It’s time for the annual recap of my reading time for 2020. I kept my reading goal at 75 for this year, the same as 2019 and 2018. Despite my plans to focus more on my writing, I blew past that number and reached 90 for the year. The reason, in part at least, is obvious: COVID-19. With no ability to travel, I spent more time plopped in the corner recliner alternating between reading and dozing. I also didn’t write as much as I planned, but as I’ll note in a separate post on my website, it was a good year in the writing life nonetheless.
Books about Abraham Lincoln continue to dominate my reading list. In addition to my own purchases, I received a few books from publishers for book reviews (three of which are in publication) and quite a few books to evaluate for the annual ALI book award. That meant a full 30% of my reading this year were books directly about Abraham Lincoln. Among my favorites were Abe: Abraham Lincoln In His Times by David S. Reynolds, Lincoln on the Verge by Ted Widmer, Lincoln and the American Founding by Lucas Morel, The Zealot and the Emancipator by H.W. Brands, and Summoned to Glory: The Audacious Life of Abraham Lincoln by Richard Striner. Many of the others were also excellent. There were also books that I didn’t officially count as Lincoln books but featured Lincoln, such as Harold Holzer’s excellent look at The Presidents vs. The Press and Heather Cox Richardson’s How The South Won The Civil War.
Another 30% of my reading fell into the category of non-Lincoln non-fiction books, which also excludes memoirs, science, and writing books. These included books on Why Honor Matters, Target America (about Pearl Harbor), Lies Across America (misleading and downright falsehoods in history textbooks), Run the Storm (about a deadly hurricane), and The Year Without a Summer (the unusual climate of 1816 influenced by a huge Indonesian volcanic eruption). There were also two books of essays by Rebecca Solnit, a book called Indistractable that distracted me from writing, and the intriguing David’s Sling by Victoria C. Gardner Coates that traces the history of democracy in ten works of art (including Michelangelo’s famous David sculpture). Eleven of the non-fiction books were related to racism, continuing a trend I began in 2019. Among the best are White Rage by Carol Anderson, So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo, White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, and The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. I am early in my reading of Isabel Wilkerson’s book, Caste, which may turn out to be the best book of the year (or next if it takes me to January 1st).
I counted memoir separately and read ten of them in 2020. Early in the year I read the memoirs of former UN Ambassador Samantha Power and scientist Hope Jahren, which I followed up later in the year with a charming memoir called Exploring New Europe by economics journalist Barry Wood, who documented his epic bicycle tours through the former Soviet block countries beginning in Estonia and ending in Albania. I also read about important political personalities including National Security Adviser Susan Rice and Senator (and now Vice President-elect) Kamala Harris. Most notable among the memoirs was A Promised Land, Volume 1 of President Barack Obama’s two-part memoir. I had read Michelle Obama’s memoir, Becoming, last year and was enthralled; Barack Obama’s was even more inspiring.
Writing books included Murder Your Darlings, How to be a Travel Writer, The Best American Travel Writing 2019, and Guide to Magazine Article Writing. Hey, if you can’t travel, you at least can write about it, right?
Fifteen out of the 90 books this year were fiction. Among them were three books I read again after having initially reading them years ago, including Brave New World (I also reread the non-fiction follow up Brave New World Revisited), The Great Gatsby, and The Ugly American. I also read random fiction picked up (and returned) at two local mini-libraries and two Shakespeare plays as I try to make up for somehow missing them in school, plus a poetry book by Nathan Richardson, perhaps best known for his current portrayal of Frederick Douglass in public events. By far the best fiction book was A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, a beautifully written book about a curmudgeonly old man rediscovering life as his neighbors rediscover him. If you read only one novel, read this book.
As always, there is much more that I could talk about. I keep track of my reading on Goodreads, so feel free to check out my Goodreads author page where I also have links to my own books.
You can also join my Facebook author page for updates and links to interesting articles.
For 2021 I’m going to backtrack on my Goodreads challenge goals even though I generally surpass those goals anyway. Officially I will set my goal at 50 books for 2021. Why? Because for the first six months I am going to be so busy writing my forthcoming book that I won’t have much time for reading. COVID is likely to halt traveling at least until summer anyway, which means no reading time on trains, planes, and automobiles. I do expect to read more light novels as mental breaks in the first half of the year, and I’m just as certain that I’ll have plenty of Abraham Lincoln books to review in the second half. We’ll see how many I actually read.
David J. Kent is an avid traveler, scientist, and Abraham Lincoln historian. He is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World as well as two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!
