Pexels - A stack of old books with the spines turned away so you can't see what they are Books I Read in 2020
Thoughts & Essays

Books I Read in 2020

JavaElemental ☕

I did a lot of comfort reading this year. I re-read a lot of old favorites like the Dresden Files and Terry Pratchett, a lot of easy books I hadn’t read in years and years like the Little House books and a few of the Star Trek books, and a lot of new but similarly easy books like the rest of the Star Trek books. I read a couple of current events books, and a couple of other new books, too.

Wanderers, by Chuck Wendig, was one of the new books I read, and it was a pretty decent read. It’s about a plague that ends the world, so it got a lot of help from current events, being topical, that kind of thing. I also read Red Shirts, by John Scalzi, which has been out for a few years but it was new to me. I thoroughly enjoyed that one. It’s basically a Star Trek parody, but the names have been changed to protect the innocent, that sort of thing. It was a lot of fun, and pretty funny.

I re-read most of the Little House books a couple of months ago, which I hadn’t read since I was a kid. They’re kids’ books so I chewed through them over a weekend, and walked away mostly amused by the fact that apparently you couldn’t turn your back on Pa Ingalls for a single hot second without him tossing up a house and plowing a field on any spare bit of land he stumbled over. Also, holy hell, there’s a lot of racism in those books I’d completely forgotten. At one point Pa Ingalls helps put on a minstrel show in black face. Like, okay, it was a long time ago, but damn.

2020 Reading List

  1. A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America, Philip Rucker & Carol Leonnig (Got about a third of the way through it and gave up. Super dry. Might try it again in a few years.)
  2. STP: The Last Best Hope, Una McCormack
  3. World War Z, Max Brooks
  4. ST: Uhura’s Song, Janet Kagan
  5. ST: The IDIC Epidemic, Jean Lorrah
  6. ST: The Vulcan Academy Murders, Jean Lorrah
  7. Raising Steam, Terry Pratchett
  8. ST: Ishmael, Barbara Hamby
  9. Thief of Time, Terry Pratchett
  10. The Truth, Terry Pratchett
  11. Wanderers, Chuck Wendig
  12. Thud!, Terry Pratchett
  13. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
  14. Snuff, Terry Pratchett
  15. Jingo, Terry Pratchett
  16. The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett
  17. Feet of Clay, Terry Pratchett
  18. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara
  19. Red Shirts, John Scalzi
  20. Peace Talks, Jim Butcher
  21. Too Much and Never Enough, Mary Trump
  22. The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor LaValle
  23. Battle Ground, Jim Butcher
  24. Side Jobs, Jim Butcher
  25. Brief Cases, Jim Butcher
  26. Cold Days, Jim Butcher
  27. Skin Game, Jim Butcher
  28. ST: Spock’s World, Diane Duane
  29. The Stand, Stephen King
  30. ST: The Three-Minute Universe, Barbara Paul
  31. ST: The Pandora Principle, Carolyn Clowes
  32. ST: Doctor’s Orders, Diane Duane
  33. ST: Federation, Garfield Reeves-Stevens & Judith Reeves-Stevens
  34. Little House in the Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder
  35. Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder
  36. On the Banks of Plum Creek, Laura Ingalls Wilder
  37. By the Shores of Silver Lake, Laura Ingalls Wilder
  38. Little Town on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder
  39. The Long Winter, Laura Ingalls Wilder
  40. These Happy Golden Years, Laura Ingalls Wilder
  41. STTNG: Debtor’s Planet, WR Thompson
  42. ST: Killing Time, Della Van Hise
  43. ST: The Tears of the Singers, Melinda Snodgrass
  44. STTNG: Infiltrator, WR Thompson
  45. The Life & Adventures of Santa Claus, L. Frank Baum
  46. STTNG: Spartacus, TL Mancour
  47. STTNG: The Peacekeepers, Gene DeWeese