2020. Oh my god, guys, what a ride. I’m surprised, but I was able to get some reading done in 2020. It helped, sort of, that I was home most of the time. And, we read a lot more books as a family to each other. So that’s why you’ll see Diary of a Wimpy Kid on my list, and Little House on the Prairie, and Junie B Jones. These are book we read as a family or I read to my kids at bedtime. So it did seem we were all reading more together. I really liked that.
So, you can find my reading logs on Goodreads. I log everything I read there. My reading goal for 2020 was 105 books. And according to Goodreads, I read 170 books.
Reading 170 books certainly sounds impressive, but it’s deceiving as well. I had three books I did not finish, but Goodreads counts them in my “books read” and “pages read” totals. There were also a couple large story collections that I only read one story out of, but Goodreads counts that whole book towards my totals. Also, I read several comics series that weren’t collected into paperbacks so I had to list them as single issues. That quickly inflates my totals. Plus, comics are super easy and quick to read. And I read a bunch of them this year.
Let’s look at some of my other Reading totals.
Here’s my shortest and longest book I read. Both were read for AWESOME-tober-fest this year. The short one is obviously a short story. The longest one is a collection of the works of Stephen Vincent Benet. He wrote The Devil and Daniel Webster. I only read The Devil and Daniel Webster. None of the other stories. But that book is counted amongst my totals.
Here are my “most popular” and “least popular” shelved books. I had read the first Harry Potter to my kids this year which started off a whole Potter obsession in this house that continues to this day. We’ve watched all the movies, I’ve read the first three books to them, and they each have their own wands. The least popular book I read is a comic from the Ultraverse: Prime comic series by Malibu. I read a bunch of these Ultraverse titles for my apppearance on the podcast Wizards: The Podcast Guide to Comics. These didn’t even exist on Goodreads. I had to add them.
If you look at my Google Spreadsheet reading log, which I keep in parallel with Goodreads, you’ll see it listing 113 reads this year. Minus the three aforementioned DNF books, which makes it 110 reads. That number rolls up the single issue comics into their collected titles. Still over my goal number of 105, so I’m happy with that. Next year (or this year, I guess, 2021) I set my reading goal to 115.
Let’s move on with my recap of my favorite books I read this year.
Rules are the same. Only books/comics I read for the first time in 2020 are eligible for this list. No re-reads, of which I had a few. You won’t find a lot of “2020” reads in here. I don’t typically read brand new stuff the year it comes out, but it happens. There was one big 2020 release that I did read. Will it make the list? Let’s find out.
Books
Immortality, Inc by Robert Sheckley – I’ve been wanting to read this for YEARS. This is the book that the movie Freejack was based on, and I am a fan of that movie. We even covered Freejack on Cult Film Club in 2020. Robert Sheckley is a prolific sci-fi author from the 50s. And yes, Immortality Inc was written in the late 50s. The novel is very different from the movie. The movie took a few aspects of the story and that’s about it. I’m considering doing an appendix episode of this novel on I Read Movies, so possibly stay tuned for that. But the book is good, it’s packed with interesting ideas, and I had some fun with it. I’m now curious to check out more of Sheckley’s work. He’s written a *ton* of stuff including several short story collections, and a novel, Dimension of Miracles, that was a precursor (and possible influencer) to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide.
Brilliance Trilogy by Marcus Sakey – I forget how I found out about this series. The basic premise is that at some point in the 80s it was discovered that 1% of the population is born “brilliant”. Meaning that they have special abilities. But we aren’t talking throwing fireballs, super speed, or flying. It’s more grounded than that. One man can read your intentions through your posture or your muscles tensing. Another man can read the subtleties of the ever changing stock market to such a degree that he racked up billions and shut the entire NYSE down. One woman can turn invisible, not physically invisible, but she inherently knows where people aren’t currently looking and can occupy those spots at the exact time to make herself functionally invisible. And there are many other degredations besides that. Sakey creates a pretty interesting world. It’s definitely an X-Men pastiche type story. Which itself is a thin alegory for racism. This book investigates all of that. The government that’s scared that Brilliants will take over world. What they do about it. And all the political intrigue and drama behind the scenes. It’s really good and I highly recommend it.
The Making of Return of the Jedi by JW Rinzler – So, I finally finished this series. It took me three years, but I finally did it. I read the original Making of Star Wars in 2018. Then I read the Making of Empire Strikes Back in 2019. And this year, I was able to finish the trilogy with Making of Return of the Jedi. These books are exhaustive. Thousands of pictures. Script fragments. Behind the scenes stuff. I had the Kindle versions and they also came with snippets of audio and video clips. There is so much to consume with this series. It’s an undertaking. But it’s highly satisfying and worth it for a die hard Star Wars fan. And to be honest, lately, I’ve been sort of “taking a break” on Star Wars. These books sort of put me back into the mindset of, “Yeah, there’s a lot to like about Star Wars.” Then add in watching season 2 of The Mandalorian with my son, and I may be somewhat ready to dive back into….well, if not all, then certain…Star Wars things.
