Reading 100 Books During Quarantine

In a year full of loss, panic, and generally high levels of anxiety, I found escapism in reading. I just finished my 100th book, more than I’ve ever read in one year. Is this achievement significant? Compared to the things I wanted to accomplish in January 2020, not really. Compared to what Dolly Parton has done this year, not at all (Thank you, Dolly!).

Regardless, reading an immense amount brought me much-needed connection and a greater understanding of myself and the world in this weird, sad time of forced solitude. Here are some takeaways and my favorite reads from the past year.

The Anti-Racism Books Every White American Should Read

In response to the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade at the hands of police, there was a mad rush by mostly White people to buy anti-racist texts and support black-owned independent bookstores. I was part of this initial rush and I still have a pile to get through from this list Ibram X. Kendi compiled for the Chicago Public Library.

These are the top anti-racist works I read this year:

• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson: This is hands-down the best book I read all year. This is the book I was waiting for to talk about the 2016 presidential election. A very necessary read for where the US is right now. “So the real question would be, if people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness?”
• Solitary: A Biography by Albert Woodfox: Known as one of the Angola Three, along with Robert King and Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox served nearly 44 years in solitary confinement at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. It’s a credit to Woodfox’s strength and conviction that he survived decades of what the The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN Human Rights) declares amounts to psychological torture. Published in 2019, Solitary is a candid, heartbreaking, and infuriating account of the cruelty and inherent racism of the American prison system.
• Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad: Doing the work to combat ingrained stereotypes and confronting one’s own racial biases can cause feelings of pain, frustration, guilt, and exhaustion. It is necessary work and Saad’s book goes a step beyond by creating a guided journal that allows the reader to be an active participant.

Romance? (Yes, really.)

Romance is the perfect genre for escapism in times of stress and anxiety. They’re usually quick reads with relatively uncomplicated plots and always have a happy resolution. They’re like cotton candy for the brain and my friends and I devour them. In recent years, the genre has grown beyond the stereotypical pulpy-covered paperbacks to include stories with more inclusive characters and plot lines that deal with progressive issues.

Writing for Vulture, Jamie Greene, who, like me, discovered the genre in her 30s, makes the case for reading romance novels:

After growing up on Madeleine L’Engle or Louisa May Alcott and graduating into a high-school canon so dominated by men, imagine the relief and delight to read about women. And to read about such adult things — not adult as in sex, but adult concerns, like love and courtship and family strife. To see in those pages possible paths forward, worlds and happy endings to imagine yourself into…That’s not a thing we stop needing when we grow up.

I make the case for reading more BIPOC authors here, especially Black authors and especially works beyond those that deal with Black pain. If you’re new to the genre, here are two series that make a great start:

• Jasmine Guillory’s Wedding Date series: This series was so fun and such quick reads (I finished all five of the books in this series over a long weekend). Each standalone novel overlaps and connects to a group of strong female friends and family. The leads are black women and the stories are contemporary.
• Talia Hibbert’s The Brown Sisters series: I never expected a romance novel to feature a protagonist managing chronic pain, especially not in a way that feels real. Hibbert used her own experience with chronic pain, years of struggling to find a diagnosis, and what she calls “medical discrimination” to shape her protagonist Chloe Brown for the first novel in the series. There is a happy ending and a lot of fun before it as Chloe navigates a successful career and reassesses her isolated life. The novel shows as Veronica Vivona in The Mighty wrote, “A chronic illness doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker in a relationship, but how a partner responds to your illness can be.”

YA and #BookTok

I’m comfortable admitting that I am an elder millennial who uses TikTok. I love the platform. Charlotte Shane wrote the perfect essay about 30-somethings watching TikTok during quarantine:

I watch TikTok not to be numbed but to remember what I like about being alive, the elements of which we’re now largely deprived: unexpected spectacles, spontaneous conviviality between strangers, accidental hilarity.

Like every social media platform, Tiktok uses hashtags to allow users to classify and find posts they’re interested in. Enter #BookTok, one of the more popular hashtags to share reading recommendations. There are a lot of Sarah J. Maas recommendations, but I’ve also found some unexpected gems mostly within the Young Adult Fiction genre (YA).

You might be asking yourself: “I’m an adult, am I allowed to read YA?” Yes, obviously. Why would you deny yourself strong female characters or a retelling of myths and legends like One Thousand and One Nights?

• Orleans by Sherri L. Smith: I’m a big fan of dystopian fiction and this is a great addition to the genre. Fen de la Guerre is the brave heroine surviving a brutal society in a post-natural disaster and epidemic Gulf Coast.
• Blood Heir by Amélie Wen Zhao: The first installment of a YA fantasy trilogy by a first-time author. Mired by a pre-publication controversy, Zhao adjusted her story in response to criticism and created a really interesting world.
• Dread Nation series by Justina Ireland: Young Adult historical fiction where, in an alternate timeline, Americans had to stop the Civil War to collectively fight zombies.