Hot White Snow 
There was a summer when I was about 16 that I read Brave New World, 1984, and Player Piano, Fed the natural sensibility of a teenager that “These adults don’t know squat”. Probably had an impact on my world view.
I think I would have benefited from more Shakespeare. It seems to permeate almost everything. One has to wonder why?
I do wonder about the information that I consume. I listened to a podcast on the way to the grocery this morning about the best TV, and film, and podcasts of 2020. I knew nothing of any of them. Not so much a surprise, but it does speak to the issue that one can function and still be askew to a lot of other folks. ….Hence arguments.
Doesn’t mean that some ideas are not wrong..
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I don’t recall when exactly I read all three of those books you mention, but I’ve reread the first two in the past couple of years. Might be time to reread some Vonnegut too. I think the dystopian theme has been “popular” the last four years as people try to deal with the PTSD-inducing abusive relationship we’ve been in.
I have the same problem with “best” lists. I just don’t follow the latest music, movies, fiction, or TV, so have no idea what pop culture looks like these days. That might be a good thing.
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Brave New World and 1984 as a high school sophomore. I think these were central to some standard lists. Somehow, I missed Player Piano, but I think Cat’s Cradle was a part of that particular list, as well as Walden II, Farnham’s Freehold, Darkness at Noon, Atlas Shrugged, and several others that left perhaps less of an impression. I think that culminated in struggling through Das Kapital, and The God of the Machine. There was an emerging theme that I suppose has never left me. You can blame my AP lit teacher.
Shakespeare wasn’t until college, but I got it… peering behind the arras of social structure.
As a non-mainstream consumer, I am sometimes caught woefully unaware. But what constitutes the genre changes over time. I find myself triggered to reach for the “off” switch whenever any too oft repeated jargon starts to sound like a pop-meme being passed as information.
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I am a slow reader. Slow talker too. Spent a fair amount of time with sort of gifted, so to speak, mathematical people, that could run rings around me. That is a frustrating bit about getting stuff. Sometimes, one takes things literally. Then confusion occurs.
I have never read We. That shall make it to the forefront this year.
Animal Farm should probably be in the list of dystopian things that are a quick read. But slowly incorporated into one’s being. Not sure if it is good to read such material after a certain age.
I tend to like fiction. Reading technical stuff takes up my daytimes. I split the eves between music and fiction. A lot of the times both
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My reading speed depends on the book. Fluff fiction, when I read it to detox, is zapped out at lightning speed. But I almost always take extensive notes when reading Lincoln books, both for my own research interests and so I can write book reviews for newsletters, magazines, and journals.
I did reread Animal Farm within the last few years, along with It Can’t Happen Here. Dystopia really is current events now. Rereading something I read when I was too young to appreciate it gives me a different perspective.
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A favorite piece of fiction is A Confederacy of Dunces.
I am curious about the recent screen tale of John Brown. Always been a source of intrigue for me. My best friend in third grade claimed blood relation. Odd for a kid in the South. But that goes with the story.
I have liked travel fiction in the past. It is a way to explore that is not too boring without being sedentary for a day. But then I enjoy most things about snow and skiing given my usual swelter. But maybe I could do with a rain forest mystery.
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I actually didn’t like Confederacy of Dunces at all. Not really sure why it was touted so highly. I haven’t seen the John Brown film/TV show.
What constitutes “travel fiction”?
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I think I’ve read Confederacy maybe three our four times in the last 30 years. So I do get it. The human predicament. I still recommend it.
Travel fiction….anything in which setting is real but he story is fiction. A way of travelling without the bother. Paul Theroux. Lately stuff featuring geography as character. Going up the Congo or solving a mystery in Copenhagen or politics in Hong Kong.
I was never able to get past a few pages of Ayn Rand. So I don’t get that at all.
Arthur C. Clarke though fascinated me for a time.
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I think it’s a mistake to approach Rand as a “conservative”. She was first an anti-communist, and from there a libertarian (in the real sense). But I would consider her the least convincing among her peers.
Rose Wilder Lane had started out as a socialist, but become discouraged by where she had seen Marxist ideals lead in the Soviet Union. She became a critic of the New Deal and a staunch anti-racist, seeing “race” as a way to disguise classism. She was also a personality with whom I can relate on some other levels. She lived what she wrote. Her best known work is, “The Discovery of Freedom,” which is partly anecdotal. But she wrote a number of excellent shorter articles.
