Books I Read in 2020

I used to hate the idea of re-reading books because I always felt like there were too many books in the world to read to waste time re-reading. That's not true for me anymore - thanks mostly to the pandemic. In those rough rough months of lockdown, I was so grateful for books on my Kindle that I loved and re-read for the sheer comfort of it. The books starred once are books that I re-read and those starred twice are the ones I'm still working on (because I have this terrible habit of starting too many books at the same time!)

Sue Monk Kidd - *The Invention of Wings, *Secret Life of Bees, The Book of Longings, **Dance of the Dissident Daughter Andy Weir - *The Martian

Amor Towles - A Gentleman in Moscow

Celeste Ng - Little Fires Everywhere Winifred Watson - Miss Pettigrew Lives For The Day Nick Hornby - How to be Good Fredrik Backman - A Man Called Ove Phillip Pullman - His Dark Materials Trilogy Mike McHargue - You're A Miracle (and a pain in the ass)

Rachel Held Evans - Inspired

James Nestor - Breath

Rina Mae Acosta, Michele Hutchison - The Happiest Kids in the World Rick Hanson - **Resilient, **Hardwiring Happiness Richard Rohr - **The Universal Christ

Kristin Neff - **Self Compassion

Tara Brach - **Radical Compassion

Rutger Bregman - **Humankind

There isn't a book that I read and didn't enjoy. Every book gave me what I most needed at that time but the book that took the cake, really gave me all the feels is The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd. As you can probably tell, I love everything this woman writes. I re-read The Invention of Wings and The Secret Life of Bees and now am reading her memoir which makes so much sense of everything else that she has written. Little bits of her story in every fictional work. The Book of Longings is a fictional take at the life of Jesus in which he is imagined to having a wife. Ana. I love Ana so much and I re-fell-in-love with the person of Jesus through Ana's life. Other special mentions goes to Fredrik Backman, for giving me the best warm fuzzy feelings with his hilarious book A Man Called Ove. And Kristin Neff, who I stumbled upon while doing research for a public-speaking assignment. Her writings in her book Self Compassion had the same deep impact on me that Susan Cain's Quiet did many years ago. An a-ha! moment of getting to know myself and not beating myself up for who I am.