meet the Austins [Kindle 241 pages] {Morning Time}
- L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables [Kindle 355 pages] {Close Reads}
- Lynda Mullaly Hunt, Fish in a Tree [Kindle 320 pages] {Joe & Caroline}
- Lincoln Peirce, Big Nate: From the Top [224 pages]
- Wilson Rawls, Summer of the Monkeys [Kindle 290 pages] {Morning Time}
- Louis Sachar, Fuzzy Mud [Kindle 191 pages] {Waverly library}
- Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society [Kindle 497 pages] {Morning Time}
- Rosemary Sutcliff, Black Ships Before Troy [Audible 2:57]
- Karina Van Glaser, The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden [Kindle 341 pages] {Morning Time}
- Melissa Wiley, the Nerviest Girl in the World [Kindle 208 pages] {Joe & Caroline}
Science
- Eric Sloane’s Weather Book [96 pages] {Joe}
Work/Creativity
- Stratford Caldecott, Beauty in the World: Rethinking the Foundations of Education [Kindle 181 pages]
- Courtney Carver, Project 333 [224 pages]
- James Clear, Atomic Habits [Kindle 319 pages]
- Scott F. Crider, The Office of Assertion: An Art of Rhetoric for Academic Essay [170 pages] {Apprenticeship}
- Gladys B. Hunt, Honey for a Teen’s Heart [Kindle 306 pages]
- Andrea Lipinski & Andrew Kern, A Circe Guide to Reading [130 pages] {Apprenticeship}
- Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You [Kindle 267 pages]
- Emily Nagoski, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle [Kindle 271 pages]
- Cal Newport, So Good They Cannot Ignore You [Kindle 267 pages]
- Barbara Oakley, A Mind for Numbers [336 pages] {Ben}
- Andrew Peterson, Adorning the Dark [Kindle 224 pages]
- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death [Kindle 196 pages] {Ben}
- Dani Shapiro, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life [Kindle 242 pages]
- Justin Whitmel Earley, The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction [Hoopla ebook 193 pages]
Now, the list of the persons and groups mentioned in the curly brackets.
- Ben, Joe, and Caroline—my kids
- Morning Time—an hour we spend together every school day comprised of multiple things, including read-alouds (listed here), poetry, Plutarch, Shakespeare, nature study, hymns, and folksongs. When reading Shakespeare, we follow along with Arkangel Shakespeare productions from Audible.
- Close Reads—a podcast hosted by the CiRCE Institute
- Well Read Mom—I belong to a local group
- MMD—Modern Mrs. Darcy’s book group
- Guardian—sadly now defunct
- Now Read This—a national book group hosted by PBS/New York Times
- Pelican Society—hosted by the Center for Lit
- The Bookening—another podcast
- Literary Life—a podcast hosted by Angelina Stanford and Cindy Rollins
- Happier podcast—hosted by Gretchen Rubin and her sister Elizabeth
- One Book One Lincoln—hosted by our local library every summer
- On Reading Well—another local book group
- Waverly library—a middle school book group at our local library
- Arrow & Boomerang—booklists with literary guides provided by BraveWriter