I’m less clear on Paterson’s background, but she was easy to read, logical and persuasive with, “The God of the Machine”. She was also a Deist, and saw a place for religion in rational thought. All three are considered to be among the central founders of the Libertarian movement (and political party) in the US.
Zora Neale Hurston might also have been considered to have been among them. She was friends with both Wilder Lane and Paterson, and shared many of their ideals. Unfortunately, she was so despised by several would be Black leaders that after her death, they managed to have most of her personal writings burned.
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I don’t think Rand was a conservative. Most of today’s “conservatives” are not conservatives. Rand Paul with his obvious connection isn’t conservative. He’s not even libertarian. But then labels are mostly defined by the 1) opposite party, and/or 2) extremist, most dishonest members of the party claiming the label. I’ve said before I’m not a big fan of labels, which I find mostly meaningless.
I’ll try to read more about the others you mention as they sound interesting in their own ways. I could always use alternative perspectives, if for other reason than to figure out why other people do things that don’t make any sense. I’m beginning to believe we’re all psychopathic variants, mostly “normal,” but some so far out in the hinterlands of sanity that they wreak havoc on society.
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To be honest, I didn’t particularly like Ayn Rand’s writing. I thought it was contrived and not particularly believable. But that was also one of my first experiences of getting to know a writer. Once I understood her history, then I understood her motive. But at that point, I became more interested in her essays and secondary philosophical works like “The Voice of Reason”. That also led to the discovery of Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson (who were far better writers). Thirty-five years on, and I can still quote (or at least paraphrase) Patterson from memory… “The lust for power is easily disguised as the humanitarian or the philanthropic.” But only a year or so earlier, I had watched as a group of terrified Chinese athletes entered the LA Colosseum to the roar of a standing ovation by 90,000 people. Even we readers are the products of our time and place.
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Ayn Rand’s popular writing to me is simply dense for the sake of density, not to mention self-absorbed. What she stands for to “modern” conservatives is, I don’t know, repugnant. I haven’t read any of her essays so maybe she has some redeeming qualities. I’ll have to look up Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson.
It’s hard not to agree that we are all products of our time and place, but I’ll have to think about that a little. I spend so much time in the 19th and early 20th centuries that I wonder how much I really understand the world as it is today. Certainly not the last four years.
BTW, I’m about a quarter into Isabel Wilkerson’s new book “Caste.” So far it’s eye-opening.
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My reading speed varies according to the degree of cognitive dissonance. And I’ve always hired out the really difficult mathematics. Some occasional poetry serves to remind me just how much we hallucinate reality.
The big ideas start to be repeated, just as do the big questions. And at some point, it just occurred to me how little I actually know. These days, the reading needs to serve a purpose.
“Not sure if it is good to read such material after a certain age.” Agreed. I feel like there’s a point, perhaps in one’s twenties, where ego becomes too fixed for gleaning new philosophies or world-views from others’ words. (Serotonin receptor argonist experiment here?)
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You’ve mentioned some books I don’t think I ever read. I wish I had kept a list of books I read in a high school class called contemporary best sellers. We were supposed to read something like 15 books from a list but I blew threw them and the teacher (an elderly lady named Mrs. Lovely) fed me all sorts of obscure books, many of which weren’t so contemporary. In all I read about 55 books that semester.
I don’t read a lot of contemporary fiction, and get turned off if one gets a lot of hype. Some of the “great modern novels” I found severely lacking. But occasionally I’ll find something that stands out.
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Don’t know which ones, but I can guess. Every quarter in my high school sophomore and junior years, my AP English teacher would assign us a reading list (with some flexibility) based around a theme. The literature on the list above were from the “utopia” theme. We’d do a report per some format for each book, and then write a paper on the theme based on the readings. This particular set caused me read over that summer several works by Rose Wilder Lane (daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder), Isabel Paterson (“The God of the Machine”), and some of Ayn Rand’s philosophical works (I disliked her literary writing). That’s where it all started for me.
As a senior, I ditched the AP English and lit for a year of electives with the most notorious teacher on the campus… an orgy of romance, science fiction, and Russian novels.
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I recall having to write out brief evaluations of each book in that class on index cards. Maybe that’s why my handwriting is so small since I find it hard to write short. I did AP English and History as well as Biology so got to skip taking credits for the first two as a freshman in college (since Biology was my college major, I still took the required freshman biology courses).
Occasionally I’ll feel the need to reread something (or accidentally reread something I forgot I read). A few years ago I went through one of those “100 books to read before you die” lists and read everything on it I had missed. But these days I find there is no shortage of new books to read, or write, so time forces some prioritization.