Audiobooks Count

Is anyone else walking more since quarantine started? With all the walking breaks from work and walking to socially-distance with friends and family, I’m at Elizabeth Bennet-levels of walking these days. Instead of with my nose in a book and running into awkward proposals, I’m masked up and listening to an audiobook. I understand that some purists may think audiobooks shouldn’t count. To them, I say, I don’t care. I used to be you, but this is my journey now. Favorites from this year:

• The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Stephen Brusatte: A millennial paleontologist and rising star in the field, Brusatte tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, “drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy.” His hour-by-hour timeline of everything that happened on the day the meteor hit puts 2020 into perspective.
• The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey: Mariah reads (and sings) her life story. It was delightful and weird and funny, and I hope this changes how musicians produce their memoirs from now on.
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama: Obama is an incredible writer and an incredible speaker. Close your eyes and drift back to a time when you respected POTUS.
• God-Level Knowledge Darts: Life Lessons from the Bronx by Desus & Mero: Hilarious and surprisingly tender. I definitely looked like a lunatic laughing out loud by myself on a walk while listening.

Story Collections And Novellas

I thought short stories were a relic of high school Lit classes until friends sent me some recommendations. I’m now a huge fan. Short stories and novellas allow authors to pull the thread of an idea without having to commit to a full book. Favorites from this year:

• American Hippo by Sarah Gailey: A queer, bayou western novella set in an alternate history where man-eating hippos rule 1860s Louisiana. This was a wild ride that made a delightfully weird and fun novella.
• The Decameron Project: 29 New Stories from the Pandemic: Originally commissioned by The New York Times Magazine as the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world, this collection features new work from twenty-nine authors including Margaret Atwood, Tommy Orange, Colm Toibin, and Kamila Shamsie.

Indigenous Dystopian Speculative Fiction

I started the challenge to read more women and BIPOC authors to broaden my understanding of the world beyond Eurocentric perspectives. I didn’t expect to find Indigenous authors writing compelling dystopian speculative fiction that addresses the very real issues Indigenous peoples are facing today.

Unsure what I mean by “Indigenous dystopian speculative fiction”? Read this.

• Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman: This book was incredible. I won’t say too much about the plot except that it deals with the legacy of Australia’s violent colonial past and there is a mid-book twist that is super exciting. Coleman is Wirlomin-Noongar-Australian and this is her first novel.
• The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline: This chilling, dystopian YA novel by Métis Canadian writer Cherie Dimaline is a huge success in Canada and currently in development as a TV series. This book falls under the subgenre cli-fi, or climate fiction, where writers speculate what will happen in the future if the Earth is devastated by climate change.

Burnout in Fiction and Nonfiction

COVID-19 has fundamentally changed so many aspects of our lives, the full extent of which we have yet to see. Based on discussions that are already happening, the nature of work: how we work, where we work, and when we work, will all change as a result of this unprecedented time.

I don’t think “book double features” or pairings are a thing, but these two go together remarkably well when read in succession:

• Severance by Ling Ma: A 2018 satirical novel where, in a reimagined version of the recent past, a flu virus originates from China and goes on to decimate the world. The protagonist, Candace, is one of the last survivors not yet infected with the flu that sends its victims into a zombie-like cycle of repetition, endlessly performing familiar tasks unto death. A twentysomething working in Manhattan, Candace keeps going into the office for her 9–5 desk job as society collapses around her.
• Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen: I was looking forward to this since Petersen wrote the viral 2019 Buzzfeed article that inspired the book.

A reckoning with burnout is so often a reckoning with the fact that the things you fill your day with — the things you fill your life with — feel unrecognizable from the sort of life you want to live, and the sort of meaning you want to make out of it. That’s why the burnout condition is more than just addiction to work. It’s an alienation from the self, and from desire. If you subtract your ability to work, who are you? Is there a self left to excavate? Do you know what you like and don’t like when there’s no one there to watch, and no exhaustion to force you to choose the path of least resistance? Do you know how to move without always moving forward?

Live Online Author Events

Every organization has had to face the challenge of moving live events to online platforms with varying levels of success. At the beginning of quarantine, a colleague sagely said, “we’re going to see a lot of bad online events.”

Independent bookstores have been doing a great job of online author events throughout this year. If you have the on-camera talent and a zoom account, you can put on a great event from anywhere in the world relatively easily. They also have a much higher attendance capacity so more people can see their favorite authors in conversation than ever before. I’ve seen great conversations this year with David Chang, Morgan Jerkins, Saeed Jones, Tommy Orange, Anne Helen Petersen, James Wade, Harriet Washington, Lindy West, and Isabel Wilkerson.

Arianna Rebolini (Buzzfeed books editor) has been posting a schedule of weekly online book events throughout the year. Aside from the lack of subtitles, which alienates readers with impaired hearing and can be solved with a bit more effort, I hope these events continue after quarantine.

What’s Next and Reading in 2021

The year isn’t over and neither is quarantine. I don’t see slowing down my reading anytime soon. If you’re looking for ways to diversify what you read, Book Riot just announced their 2021 “Read Harder” Challenge.

Here’s what I’m hoping to read before the end of the year:

• Survival of the Thickest by Michelle Buteau: I’m really looking forward to listening to this memoir by one of my favorite comedians.
• Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo: Oluo’s 2018 So you want to talk about race? is a great starting off point for anti-racism reading. I expect Mediocre will become an instant must-read as well.
• Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon: This 2019 epic fantasy is another #BookTok recommendation.
• Network Effect by Martha Wells: The final installment of the Murderbot Diaries series that I’ve been putting off reading because I don’t want to say goodbye to the protagonist. The six-books are described as “an action-packed, cerebral science fiction series about a self-hacking robot searching for the meaning of life.”

What are you reading next? Connect on Twitter or Goodreads and share recommendations.

This was originally published on mchughla.medium.com.