All of The Books I Read In 2020 and the Places Where I Read Them.
1.What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon
Bill and I got some Kayaks this year. I love to be in the river. But I hate the half mile walk with these blue plastic heavy boats. So we hooked up a blue tooth in one of the Kayaks, put it in a waterproof bag and everything and I listened to the book on audio (Libro.fm) It sufficiently distracted me from thinking about the cramps in my shoulders and arms.
2.It is Wood, It is Stone by Gabriella Burnham
We went to visit Bill’s family in St. Louis. I read this book in his mother’s backyard, the mosquitos biting at my ankles. It was 100 degrees, August and even though the pools were open, we didn’t feel safe going.
3.Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong
In October, we moved bedrooms to be in the one that is bigger and gets more light. Bill built us a new bed frame. I started this book in that bed, but finished the book in December, on our couch, that same morning we had taken a COVID test at a newly opened testing center up the street.
4. Having and Being Had by Eula Biss
In the fall, we opened Women and Children First back up for limited capacity browsing. Twelve people were allowed in the shop at a time and it was occasionally my job to sit at the door and keep track of the customers as they came in. I read the book between hitting the screen of store’s Ipad, watching the numbers rise and fall. Sometimes I would miss someone and the count would be off.
5. My Autobiography of Carson Mccullers by Jenn Shapland
In February we stayed at an Airbnb in Iowa. I went on a run one morning and slipped on the ice. I got a bruise the color of this book cover.
6. The Magical Language of Others by EJ Koh
I took the Kedzie bus down to visit a friend who lives in Garfield park. Even though I was looking forward to seeing her and for the plans we made to go look at flowers in the Garfield Park Conservatory, I found myself wishing the bus ride was longer, that’s how much I liked reading this memoir. To make matters worse, a few stops into the ride someone I knew got on the bus and sat down in the empty seat next to me. I wondered if they could see my disappointment when I put the book back in my backpack
7. Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
We had just gotten back from our month long bike trip around Lake Michigan. The boys were in the other room watching Total Recall. I borrowed the book from John, our friend and summer sub-leaser. I cracked it open, half asleep, surrounded by all of our dirty laundry.
8. The Seep by Chana Porter
In a very hot bath.
9. Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
I was sitting in a bar, drinking water, waiting for a friend’s show to start. The bar was dimly lit, too dark to see the words on the page so I begin using the flashlight on my phone. All of a sudden, I look up and the bartender is at my table. “Please turn off that flashlight, it’s disturbing the other customers.” There was only three other people at the bar, a man at the end of the counter and a couple in a booth sitting far away from me. None of them seemed disturbed. Perhaps the bartender was just mad I hadn’t ordered an actual drink. Flushed and embarrassed, I turn the flashlight off. A few moments later, the man at the end of the counter comes over to me, I didn’t know he had been watching, he says he wants to show me his “trick.” He holds the bar’s long paper pamphlet drink menu over his phones’ light to dim its glow. I try that for a bit but it’s too hard to get the coordination and positioning of my hands and paper right, so I stop and just drink my water.
10. In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
In a hammock tied between two skinny trees, across the river from Ronan park. Bill is also reading in a hammock that just a few moments before he had fallen out of. I laughed at him and it hurt his feelings.
11. Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller
Along the way as Bill, Andrew and myself completed a 1200 mile bike tour. In a tent, on a bench, in the sand or the grass in the following small towns around the coast of Lake Michigan:
Racine,Belgium,Two Rivers,Sturgeon Bay, Greenbay, Menominee, Escanaba, Manistique, Nuabinway, Mackinac Island, Bay Shore, Elk Rapids, Sleeping Bear Dunes, Onekama, Hart, Grand Haven,South Haven, Warren Dunes, Indiana Dunes.
12. A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
February. Waiting in the for the 50 Damen bus. Trying to stay warm in the Damen Brown line station, sitting on a bench next to the bronze statue of suitcases. It was almost 10 pm and I am going to be late for my call time at The Neo-Futurists. The heaters in the station aren’t working, it’s hard to turn a page in mittens.
13. There, There by Tommy Orange
Sometime in April, I moved the blue paisley chair from the living room into the spare bedroom. My head resting on the window pane that is being smacked by a tree in the wind. tree. I text a friend who is also reading this book, I ask him what he thinks of it.
14. White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
Sitting on my back “porch” (It is really just the wooden step outside of our back door, a small corner of the staircase leading up to the third floor where the neighbors do have a porch, with an herb garden and everything) A cup of coffee balanced on one knee and a banana peel inches away from the other. One side of me is bitter and almost empty . The other side of me is sweet but also garbage.
15. Bicycling Guide to the Lake Michigan Trail by Bob Robinson
It’s three days before our trip. Andrew and I are standing under the purple awning outside of Women and Children First. I am on my lunch break and the guide, having just arrived from the warehouse in Indiana, is still in mint condition. I read to Andrew a part of the introduction that I had just read moments earlier in the store’s break room:
“…Until one day, when I had the atlas out planning a trip, and there it was jumping out at me like the natural wonder that it is, Lake Michigan. And I say to myself, and I say to myself ‘Now that would be a sweet ride.” And now I can truthfully say to myself: ‘Yes. It is.’”
Andrew laughs, puts the book in his bag and bikes away to begin the first stages of planing.
