Books 2020

For the Goodreads Reading Challenge 2020, I surpassed my goal of reading 45 books.  With one day left, I have finished 47 and am closing in on 48!  Would you believe that 5,368,755 people participated in this challenge, pledging to read 322,552,719 books during the year.  The average books pledged per person was 61.  I think that is very impressive.

2020 had lots of difficulties, as the whole world knows, but I often escaped into some of the best books I've read in a long time.  Here are a few of them:

If you enjoy historical fiction, I highly recommend Ruta Sepetys.  I have loved every book of hers that I've read.  Salt to the Sea is about the sinking of the German ship ‘Wilhelm Gustloff’ with 9,000 people on board; some were soldiers but many were refugees who had fled from the Baltic countries as the Russian troops advanced.   Her intertwining of the stories of several people kept me interested.  I really cared about each character

The Fountain of Silence  is set in Madrid and blends a modern story with one set during the Spanish Civil War.

I am not a frequent reader of non-fiction but I really did enjoy both of these books.  The Moment Of Lift confirmed so much that I had learned during my trips to Africa with Kenya Keys.  And Born a Crime taught and entertained while telling of Trevor Noah's early life in South Africa. 

Three books about family...The Honey Bus is a heart wrenching story of neglect and eventual abuse but the main take away from the story is what a powerful influence one person can be in a child's life. 

Millicent Glenn's Last Wish was especially interesting to me because Jane, the daughter, was born about when I was and was also an only child. My mother also worked outside the home and wasn't a 'stereotypical' 50's housewife. 

The Invisible Bridge What a great book! I loved the characters and felt their joys and sorrows. Even some of the minor characters were memorable. I loved Andras's mother.  One of my favorite historical fiction books about World War II.  

The Dreamers and The Pull of the Stars were both set during a pandemic.  The first during a mysterious, fictitious illness  and the 2nd during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 2018.  Both felt very timely as we grappled with COVID-19 in 2020.

Both of these were re-reads.  Wuthering Heights was a revisit from my high school days.  My clearest memory of reading it then was the quote 'He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.' To my teenaged self this was so terribly romantic. Reading it again as an adult, it didn't seem like a romance at all but a tragedy because what their souls were made of was not anything virtuous or lovely. 

The Shell Seekers was one I loved when I was a young wife and mom and I loved it just as much this year.  Strange that now I am the age of the 'elderly' main characters.

These two were high on my list of favorites -  Lost Autumn and The Giver of Stars.  Totally different settings, rural Tennessee and Australia/England but both were rich in character development and story line.