(Some of my favorite 2020 reads)
This is an updated version of my previous book lists with new additions at the beginning of each category. The links in this post are Amazon affiliate links, and when you make a purchase through any of them we earn a small percentage. Thank you! (My good gifts list is here.)
Adult Fiction:
Their Eyes Were Watching God was one of my favorite Reads of 2020.
I really liked Growth of the Soil.
I read my first Agatha Christie last year. And Then There were None was a page-turner. This year I read Murder on the Orient Express and enjoyed that one as well.
I also read the epic Middlemarch and loved it.
The Remains of the Day was very good.
I finished reading the Mitford books last year. I’ve talked about them before. I tried reading them in my early thirties and couldn’t get into them. I’ve loved them in my early forties. They are easy, light reads with loveable characters. Sometimes that’s just what you need.
Christmas with Miss Read is lovely.
My Aunt Genie sent me a copy of Book Girl, and I think it’s a great resource and fun read. (Not fiction, but about fiction so I’m putting it in this category!)
I read Gunnar’s Daughter, by Sigrid Undset last year and found it intense (and quite short compared to Kristin Lavransdatter, also by Undset) but quite good!
I loved Gilead and Lila, and think you could read them in any order you please. The third in the trilogy, Home, was good, but I found it sad.
I haven’t read The Yearling in many years but listened to it on audiobook last year, and it’s definitely in my top three favorite books, possibly number one. (The other two being My Antonia and Kristin Lavransdatter.) I think it’s one that many of us read too early (and dismiss). it’s really not a children’s book in my opinion.
Peace Like a River was incredibly good. I know people reread this one. In 2020 I read So Brave, Young, and Handsome by the same author. I liked it, but didn’t love it like I did Peace Like a River.
The Winthrop Woman and Katherine by Anya Seton are so, so good. I also enjoyed Devil Water.
Rebecca is another really good one!
So Big was one of my favorite reads in 2015.
I would love to own this Black Dog Opera Library box set. I own the Black Dog Opera La Traviata and appreciate having background on the composer, the story of the opera, along with the complete Libretto (text of the opera itself–yes, I had to look that up!), commentary, and the opera on CDs.
I love Rumer Godden, and especially In This House of Brede and Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy. Another favorite is An Episode of Sparrows (New York Review Children’s Collection).
Willa Cather is probably my favorite author and I love these two volumes of her novels: Early Novels and Stories and Later Novels. I read Shadows on the Rock (Vintage Classics) last year and it is one of my favorites of hers, after My Antonia, one of the very few books I have read more than once (three times!) I recently purchased this volume of her short stories, and think it would make a lovely gift.
And Wilkie Collins! The best of his that I’ve read is The Woman in White .
And finally, epic and beautiful if not rather long, The Betrothed: I Promessi Sposi (Penguin Classics). I will re-read it someday.
General Non-fiction:
Seth bought this book about tanks this year. I have no idea what category to put it in but thought that if I have a son who was interested, you might too.
All My Patients Are Under the Bed is a fun read for the cat lover in your life.
Jonny’s favorites:
He read We Took to the Woods this year and enjoyed it. This one has been recommended to me again and again, so I will have to read it too!
A Walk in the Woods and The Contrary Farmer.
Favorite’s of his and our older boys are:
One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, and Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage (Seth and Keats read this one as well).
Jon Krakauer is a favorite author. Michael Perry is another.
Faith:
The Fulfillment of all Desire is encouraging, convicting, and even life-changing in a way that is accessible and not overwhelming.
This year I read Theology of Home and I’m reading volume II now. These books offer encouragement and inspiration to homemakers and I highly recommend them!
I was given a copy of Ruth Chou Simons’ Gracelaced last year and I loved it. It is full of the most beautiful art and photography along with seasonally themed devotions that I have found very relatable. This year I read a more recent book of her devotions and really loved it too. I think that her books make perfect gifts because they are both beautiful visually and beautifully written.
The same kind person who gave me Gracelaced also gave me a copy of Tattoos on the Heart. I read it. Jonny read it. Gabe read it. I’m about to pass it to someone I think would appreciate it as well. It’s wonderful.
Bread in the Wilderness gave me a new appreciation for the Psalms.
Made for This: The Catholic Mom’s Guide to Birth, is just that, a guide to childbirth rooted in the Catholic faith. It’s a beautiful book, one I wish I had many years ago. If you enjoy birth stories, there are quite a few of them included in the book. I contributed the story of Mabel’s birth via planned c-section, so if you are interested, it’s there!
