2020 - A Year in Books

Introduction

2020 was an interesting year. For me, It started with finishing several months of working as an associate lecturer for Sheffield Hallam University, a short term post after finishing my PhD to save money to go backpacking indefinitely in early February. My trip to South America lasted 6 weeks, before a mad journey to get home as governments panicked to deal with the impending COVID-19 pandemic. I made it home on the 17th March, 6 days before UK lockdown.

Since then, I've been lucky enough to pick up various jobs that I've been able to do from home. However, with lockdown after lockdown, I've also had lots of time to read.

I started reading properly in January 2016, when my brother and I set ourselves the goal of reading a book a week for that year. Since then, I've managed to beat this target every year, reading a roughly 50/50 split of fiction and non-fiction, across a wide range of subjects (the only barrier of entry to my reading list is a good rating on Goodreads.) I tend to have one fiction and one non-fiction on the go, that I'll swap between depending on the heaviness of the book, the time of day, and how bad my stress headache is.

This year, however, I realised in around June that I was on pace to break triple figures for the first time. I've managed to maintain that consistency, even through the mental struggle that has been 2020, and reached 101 on the 30th December (a total of 35,586 pages). An achievement that I will probably not be able to achieve again, not least without some stat-padding.

Several people have asked me what my favourite book of the year has been. It's too difficult to choose one, so, after much consideration, I've managed to whittle down an initial list of 20 books into a top 10, split into non-fiction and fiction categories (in no particular order). Here we go...

Non-Fiction

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism - Naomi Klein

The Shock Doctrine is a devastating, detailed critique of neo-liberal free-market policies and their introduction in countries around the world using the deliberate strategy of "shock therapy": exploiting national crises such as natural disasters, crumbling economies and war to push through free-market policies that would otherwise not have been accepted. It's a disturbing but enlightening book that goes some way to explaining the rationale and reasons for the increasing inequality in, and privitisation of, the global economy.

"For more than three decades, Friedman and his powerful followers had been perfecting this very strategy: waiting for a major crisis, then selling off pieces of the state to private players while citizens were still reeling from the shock, then quickly making the “reforms” permanent."

"That is how the shock doctrine works: the original disaster—the coup, the terrorist attack, the market meltdown, the war, the tsunami, the hurricane—puts the entire population into a state of collective shock."

"The global “homeland security industry” - economically insignificant before 2001 - is now a $200 billion sector."

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst - Robert Sapolsky

I've read several books that touch on human biology, psychology, neurology and sociology. Sapolsky brings together all these strands in a masterful attempt to answer the question "why do we do the things we do?" Behave is wonderfully structured, starting with an event (a kiss, a punch, a twitch), and going through what happens in the brain milliseconds before, to evolutionary factors millions of years before. Sapolsky then uses this to wrestle with some of life's big questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. It's one of the most comprehensive books I've ever read, and you don't need any existing knowledge to read it!

"This is a central point of this book - we don’t hate violence. We hate and fear the wrong kind of violence, violence in the wrong context. Because violence in the right context is different."

"The opposite of love is not hate; its opposite is indifference."

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War - Ben Macintyre

The Spy and the Traitor is the amazing true story of Oleg Gordievsky, a senior KGB agent who spied for Britain over ten years during the cold war. The narrative that Macintyre weaves is brilliant and it gives a real insight into the world of the secret service. It's an astounding book, the impact of Gordievsky's courage may have changed the result of the cold war, and even contributed towards the downfall of the Soviet Union.

"For many years, the KGB used the acronym MICE to identify the four mainsprings of spying: Money, Ideology, Coercion, and Ego."

"The Soviet Union was in effect an enormous prison, incarcerating more than 280 million people behind heavily guarded borders, with over a million KGB officers and informants acting as their jailers."

"Paranoia is born of propaganda, ignorance, secrecy, and fear."

Papillon - Henri Charrière

Papillon (French for 'butterfly') is an autobiographical novel (based on his diaries) that details Henri Charrière's incarceration and subsequent escape from the French penal colony of French Guiana. It's an incredible story of an innocent man's desperate fight for freedom, one of those books where you can't quite believe it's not fiction. It's also an eye-opener into the practice of sending criminals to penal colonies, which European countries did for hundreds of years, and the effect that this had on local populations.

"Each time I was tempted to despair, I would repeat three times: “As long as there’s life, there’s hope."

"I wanted to tell them our sentence in solitary was over and we could talk now. I kissed Clousiot on the cheek. He looked at me with bright eyes and smiled. “Good-by, Papillon,” he said. “What do you mean, good-by!” “I’m through. It’s over.” He died a few days later in the hospital at Royale. He was thirty-two and had been given twenty years for the theft of a bicycle he hadn’t stolen."

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power - Shoshana Zuboff

For those that have seen the Netflix documentaries "The Social Dilemma" or "The Great Hack", this book explains and clarifies the wider ideas surrounding Surveillance Capitalism (that being said, it's always difficult to compare a documentary and a book, due to the sheer amount of information and explanation included in the latter). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is an incredibly well thought out and detailed exposé of the ubiquitous and inescapable digital architecture in which we now live our lives. The speed at which this has happened has resulted in an almost lawless technological landscape where companies such as Google, Apple and Microsoft now use our data to modify our behaviour. This book was the final straw in my deletion (and blocking) of social media apps from my phone, and yet I know that I'm still producing a multitude of data from merely using my phone, all of which is fed back into changing the behaviours of humanity.

