reading list: 2020

January 2020: (12)

• A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
• Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
• Save Me The Plums: My Gourmet Memoir by Ruth Reichl
• Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer by Barbara Ehrenreich
• Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
• Sorry Please Thank You: Stories by Charles Yu
• The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
• The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
• The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
• Future Tense Fiction by The Editors of Future Tense
• Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and The Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy (audiobook)

February 2020: (10)

• Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon (audiobook) (unfinished)
• User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play by Cliff Kuang with Robert Fabricant
• The Heap by Sean Adams
• This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of A Medical Resident by Adam Kay
• Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Wiener
• How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee
• Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now: Essays by Andre Perry
• Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
• Little Gods by Meng Jin
• The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez
• Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us About Digital Technology by Lizzie O’Shea

March 2020: (15)

• The Earth Dies Streaming: Film Writing, 2002-2018 by A. S. Hamrah
• A Beginning at the End by Mike Chen
• You Look Like a Thing and I Love You by Janelle Shane
• Know My Name: A Memoir by Chanel Miller
• The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie
• Wanderers by Chuck Wendig (unfinished)
• Lurking: How A Person Became A User by Joanne McNeil
• Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
• Contact by Carl Sagan (unfinished)
• Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong
• Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer
• Real Life by Brandon Taylor
• Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber by Susan Fowler
• The Ethical Algorithm: The Science of Socially Aware Algorithm Design by Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth
• Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn
• The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu
• The Velvet Rope Economy: How Inequality Because Big Business by Nelson D. Schwartz

April 2020: (9)

• The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston
• The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
• Days of Distraction by Alexandra Chang
• Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress
• The Longing for Less: Living With Minimalism by Kyle Chayka
• Facebook: The Inside Story by Steven Levy (unfinished)
• Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein
• Recollections of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit
• Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li
• New Waves by Kevin Nguyen

May 2020: (26)

• Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
• The Red Lotus by Chris Bohjalian
• The Deep by Alma Katsu
• Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets and Advice for Living Your Best Life by Ali Wong
• Pravda Ha Ha: True Travels to the End of Europe by Rory Maclean
• Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li
• Unbecoming: A Memoir of Disobedience by Anuradha Bhagwati
• Providence by Max Barry
• How to Be Alone: Essays by Jonathan Franzen
• The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin
• The Down Days by Ilze Hugo
• Network Effect by Martha Wells
• Breasts and Eggs: A Novel by Mieko Kawakami
• Girl Decoded by Rana el Kaliouby
• Lexicon by Max Barry
• A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet
• Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell
• Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver by Jill Heinerth
• Wow, No Thank You.: Essays by Samantha Irby
• Normal People by Sally Rooney
• Lives of the Monster Dogs: A Novel by Kirsten Bakis
• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks (reread)
• On Such a Full Sea: A Novel by Chang-Rae Lee
• A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
• The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang
• The Dragon Republic by R. F. Kuang

June 2020: (8)

• Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett
• Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang, translated by Ken Liu
• The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata
• The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World by Patrik Svensson
• White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
• Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back Mark O’Connell
• The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp
• Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data by Charles Wheelan

July 2020: (11)

• The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power by Deirdre Mask
• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
• How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
• Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare by Thomas Rid (unfinished)
• Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone by Eric Klinenberg
• Devolution by Max Brooks
• Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton
• Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin
• The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
• The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping by Samantha Harvey
• Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan, translated by Ken Liu

August 2020: (8)

• Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo
• Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
• How To Read Nonfiction Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
• The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
• The Wall of Storms by Ken Liu
• Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri
• Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
• Docile by K.M. Szpara

September 2020: (10)

• Leonard and Hungry Paul by Rónán Hession
• Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay
• Females by Andrea Long Chu
• Beloved by Toni Morrison (unfinished)
• The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz
• What Can a Body Do?: How We Meet the Built World by Sara Hendren
• If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha
• Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and the Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow
• Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World by Leslie Kern
• The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor, trans. Sophie Hughes

October 2020: (13)

• Eat A Peach: A Memoir by David Chang
• Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary by Timothy Snyder
• Weather by Jenny Offill
• Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen
• Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
• Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America by Laila Lalami
• Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen
• Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy
• Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton
• The Searcher by Tana French
• We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor (unfinished)
• How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti
• Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal Penis by Emily Willingham

November 2020: (12)

• What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry Into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley by Adrian Daub
• Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do–and How They Do It edited by Ben Tarnoff and Moira Weigel
• Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor by Virginia Eubanks
• To Hold Up the Sky by Cixin Liu
• Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema by Lindy West
• Bland Fanatics: Liberals, Race, and Empire by Pankaj Mishra
• Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin by Megan Rosenbloom
• Blockchain Chicken Farm, And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside by Xiaowei Wang
• When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen
• Get in Trouble by Kelly Link
• Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life by Adam Greenfield
• The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy by David Graeber

December 2020: (11)

• Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco by Gary Kamiya
• Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
• Ex Libris: 100 Books to Read and Reread by Michiko Kakutani
• The Cult of Smart by Fredrik deBoer
• On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel by Ocean Vuong
• The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
• Felicity: Poems by Mary Oliver
• The Meritocracy Trap: How America’s Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite by Daniel Markovits
• The Idiot by Elif Batuman
• The Burning God by R.F. Kuang
• Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities by Rebecca Solnit

Total count: 145