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My Dad gave up fiction somewhere in his teens. I have a few of the novels that he read in childhood. Utter dimestore tripe from the 40;s. I don’t think he ever had the chance to experience imagination. He read National Geographic, and Smithsonian, and Scientific American in later life after work.
And then he watched sports on TV. That was something I could almost never do. I cannot even consume the advertisements during the Super Bowl. I do enjoy highlights from games that are maybe 50 years old though. There is an immediacy that a lot of folks have to connect with sports. I don’t feel that. It’s like watching election returns. Still the same in the morning.
I don’t think any of my grandparents ever read any kind of fiction. That was too much of a luxury. They read enough to learn to cook and balance the budget. That was it.
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I actually gave up fiction for about a decade. Way too much time spent reading technical papers for work and doctoral studies. Then about 10 years ago I read one or two. The next year was a handful. I still read mostly non-fiction, but read more fiction than I used to (not counting early in my life when I read mostly fiction and science fiction). Some of it is classic novels, some fluff (this year I read two by Clive Cussler, who stole my high school character and has made a fortune with him).
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I suspect there is something to do with the brain ageing like LT says above and one’s tolerance for fiction. I actually tried to read the first Harry Potter. I gave it a few tries. That was also a non starter for me. I don’t think that there is any shame in not matching up with something.
On the other hand, it is nice to try to stay fresh in at least a few areas of life, some of I them frivolous.
Clive sounds like he might be worth a try.
My brother read science fiction constantly from age 10 to age 20. Then priorities shifted. But i did get to read all of the paperbacks that he left around.
Right now, I have Ian Rankin ( I like other places, even if only in my mind).
Some technical stuff becomes obsolete in a few ways. I don’t mind working through it, but the nomenclature can be odd if out of date. On the other hand, studying that history can be revealing. History for history’s sake is rather more enduring. But many of the authors of such stuff are really just clerks, like reading biblical geneology. Takes some time to develop perspective.
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I read a few of Ian Rankin’s books the summer I lived in Edinburgh, where the books are set. I even found the bar he refers to. Really enjoyed them. Besides SF I was into science fantasy, especially Piers Anthony. I suspect it wouldn’t hold much interest today.
Mostly the science I read today is non-technical in the sense that it is more about science policy (climate change, leadership). Since I’ve shifted to my Lincoln side, history is a big focus these days. Recently I’ve expanded out from just Lincoln/Civil War times into antebellum and then forward through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, to today’s resurgence in white supremacy. I’m trying to make my Lincoln group more relevant to today’s strife since we’re effectively regressed back to the 19th century.
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62… However, a couple of them were not well-read (difficult reads that really needed more time), and several were as university classwork.
Ironically, the most recent on that list was number 1, the “I Ching” (last year). It’s not intended to be read sequentially. Rather, there’s a process involved in using the text for divination. However I did read it through entirely, as well as becoming proficient at using it (via a set of yaro sticks). I also compared some of the better-known translations, and read through a series of associated commentaries, both concurrent (“The Ten Wings”) and more contemporary (Hegel’s criticism). And of course, there was some associated history.
That’s the way I like to do things… fully immersed.
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Impressive. There are a few on the list that I feel I should read, but I found reading through other lists of “must read” books revealed that many of them aren’t really worth reading at all.
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Yes… You touch on my response to “estebang” that there comes a point where certain types of readings, especially those with a philosophy or approach behind them become inaccessible through the development of one’s ego. And this is not a criticism of either the development of ego or of the books. But it can cause what we choose to engage as a sort of echo-chamber. That’s why I’ll sometimes ask for recommendations of things that I wouldn’t necessarily choose to read on my own. It’s also why I’ll try to engage things fully… even if I have no intent of becoming an I Ching practitioner, or a Mormon, or a Greek soldier… So, short of reading something cognitively dissonant while on a psilocybin trip (which I’m not advocating), I just want to understand at least the context, if not the feeling of a perspective.
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I have wondered from time to time how things got chosen for high school reading lists. A lot on my required reading seemed like they were just pop culture from when the administrators were 15 years old. Much of the rest were just legacy items. Other stuff seems to be a sort of pompous claim…”Yes, try and read this. Bet you can’t.”
Fiction that does not seem too farcical nor too dogmatic is a balance. A goldilocks thing. Some “nonfiction” seems too arrogant for my taste. Films and TV are the same, but there one has the added elements of audio and visual styles. If I’m tired enough not to want to read, I’d really prefer to have someone read me a story with my eyes closed.