Something Other than God. I loved this one, and I’ve given several copies as gifts.
I finally read The Diary of a Country Priest and I’m so glad that I did.
Silence is incredibly intense. Shook me up for a long time. It made for a great book group discussion, but I probably won’t ever see the movie.
I gave my sister, Abby, A Year with the Church Fathers for her birthday.
For the kids, Dear Pope Francis is priceless.
I really loved My Sisters the Saints: A Spiritual Memoir.
The Reed of God is the perfect Advent reading. This year for Advent I’m reading Come Lord Jesus, Meditations on the Art of Waiting. It’s very good.
I find Mother Theresa’s writings to be very encouraging and recommend No Greater Love and Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta.
I also love St. Therese and while I have read her own Story of a Soul, I also really liked this little book: The Love That Keeps Us Sane: Living the Little Way of St. Therese of Lisieux (Illuminationbooks.).
Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry is lovely and so is A Mother’s Rule of Life: How to Bring Order to Your Home and Peace to Your Soul.
Health and Cookbooks:
I read so many books about Hashimoto’s the year I was diagnosed. There are many good ones, but I think this was my favorite. For leaky gut information I read Eat Dirt and it really jumpstarted my healing journey. I highly recommend it.
Some of our favorite cookbooks:
Photography:
Capture the Moment is full of inspiration!
I am often asked for camera and photography advice. The book I always recommend, and the one I used to learn how to shoot in manual mode from is Understanding Exposure. That book would make a great gift for someone wanting to learn. A similar book by the same author, that I also recommend (and possibly prefer) is Bryan Peterson’s Understanding Photography Field Guide: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera. Along those same lines, though not a book, this is the lens that is on my Nikon D750 camera 95% of the time. (And btw, when I linked to the camera it was cheaper for a new body than I paid for mine used!)
Nature and field guides:
I love Around the World in 80 Trees. It’s a beautiful book and would make a great gift.
For the Nature Lover in your life, Great Possessions is lovely.
Nature Anatomy is so fun! I think it would make a great gift. We also love Ocean Anatomy.
For the tree lover, we are on our second copy of Remarkable Trees of Virginia (you don’t have to live here to appreciate this book.) I also really like The Tree Book for Kids and Their Grown-Ups.
Larkspur received Bird Feathers: A Guide to North American Species for her birthday and it has been very useful. We also really like this guide to Eastern Birds’ nests.
Some of our most used field guides include: North American Wildlife: An Illustrated Guide to 2,000 Plants and Animals (we’re on our 3rd copy), Wildflowers and Plant Communities of the Southern Appalachian Mountains and Piedmont: A Naturalist’s Guide to the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia (Southern Gateways Guides), Caterpillars of Eastern North America, Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide, and A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: Eastern and central North America (Peterson Field Guides). I don’t have a favorite tree identification field guide, but have Native Trees of the Southeast: An Identification Guide on my wishlist.
Homesteading and Beekeeping:
I love Both Floret Farm’s Cut Flower Garden and A Year in Flowers.
My top read in this category in 2018 was The Shepherd’s Life. Well worth reading-I loved it.
Sylvia’s Farm: The Journal of an Improbable Shepherd and Goat Song are other favorites.
Jonny enjoyed Adventures in Yarn Farming.
The Heirloom Life Gardener: The Baker Creek Way of Growing Your Own Food Easily and Naturally, Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening, and The Small-Scale Poultry Flock: An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers.
Larkspur loves her copy of Gardening with Chickens.
The Practical Beekeeper: Beekeeping Naturally is our favorite beekeeping resource, though my favorite book about beekeeping, in general, is A Book of Bees: And How to Keep Them. The Backyard Beekeeper is a good beginner’s guide. And here’s a great book with ideas of what to make with your beeswax:
Natural Dyeing:
My longtime favorite on this topic is Wild Color. The Art and Science of Natural Dyes came out last year, and it has become my go-to book.
Knitting:
People Knitting!
The Knitter’s Book of Socks, The Knitter’s Book of Wool, and The Knitter’s Book of Yarn would all make great gifts.
Anything by Elizabeth Zimmerman is probably a good choice. I have and love Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac, Knitting Without Tears: Basic Techniques and Easy-to-Follow Directions for Garments to Fit All Sizes, and The Opinionated Knitter.
Vogue Knitting: The Ultimate Knitting Book really is a great resource.
