- kylierwalters
2020 Reading
Updated: Apr 23, 2021

My reading in 2020 is, so far, scattered as ever. Some books I've arrived at clearly looking for something -- such as Rain: Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison, The Shepherd's Life: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape by James Rebanks, and Wilding: The Return of Nature to A British Farm by Isabella Tree. In this set I was looking for dispatches from pastoral living, from lives distant and (at least romanticized in my mind as) pleasant. Some books I've simply had sitting around for months and have picked up because the time felt right. See: The Sun Also Rises, High School.
Fresh Complaint by Jeffrey Eugenides
Any Human Heart by William Boyd
Crudo by Olivia Laing
Burn the Place by Iliana Regan
You & A Bike & A Road by Eleanor Davis - I highly recommend this book, an account of a long distance bike ride through the American southwest. The book is about so much more, than biking -- traveling as a woman, mental health, border policing, the environment, hope -- and its drawings are soothing.
The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
Weather by Jenny Offill
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Writers & Lovers by Lily King
Grand Union: Stories by Zadie Smith
High School by Sara Quin and Tegan Quin
All About Sarah by Pauline Delabroy-Allard
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
Rain: Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison
The Shepherd's Life: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape by James Rebanks - I greatly enjoyed this book and feel its British title deserves mention: The Shepherd's Life: A People's History of the Lake District. This book speaks to the role of literature in our understanding of the environment, education, class, and more, and challenges the canon as a worthy informant for tourists.
Wilding: The Return of Nature to A British Farm by Isabella Tree
Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over by Nell Painter
Wow, No Thank You. by Samantha Irby
How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale
Heartburn by Nora Ephron
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire
Persuasion by Jane Austen