"Science Finds—Industry Applies—Man Conforms."

"The US, the UK, and most of Europe entered the second decade of the twenty-first century facing economic and social inequalities more extreme than anything since the Gilded Age and comparable to some of the world’s poorest countries."

Those that didn't quite make the cut (but were still excellent):

• The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe
• Hidden Valley Road - Robert Kolker
• Midnight in Chernobyl - Adam Higginbotham
• Rebel Ideas - Matthew Syed
• The Deficit Myth - Stephanie Kelton
• Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer

Fiction

A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles

A heartwarming story of a Russian aristocrat, Count Alexander Rostov, who is stripped of his wealth and sentenced to live under house arrest in Moscow's Metropol hotel after the Bolshevik revolution. Brilliantly written and a joy to read, Towles paints an excellent and stark picture of life in Soviet Russia, contrasted with the sanctuary and civility that the Count battles to maintain in his life confined to the Metropol.

"If a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them."

"'Does a banquet really need an asparagus server?' 'Does an orchestra need a bassoon?'"

Beartown - Fredrik Backman

Beartown takes place in a small, remote Swedish town, where junior ice hockey is seemingly all that matters. That being said, ice hockey is the mere core around which the story intertwines. It's similar to Friday Night Lights in style, but Backman has a way of writing that immerses you in the story and the characters, this book had me captivated and I'm not ashamed to say, reduced to tears by the end. Although if you don't love sport quite as much as I do, the ice hockey undertones won't be as interesting. The sequel, Us Against Them, is just as good, if not better.

"Big secrets turn us into small men."

"When I was little, my dad used to hit me if I spilled my milk, Leo. That didn’t teach me not to spill things. It just made me scared of milk. Remember that."

The Beekeeper of Aleppo - Christy Lefteri

The Beekeeper of Aleppo follows a couple who escape war torn Syria in a desperate and courageous attempt to make it to the UK. The book follows a split narrative, transitioning beautifully on certain words, in flashbacks, between Nuri and his wife, Afra, applying for asylum in England, their journey from Syria and their life before the war. I've seen the book described as a love story, but I'd say that understates the loss, bravery and desperation to survive and build a better life. For me, the book also acted as a poignant reminder of freedoms that I often take for granted, and how much others will give just for the chance to have them.

"'There’ll be no bombs there,’ he’d said, ‘and the houses won’t break like these do.’ I wasn’t sure if he’d meant the Lego houses or the real houses, and then it saddened me when I realised that Sami had been born into a world where everything could break. Real houses crumbled, fell apart. Nothing was solid in Sami’s world. And yet somehow he was trying to imagine a place where the buildings didn’t fall down around him. I had stored the Lego house safely in the cupboard, carefully, to make sure it was exactly as Sami had left it. I’d even thought of taking it apart and reassembling it with glue, so that we could always keep it."

A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara

A Little Life is a challenging, devastating and profound story of a group of four friends in New York City. It begins with them in their twenties, and unravels into an incredible story of pasts and futures, acceptance and forgiveness and love and pain. Yanagihara weaves these lives together in a way that, by the end of the book, makes you feel like you know them implicitly. It's superbly written and an unforgettable story.

"The car takes them downtown, and by the time they’ve reached Greene Street it’s pouring, so hard that they can no longer discern shapes through the window, just colors, spangles of red and yellow lights, the city reduced to the honking of horns and the clatter of rain against the roof of the car."

"What he knew, he knew from books, and books lied, they made things prettier."

City of Thieves - David Benioff

City of Thieves takes place in the brutal Siege of Leningrad during WW2, the blockade of the city for over 2 years by the Nazis. It follows two boys who meet in a prison cell, and to save their lives, are given the almost impossible task of finding a dozen eggs for a Soviet NKVD Colonel. I first read City of Thieves in 2017 and loved it. It's funny, sad and thrilling, a beautiful "coming of age" story in an abject, but shockingly real, setting.

"The boy sold what people called library candy, made from tearing the covers off of books, peeling off the binding glue, boiling it down, and reforming it into bars you could wrap in paper. The stuff tasted like wax, but there was protein in the glue, protein kept you alive, and the city’s books were disappearing like the pigeons."

"Perhaps a hero is someone who doesn’t register his own vulnerability. Is it courage, then, if you’re too daft to know you’re mortal?"

Those that didn't quite make the cut:

• Anxious People - Fredrik Backman
• His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
• Recursion - Blake Crouch
• A Man Called Ove - Fredrik Backman

Disclaimer

Not everyone enjoys reading, and not everyone has the luxury of time to read like I do, this post is meant to document my year in books and hopefully give some useful information and an insight into my reading process.

FAQ

How much time do I spend reading?

About 2 to 2.5 hours a day (or around 100 pages).

Do I read physical or electronic books?

Before this year, I read fiction on my Kindle and non-fiction in physical form, so that I could highlight bits and add post-its to key sections (and add them to my library). However, because of my backpacking trip, I started 2020 reading everything on Kindle and with the uncertainty of this year, have continued with that, only purchasing a couple of reference type books physically. I now use Kindle's highlight function and make sure to backup all my 'clippings' to clippings.io.

Five Years on Goodreads

Here are the stats from my five years of reading, for those who are interested...

Book counts year-on-year

Book counts month-on-month

Page counts month-on-month