Reading Material: Top Books of 2020
“The nights I sleep best, I spend time unwinding before bed. I soak in a warm bath to melt the day away, leave my phone in another room, take a dropper of NOVA, and read a few chapters in a novel to let my mind fully settle and leave the to-do list behind. Once my eyes get heavy, I turn in for the night, fall asleep within five minutes and escape into my fantastical dreams.”
Reading has been something I’ve loved since I was little. I love the escape, the knowledge, the characters, the stories, and the perspectives I am able to uncover. I set a reading challenge every year as my reminder to take a break from my day-to-day and reset my mind. I prefer to read non-fiction during the day so my mind is able to stretch and absorb the information and I prefer novels before bed so I can escape into a fantastical world and prepare for a deep sleep. I’ve curated my favorite books I read during 2020 and hope you are able to connect to some of the books, stories, and characters below. Happy reading!
- Kayla Clements, Founder & CEO Luna Volta
Most Powerful
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race.”
2. Most Inspiring
How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of a Private Spaceflight
by Julian Guthrie
The historic race that reawakened the promise of manned spaceflight.
3. Most Fun Read
by Robin Sloan
A deep dive into the world of food, underground restaurants and markets, and the magic power of a good sourdough starter.
4. Most Bookmarked
by Glennon Doyle
Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live.
5. Most Magical
by Erin Morgenstern
'A journey of wonder and imagination' You are invited to join Zachary on the starless sea: the home of storytellers, story-lovers and those who will protect our stories at all costs.
6. Best Mystery
by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, Karen White
A captivating historical mystery, infused with romance, that links the lives of three women across a century—two deep in the past, one in the present—to the doomed passenger liner, RMS Lusitania.
7. Best Characters
by Brit Bennett
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing.
8. Anti-Racism
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
by Robin DiAngelo
Using knowledge and insight gained over decades of running racial awareness workshops and working on this idea as a Professor of Whiteness Studies, she shows us how we can start having more honest conversations, listen to each other better and react to feedback with grace and humility.
9. Fun Mystery
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
by Robin Sloan
Evoking both the fairy-tale charm of Haruki Murakami and the enthusiastic novel-of-ideas wizardry of Neal Stephenson or Umberto Eco, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is exactly what it sounds like—an establishment you have to enter and will never want to leave.