ALL I read in 2020

51 books in 2020! 2020 was hard for us all, but reading kept me going even in lockdown!

I organized this post into the following categories so that you can easily find book recommendations that match what you’re interested in! My top reads are in bold.

faith

• Handle with Care: How Jesus Redeems the Power of Touch in Life in Ministry – Lore Ferguson Wilbert
• Honest Advent – Scott Erickson
• Invitations from God: Accepting God’s Offer to Rest, Weep, Forgive, Wait, Remember and More – Adele Ahlberg Calhoun
• Is There Anybody Out There?: A Journey from Despair to Hope – Mez McConnell
• O Death, Where Is Thy Sting? – Alexander Schmemann
• The Abolition of Man – C.S. Lewis
• The Eternal Current: How a Practice-Based Faith Can Save Us from Drowning – Aaron Niequist
• The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry – John Mark Comer
• Women of the Word – Jen Wilkin

racial justice

• Men We Reaped – Jesmyn Ward
• The Book of Night Women – Marlon James
• The Last Interview and Other Conversations – Martin Luther King, Jr.

middle east / refugees

• A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier – Ishmael Beah
• Call Me American – Abdi Nor Iftin
• How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less – Sarah Glidden
• Iraq: An Illustrated History and Guide – Gilles Munier
• Iraqi Girl: Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq – John Ross

• Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq – Sarah Glidden
• The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq – Dunya Mikhail
• The Girl from the Garden – Parnaz Foroutan
• The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria – Janine Di Giovanni
• The Refugees – Viet Thanh Nguyen
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist – Mohsin Hamid
• The Swallows of Kabul – Yasmina Khadra

women’s equality

• Gender Roles and the People of God: Rethinking What We Were Taught about Men and Women in the Church – Alice Mathews
• Know My Name – Chanel Miller
• Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: How the Church Needs to Rediscover Her Purpose – Aimee Byrd

misc. non fiction

• Loveology: God, Love, Marriage, Sex, and the Never-ending Story of Male and Female – John Mark Comer
• Tying the Knot: A Premarital Guide to a Strong and Lasting Marriage – Rob Green (spoiler alert: this is terrible and you shouldn’t read it! Loveology is a much better book on marriage)

novels

• Amina’s Voice – Hena Khan
• Ashes – Laurie Halse Anderson
• Behold the Dreamers – Imbolo Mbue
• Circe – Madeline Miller
• Detectives in Togas – Henry Winterfeld (an old childhood favorite!)
• Forge – Laurie Halse Anderson
• Gilead – Marilynne Robinson

• On the Come Up – Angie Thomas
• The Butterfly Girl – Rene Denfeld
• The Testaments – Margaret Atwood
• Transcendent Kingdom – Yaa Gyasi

fantasy

• The Lightning Thief – Rick Riordan
• The Sea of Monsters – Rick Riordan
• The Titan’s Curse – Rick Riordan
• The Battle of the Labyrinth – Rick Riordan
• The Last Olympian – Rick Riordan

poetry

• Home Body – Rupi Kaur
• The Complete Poetry – Maya Angelou
• When You Ask Me Where I’m Going – Jasmine Kaur

memoirs

• I Will Not Fear: My Story of a Lifetime of Building Faith Under Fire – Melba Pattillo Beals
• Surprised by Oxford – Carolyn Weber
• The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother – James McBride
• The Sound of Gravel – Ruth Wariner

Keep up with what I’m reading all year on Goodreads!