I’ve been moderately close with folks that chose to read fantasy literature well into their adulthood. Folks that I have not been able to get close with have enjoyed things more approaching screeds.
Technical stuff with a sense of perspective is nice….i.e. an appreciation for human imperfections without being too flippant about it.
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I can agree with your first paragraph. When I read through the “100 books to read before you die” list I was surprised how many of them were just garbage. The acid trip ones in particular I found to be a waste of time, but some of the classics before that weren’t very good in my opinion either.
I know people who write fantasy fiction and they write well and tell good stories (not true for others). I’ve just moved on from it for the most part. Perhaps I need to revisit the genres just to expand the breadth of my reading. Lincoln studies has me in a narrow window, so outside of that I need to read more widely.
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Internalizing the affective viewpoint of a character is easier when you’re younger; maybe all it takes is a romance novel. Gradually, it becomes more difficult. Nowadays, the paperbacks feel more like a movie theater where I can’t get the “exit” sign out of view. Ironically, the last fiction to really pull me in that way was a struggle through something Japanese. I had to look up so many kanji that I couldn’t thoroughly understand more than a chapter a day (which was the primary intent). But the (typically Asian) non-ending of the story was such an “Oh!” Gestalt that I actually went back and carefully re-read several chapters to see if they changed my interpretation.
I think the last fiction I read all the way through was Amy Tan’s, “Saving Fish from Drowning”, which had been abandoned to the seat-back pocket of a long-haul flight by a previous passenger. Captive audience, and “getting” the cross-cultural, Vonnegut-like ironic humor made it worth the read.
I like to obsess over something for a period of time, then have that Gestalt of perceiving something emergent. So if I fill in the literary gaps, it will likely be from something like Martin Seymour-Smith’s, “The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written”. One book at a time.
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Just did a quick tour through the Seymour-Smith list and was disappointed to find I had read only about 15 of them (plus probably pieces of others). Oddly enough, I had just skimmed through Euclid’s Elements and Bacon’s Novum Organum for the chapter I just finished writing of my new book. Guess I’ll have a lot to reading to do in the future.
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I get compulsive about a few things, but not counting the books. I do get pissed when I mislay one. I really like discovering one that I had forgotten and obviously enjoyed enough to keep. Feel that way about my brother’s science fiction and John D. MacDonald.
Feeling misinformed about something is more disturbing.
A few years ago I got into a tizzy for not being able to find an old text. I thought of the disgust I had for the analytical chemistry professor and found the text. I then found some respect. Most of the time when I have that sort of malfunction it resolves in a few hours or days.
I do wonder about the ones that never, ever resolve.
Choosing sources is certainly becoming more interesting.
I don’t travel so much anymore so audiobooks are a little less appealing, But I still find text more enjoyable than other formats. Plus the organization is clearer.
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I had to laugh at the “how the lists are chosen” comment. Questioning just that got me into some hot water with that AP English teacher after having to read “Catcher in the Rye” and “The Great Gatsby” for a “meaning-of-life” theme. She didn’t like my essays panning the books as socially obsolete for a 17-year old in the late 80’s, and then throwing my own unapproved Sci Fi choice into the list… Mack Reynolds’, “The Galactic Medal of Honor” (and it fit). Why I ended up dumping the AP English class for my senior year, and signed up for “Tales of Romance and Fantasy”. Granted, I don’t remember too many books from that class. But the teacher (who was excellent), sparked something unexpected toward the end of my time in high school with the subdued angst of Russian Novels.
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I don’t remember anything past sophomore lit. except reading Hemingway senior year and commenting to the teacher that the characters seemed to drink more than a healthy amount. The response would not be accepted practice nowadays. The fact that I remember it says something. But basically a lot of folks that we had to read were screenwriters in the early 20th century.
One of the more lively lit classes I had was in college. I took it as lark (my total tuition was $400/year). The course was called the Age of Dryden and Swift. I think the only reading assignment I blew off was Gulliver’s Travels. But growing up half way alert in western society, one knows that tale. The professor was a hoot though; had a lascivious lisp and enjoyed the bawdy parts of The Country Wife and the works of John Wilmot a little too much. He knew I was just an engineer in it for kicks, so he cut me some slack.
The whole robot works did make an impression on me for a while.
Could never tolerate Le Carre, but I liked Len Deighton.
I have always liked Flatland. I give that away to unsuspecting juveniles sometimes.
Overt political discourse is distasteful to me; have to come at me sideways.
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