Favorite Books Read in 2020
Amid market and news turmoil, books can provide an escape. They can also be a source of reassurance. In 2020, I read or listened to 43 of them. That's not a number worth bragging about (I think my bookworm mother probably read 4 times that many). This is the 3rd year of publishing the prior year's reading picks. Below, I selected 8. I'll be adding the non-fiction picks to the website's "Resources" page. There, you can find other recommendations for finance, lifestyle, and life improvement books. A. Fiction: 24 of the 43 I read were fiction (I found I needed more escapism in 2020, for some strange reason.) Of those, 3 stood out: The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein: I had started Stein's book and then accidentally left it on an airplane in 2013. Coincidentally it showed up in my neighborhood's Little Free Library. I never saw the movie, and I'm glad I waited. Told from the point of view of the family dog, it chronicles love, illness, and loss with equal parts sadness, charm, and humor. A tragedy, but an uplifting one, for me. Plainsong, by Kent Haruf: Plainsong takes place in a farm town of eastern Colorado - a place most of America drives through or flies over in our rush to the Rockies. The young protagonist faces more problems than a teenager should, yet they're not uncommon problems in today's world. The characters in the farm town families aren't simple. I found myself wishing some of them were different, and then accepting they're not, as I must do in real life, too. Pure goodness comes from characters I least expected based on appearances and societal norms. This was another uplifting one - I guess I'm kind of a sucker for those. Journey, by Danielle Steel: A real oldie, from the 90s. I'm not a huge Danielle Steel reader, but she masterfully and thoroughly explains a widely misunderstood phenomenon- why and how successful women are duped into staying in emotionally abusive marriages. It's got her trademark over-the-top glam lifestyle setting and more than a few one-dimensional characters. But the roller coaster ride in her protagonist's shoes makes me wonder how much of the story might have come from Steel's personal experience. B. Economics: The Gulf, by Jack A. Davis. You could argue this is not an economics book. Yet the story of the Gulf comes down to economics' essence - competition for scarce resources - whether shellfish, oil, or plain old sand. I expected to be bored by the litany of Spanish conquerors, oil explorers, tourist trappers, and real estate developers. Not so. This was a page-turner of a story about the histories of Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mexico, and Texas. From the start, I was edu-tained by the continual blundering of the Spanish "conquerors" through Florida as native Indians watched in puzzlement. That's not quite how I learned it in 3rd grade....There's plenty of tragedy to go around, but it ends on a hopeful…