Books Read, 2020

Changing jobs and world events kept me from reading as much as last year. It wasn’t that I didn’t have time to read, it was that, for whatever reason, I didn’t have much of an urge to read much during the middle part of the year.

Fiction (18)

• The Odyssey by Homer
  
  The Emily Wilson translation, which I thought was much more readable, but didn’t inspire me the way Fagles did. Looking forward to reading her Iliad when it is released.
  
• Favorite Father Brown Stories by G. K. Chesterton
  
  The first fiction by Chesterton that I really liked, though I didn’t like every story in the book. Will probably read more Father Brown.
  
• Night Soldiers by Alan Furst
• Dark Star by Alan Furst
• The Polish Officer by Alan Furst
• The World at Night by Alan Furst
• A Hero of France by Alan Furst
• Red Gold by Alan Furst
  
  These Alan Furst novels, all about spies in WWII Europe, constituted all of what I read between about June and October. In the future, when I think back on the quarantine, I imagine
  
• From Hell by Alan Moore
  
  A reread, but it’s been about 20 years. I liked it a little less this time, but not by much, and I still think it’s a masterpiece. I appreciated different things about it this time: the art, research, and logistics more than the fireworks.
  
• The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
• Castleview by Gene Wolfe
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Plague by Albert Camus
• Foundation by Isaac Asimov
  
  A reread, but I didn’t remember much about it.
  
• One Step from Earth by Harry Harrison
• Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
  
  I hated this book. I didn’t actually finish it, but got most of the way through, and I was certainly finished with it. I don’t hate it because it’s obscene, what I hate was that it was sloppy and self-indulgent.
  
• Down and Out in Purgatory by Tim Powers

Non-Fiction (16)

• Sahara Unveiled by William Langewiesche
• The Architecture of Happiness by Alain De Botton
• Moral Mazes by Robert Jackall
• Atlas of a Lost World by Craig Childs
• Discussing Design by Adam Connor
• The Tiger by John Vaillant
• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
• Cultural Amnesia by Clive James (Essays)
• Harmonium by Wallace Stevens (Poetry)
• The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane
• In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki
• Take Ivy by Shosuke Ishizu
• Design Is Storytelling by Ellen Lupton
• ‘Broadsword Calling Danny Boy’ by Geoff Dyer
• Super Thinking by Gabriel Weinberg
• Farnsworth’s Classical English Style by Ward Farnsworth