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This year was long one, and with no friends to see or happy hours to make, I read a lot. I’m a big reader anyway, but this year, I read even more—and not just fiction. In 2020, my book diet included plenty of nonfiction, cookbooks, and poetry.

I made a video reviewing the best books I read in 2020—here it is!

Or you can read through my top picks, below the video. :)

My Top Books of 2020, Video-Style

Rodham, by Curtis Sittenfeld

I’ve been a Curtis Sittenfeld fan ever since American Wife in 2008—a novel loosely based on the life of Laura Bush. This year Curtis turned to another woman in public life and imagined what Hillary’s life might have looked like had she not married Bill. I am fascinated and awed by the choice to write fiction about a living person, and I gobbled up this novel in a sitting. It didn’t disappoint me and was wholly enjoyable.

Veritas, by Ariel Sabar

This book has all the makings of a thriller or crime novel: a con man living in Florida (with a sordid occupation), a Harvard professor with a shiny reputation to uphold, and an ancient mystery with profound stakes—the question of whether Jesus might have had a wife. The catch? This story is true.

Trust me, you will fly through Veritas and then make everyone you know talk to you about it.

Wintering, by Katherine May

So many people have privately said to me, “I needed this” about 2020. Even as we’ve been terrified by COVID and some people have been irreparably harmed by it—not playing that down by any means—there is a thread of discovery that has awoken us all to this idea that we were moving too fast. That we were killing ourselves, and it was stupid.

Wintering, by Katherine May, is about welcoming our fallow times and accepting rest. It’s beautiful.

Nothing Fancy (a cookbook), by Alison Roman

Nothing Fancy came out in 2019, but I had to include it because it got me through 2020. I made the Lemon Turmeric cake 15+ times (even modified it to make it gluten-free and it was still delicious), and I last made her citrus chicken…12 hours ago.

This is a wonderful gift for new cooks, aspiring cooks, and seasoned cooks alike. Alison explains cooking in a way that even amateurs can easily understand and feel capable at the stove.

What Kind of Woman, by Kate Baer

Kate Baer became known for her poetry through Instagram, where she posts it. That was how I discovered her and fell in love with her. In 2020, my friend Kate and I would take screenshots of her poems and text them back and forth with comments like, “damn.”

Now that she’s published this collection (with a gorgeous cover), we send texts with pictures of the pages.

It’s one to savor.

The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett

The Vanishing Half is the best novel I read this year. It’s about twin sisters who flee their tiny Louisiana town at 16 and try to make it in New Orleans. When one of them disappears, the other spends the next decades of her life trying to find her—where did she go, and why?

Is this my favorite novel of all time? Maybe. It’s a close second to A Little Life. Is it my favorite cover of all time? No question.

And that’s it! If you read any of these, let me know what you think—I’d love to hear.

What was your favorite book of 2020?

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