And finally, my favorite Stephanie Pearl-McPhee book is Knitting Rules!: The Yarn Harlot’s Bag of Knitting Tricks.
Music themed books:
Year of Wonder. This is a great book that introduces one piece of music per day for a year.
and for the kids:
The Story Orchestra series is a huge hit with Mabel. I love them too! She’s getting The Nutcracker and Carnival of the Animals for Christmas.
For the children:
Sing a Song of Seasons is a gorgeous, big book that includes a nature poem for every day of the year.
Beatrix and I both read and loved Maniac Magee this year.
I read Tuck Everlasting this year for the first time and loved it. I’m putting it in this section since it’s juvenile fiction.
Beatrix, Silas, and Job read The Wingfeather Saga this year. There are four books in the series, starting with this one.
My kids were recently introduced to The Adventures of Loupio and they love them. They are comic book style stories and join TinTin books as some of our favorites in that genre.
The Little Britches series is so good. Little Pear and Little Pear and his Friends are such cute books that I couldn’t wait to read again after reading them to our older kids when they were little.
Gone-Away Lake and Return to Gone-Away are favorite read alouds. The Saturdays is the first in a great series.
My girls received these for Christmas last year. Not so much books you read, as books you make. This probably would have been more appropriate on my other gift list!
I read the Julie of the Wolves trilogy to my older girls last year and we loved them.
Calico Bush was a really good one as well, a perfect read-aloud. Larkspur read Calico Captive (different author) and really enjoyed it. I think it would make a good read aloud as well.
I’ve been reading and the girls have been listening to the audio versions of the Anne of Green Gables series. Jane of Lantern Hill has been a favorite of all.
Larkspur read The Doll People series a few years ago and loved them. They were the first chapter books that she got really excited about.
The Sophie Mouse books are great early reader chapter books.
We have a dozen or more collections of poetry for children, and I occasionally add a new title. Most recently I added A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children to our collection.
We have read several of the books in Tomie DePaola’s 26 Fairmount Avenue Series and I highly recommend them. Endearing stories of family life with a nice bit of humor, they make great read-alouds that will span a wide range of ages as far as interest goes. I also think they would make great first chapter books for young readers. I just ordered a few more of them to put under the tree this year.
We have really enjoyed this Beatrix Potter The Complete Tales for years. You can’t go wrong with Beatrix Potter!
We also like the Calla edition of Stories from Hans Christian Andersen. The illustrations by Edmund Dulac are some of my favorites. Many of the Calla Editions look beautiful.
James Herriot is another favorite. This volume for children looks lovely: James Herriot’s Treasury for Children: Warm and Joyful Tales by the Author of All Creatures Great and Small (we have an older version of it.)
Picture Books:(the images themselves are links to the books, more fun that way for pretty children’s books!)
(I better stop now!)
Happy Reading!!!
My 2020 good gifts list is here.
Annie P says
I have never been able to stomach the Mitford books, as the Miss Read books are all so very dear to me, and I read an interview with Jan Karon where she admitted “borrowing heavily” from them for her novels. Maybe she thought nobody in America reads books based elsewhere, so we wouldn’t see the blatant similarities?
Sara says
Have you ever read any Elizabeth Goudge? I think you would love her stories of families, often broken ones, which are so beautifully written and insightful into human nature. I just finished reading a rather fairytale-like one called The Little White Horse which I loved.
Sigrid Undset’s Catherine of Siena is also highly recommended!
Kathie says
I love The Jolly Postman! I have a copy, and I don’t even have kids! So many of your suggestions are on my list of books to read. I have a copy of Beloved, but haven’t read it yet. I bought it in Milan, after hearing from someone that it’s one of Pope Francis’ favorites, although I have no actual facts to back that up! Thank you for putting these lists together every year! I hope you and your family have a wonderful Advent and Christmas!
Karie says
I have to agree on The Yearling. We listened to the audio last summer and it was so lovely and so enjoyable to listen too.
Susan Kuhlman says
Your husband and older boys may like Winterdance by Gary Paulsen. It is about his running the Iditarod and many say it is the funniest book they have ever read. Also, his Hatchet series is a good read for adults and children. For older elementary kids Night of the Twister is a page turner and demonstrates how resourceful and responsible children can be. Cold River is a great book about siblings who use their unique skills to survive in the wilderness. Island on Bird Street is another book about problem solving when a Jewish boy survives in the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII. I am in love with the Louise Penny mystery series for adults. It is set in Quebec and takes you on a ride. The nonfiction book Educated is inspirational.