My 2020 Reading List

Every year, I come up with a list of twelve books that I want to read, which I track on Goodreads. I do this reading on my commute, as I take the train into work. I’m lucky to take a train with enough seating for everyone, which is not at all the case for some people on their commute. I find that, depending on the size of the book, I can usually read about one page every two minutes. Most books are divided into small chapters of fifteen to twenty pages, or have larger chapters divided into parts of fifteen to twenty pages, which is perfect for my thirty-five minute train ride. Reading on the commute is a good use of my time, as otherwise I would just be scrolling my phone, which ultimately doesn’t lead to anything productive. It is definitely one of the perks of using public transportation instead of driving.

My arbitrarily-set goal of one book per month does not always work out perfectly, as in this year when I got a late start due to having not yet finished last year’s books, and then started my 2020 list with Imperial China 900-1800, which is a great book, but extremely long. I didn’t finish it until May, meaning I was already 4 books behind schedule. By now I’m starting to catch up, but I still have to double my normal pace to finish the list by the end of the year.

I structure my list in a specific way to cover the subjects that interest me the most. There are two basic types of books on my list: culture or history books, and adventure books. Everything is non-fiction. I’m interested in learning reading about the culture and history of the USA, Mexico, France, Egypt, Russia, and China. As there is a lot of material out there on American history, I include two American history books in my yearly list. I read one book on each of the other countries, and I also add a book on geopolitics or anthropology. For example, in 2019 I read Jared Diamond’s well-known Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, and this year I am reading Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by the same author. For the remaining third of my list, I read books on true tales of adventure or nature which interest me. For example, hiking, sailing, source-to-sea descents of rivers, or tales of survival. This year I’m trying something a little different by reading On Trails: An Exploration, in which I am honored to be briefly mentioned by the author, Robert Moor, because of my time on the International Appalachian Trail, as part of my Eastern Continental Trail thru-hike.

Generally, the adventure books are much shorter, and so I finish them quickly, which is good since I typically take over a month to read some of the longer historical books. The biggest book I’ve read is probably the mammoth The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, which I believe took me about ten weeks, which is not bad for twelve hundred pages. It’s inevitable that I will occasionally pick a book that is not what I thought it would be. I’ve found that there is not very much material on modern Egyptian history and culture, and that therefore I’ve picked out books that turned out to be much more academic than I am used to. I might be hard-pressed to give a good account of Colonising Egypt, and this year I am going to read the first Cairo Cosmopolitan book, which I hope will be more accessible despite it’s academic appearance.

So far this year, I have nothing but good things to say about the books that I have picked out. That isn’t surprising, since I try to only pick books that are well-known, and have at least a four-star average rating on Goodreads. When finding books on Egypt, Russia, or Mexico, I sometimes have to disregard that standard. I also have to consider that some adventure books are more interesting to me than the average person, such as Colin Angus’ Lost in Mongolia: Rafting the World’s Last Unchallenged River. However, in general I’ve had very little dissapointment by sticking to Goodreads ratings.

I’m proud of myself for picking up reading, as for a long period of time I did no real reading at all. From the time I entered college until very recently, I didn’t really see the appeal of investing time into reading a large book. I don’t usually like the feeling of starting something and then feeling obligated to finish it. But I have to say that reading has been a good way to engage in critical thinking, not just about history, culture, or adventure, but about the allegories between what I am reading and the basics of life. Perhaps the only downside to reading large books is that it is simply not possible for me to remember details of these books. If asked, I could give a decent summary, and talk about the main points, but things like names and dates often are lost over time. Despite that, it’s very satisfying to look over the bookshelf and see all the good I’ve read. If you’re interested, feel free to check out my 2020 Reading List, and start a reading goal of your own.