Selena's Books of 2020

Hey there!

It has at last arrived, the end of 2020! What a year it has been for us all.

It felt like it went by so slowly in the beginning and then it was just a blur of months with no break towards the end.

In today's post, I thought it would be fun to share and talk a little bit about the books that I passed the time in 2020. At the start of every year, Goodreads lets you make a goal of how many books you want to read for the year and lets you track that. Compared to other more avid readers, I usually put my goal as a small number of 10 or 11. This helps me feel not pressured to read but just read whenever I want. That is like a book a month. Smart. Especially because I am prone to reading slumps.

For 2020, I decided to try and read 11 books. Looking back to the list it seems that I read a lot of queer stories, which in my opinion is amazing. During my teen years, I don't remember reading many books that had lgbtq+ characters in them (except for fanfiction), or stories that centered around lgbtq+ experiences and it makes me so very happy to see that more and more queer books are being published and providing the representation that many of us seek in so many different genres such as historical fiction, rom-com, YA, and fantasy.

Like Spotify Wrapped, Goodreads also gives you stats on the books that you read for the year, I'll link mine here but here are a few stats that I thought were cool:

-I read a total of 5,880 pages with 17 books total

-the shortest book was 128 pages (A Gentleman's Guide to Getting Lucky)

-and the longest was 662 (Midnight Sun)

From this list, my two absolute favorites are Red, White, & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston and Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas. Both of these novels have queer Latinx characters (RWRB has a Mexican-American bisexual main character and Cemetery Boys has a trans Latinx main character) and are just absolutely hilarious and fun reads that I highly recommend. A runner-up is Bloom by Kevin Panetta, which explored the theme of juggling family responsibility while wanting to escape your hometown and not knowing exactly what and where you want life to take you, kinda.

My least favorite book from this pile is Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline. When the sequel to Ready Player One was announced I was a little skeptical as I sincerely thought that RP1 was left good as a stand-alone novel, and after reading RP2 I still think the same.

I already forgot which books I read in which month, but I have a vague feeling about the timeline in which I read them. Let me know if you read any of these books in 2020, or read them in years past, or if any are in your TBR!

Without further ado:

• Spare Parts - Joshua Davis

• Wayward Son - Rainbow Rowell

• The Inexplicable Logic of My Life - Benjamin Alire Saenz

• Red, White, & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston

• A Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue - Mackenzi Lee

• A Gentleman's Guide to Getting Lucky - Mackenzi Lee

• Felix Ever After - Kacen Callender

• Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead

• This Book Is Gay - Juno Dawson

• Call Me By Your Name - Andre Aciman

• Midnight Sun - Stephenie Meyer

• Malintzin's Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico - Camilla Townsend

• Cemetery Boys - Aiden Thomas

• Milk & Honey - Rupi Kaur

• Boyfriend Material - Alexis Hall

• Ready Player Two- Ernest Cline

and finally, Bloom a graphic novel by Kevin Panetta and illustrated by Savanna Ganucheau.

If you would like to purchase any of these books you can head over to my Bookshop Store where I created a list with all these titles in them! Disclosure: If you purchase any book when using the affiliated link, I will receive a small percentage of the sales and the other portion of the sales goes to independent bookstores across the world!

That is all for now! Stay tuned for a list of the books I started in 2020 and want to finish in 2021 in addition to the books I am looking forward to reading that will be released in 2021!

Until next time and Happy New Year,

Selena