Happy New Year! Reading has always been a bright spot in my life, and that certainly was the case in 2020. Despite the lockdowns, reading allowed me to travel to so many places throughout space and time, all without leaving my house. I started keeping track of the number of books I read each year back in 2017, and it has always held me accountable and helped me keep reading a priority in my life.

• 2017 goal — 24, 2017 actual — 30
• 2018 goal — 52, 2018 actual — 52
• 2019 goal — 62, 2019 actual — 72
• 2020 goal — 72, 2020 actual — 82
• 2021 goal — 75, 2021 actual — TBD! 

I am excited about all the new adventures and stories that await me in the pages of books.

As I mentioned in my December 2020 on my nightstand post, I have also chosen my top reads of the year for a several years now—you can see my picks from 2019, 2018, and 2017 in past posts—but never broke out my picks into a standalone post. I like the idea of having my top books of the year separate from my December monthly recap so that it’s easier to refer back to moving forward, hence this post today. I also couldn’t pick just five because I read so many good books this year, so I expanded the field and chose 10. (Plus a bonus five because I just couldn’t pick!) So you don’t have to toggle between this post and my original review, I copied over my synopsis of each book below.

One housekeeping note—the list below is representative of the best books I read in 2020, but that doesn’t mean they were all published the same year. Some of these are older reads I just discovered, and some of them were published this year. I know some people separate their “best of” lists to create one for books that were published in the past and one published this year, but I did not do that for my list.

As a reminder, you can keep up with what’s on my nightstand in my monthly reading recaps and the extensive archives! You can always follow along with what I am reading in real-time over on Goodreads—feel free to friend me there.

I am ALWAYS looking for new books to read, so please let me know what some of your top reads from 2020 were! 

So without further ado, here are my 10 best books of 2020: Read more “The Best 10 Books I Read in 2020”

Another great year of reading is in the books! (See what I did there?!) Every year since 2016, I’ve set a reading goal over on Goodreads and every year, I’ve been able to meet or beat my goal. This year I set my goal at 72 books—that was the number of books I read in 2019 and I wanted to try to match it. I’m happy report I did a little bit better and beat it: I read 82 books this year, the most books I’ve ever read in a year! Of course, the pandemic meant I was spending more time at home than ever before and that allowed me the extra time for reading. I was joking with my friend the other day that I bet I could have read 100 books if I hadn’t discovered TikTok at the start of quarantine.

In the past, I’ve named my top five favorite books of the year in each December’s On My Nightstand post—you can see my picks from 2019, 2018, and 2017 in past posts. This year, I wanted to dedicate a separate post to my favorite books since I think that will make for a better user experience moving forward—it’ll be easier to find later! I

December was a great reading month for me—I took the last two weeks of the month off work and spent a lot of my time relaxing with a book in hand. I also read some really, really amazing books—and there were a few I stayed up way to late finishing, which is one of the small joys in life I love.

As is custom on these posts, I wanted to call out that I’m part of a program where Random House will send me some of their new titles each month. I’m under no obligation to post about any titles I receive, so I really can tell you my own opinion (good or bad!) about them. I’ve starred the books Random House sent me for free below. I’m so lucky to be sent books and that’s not lost on me!

One housekeeping note—I used to use Amazon links in these posts, but going forward, I’ll be linking out to Bookshop. Bookshop is an online bookstore with a mission to financially support local, independent bookstores. If you want to find a specific local bookstore to support, find them on the Bookshop map and they’ll receive the full profit off your order. Otherwise, your order will contribute to an earnings pool that will be evenly distributed among independent bookstores (even those that don’t use Bookshop). Their prices are honestly very comparable to Amazon, which is great—and makes it a no-brainer. I became an affiliate on Bookshop, meaning if you purchase a book using one of my links below, I’ll receive a 10% commission—but don’t worry, Bookshop still gives a matching 10% to independent bookstores.

I am still using my Kindle to read, but source most of my books from my local library. I still do buy Kindle books from time to time. However, when I do buy physical copies of books, I am trying my best to shop local bookstores. It’s definitely not perfect at supporting small, but I am making changes where I can.

Here’s to another great year of reading! x

Read more “On My Nightstand: December 2020”