NBA Jam (Boss Fight Books) by Reyan Ali – NBA Jam is one of my favorite arcade games of all time. This book is an oral history of how the game was made, how it became a global phenomenon, and all the drama that went on behind the scenes. It’s a lot of fun and I love oral histories like this. I read another pretty great oral history this year about Jaws called The Jaws Log. It was written by one of the screenwriters, Carl Gottlieb, who was there almost every day of shooting. Check it out!
This last spot was pretty hard. Several things could go here. I didn’t have any one, clear winner. So how about a two-fer?
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo – This book is a part of the plethora of “Magical Schools” books that have flooded the market since Harry Potter. See Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. This one, though, doesn’t use a hidden magical school amongst our world, it takes place on an existing college campus, Yale, that has a whole hidden magical community inside the normal campus life. I won’t lie, the book is a slow starter. You are sort of dropped into this world with very few context clues to what’s going on. But as I read and picked up more details about the magic in this world, I really liked it. Life in this book is pretty much the same as our own, except magic exists. The problem is, magic is dirty. It’s gross. And it’s not easy to do. There’s a lot of ceremony and ritual that’s required, and not just anybody can do it. And, it’s super dangerous. I liked this approach to magic. And the main protagonist, Alex Stern, is an interesting and complicated character. I would definitely read any sequel Bardugo wants to write in this world.
Time and Again by Jack Finney – I love time travel books. Especially ones that sort of try to take the material in different directions. This is one of those “secret government experiment to make time travel a reality” type stories. And it’s pretty good. A shadowy government agency recruits Si Morley to their ranks. They are attempting time travel. But time travel doesn’t work with a device or a “machine”. In this world, you have to almost will yourself into the past. It reminded me a lot of the movie Somewhere in Time with Christopher Reeve. And very few people have ever done it. The way they handle time travel here is pretty great. Si ultimately figures it out and travels back to the late 1800s New York. Something goes awry. He gets in trouble with a bad dude in 1880, but everytime he goes back to the future he notices small things are changing. So he has to make a decision about what needs to happen and where is he going to wind up staying, in the future, or in the past? This book was written in 1970. There’s a sequel, but it wasn’t written until 1995! 25 years later! I’m curious to read the sequel now considering some of the things that happen at the end of the first one.
I also read a bunch of movie novelizations this year for I Read Movies. I wanted to place a few on this list, however, I think I may break them out and do an I Read Movies 2020 Year End round up. And talk about the movie novelizations I read for the podcast there. Stay tuned for that!
Let’s switch over to comics!
Comics
The Flash by Josuha Williamson – This summer I went on a BIG The Flash read/re-read. First, I had gotten way behind on my current Flash reading. I had read the first couple volumes of Joshua Williamson’s Flash but stopped there. I wanted to catch up. So, I started where I left off, Volume 4, and read nearly straight through to Volume 12. And this includes Williamson’s take on Flash: Year One. There’s a lot of characters, and a lot of characters with super speed, which normally would bother me, but Williamson is able to handle that load. I enjoyed reading this run so much I actually went and read The Flash: Savage Velocity which is a collection of the first 18 issues of the 1987 Flash title. That was the title I read back in the day as they were being released. The first few issues are by Mike Baron and then William Messner-Loebs takes over. Everyone always talks about Mark Waid’s Flash run, but he didn’t get on that title until issue 62, so there are 61 issues BEFORE him that are actually really good. So I read the first 18 issues in Savage Velocity, and I happen to have a ton of these issues from when I bought them as they were coming out, so I pulled them out and read all the way up to issue #35. Loved this full read.
Marvel Masterworks – I actually read several of these collected Marvel Masterworks books. I read the first two Avengers volumes, as well as the first volume for Dr Strange, Iron Man, and Silver Surfer. I really dig these high quality collections. They are nice to read. I’m going to call out the Avengers (issues #1-10) and Dr Strange (Strange Tales #110-111, 114-141) as my favorites. I can’t express how much fun the Avengers books are. They are mostly by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Don Heck. These 60s stories are amazing and so different than what you expect out of these characters. Iron Man has roller skates BUILT INTO HIS BOOTS! And Dr Strange is exactly what you want it to be, these weirdly strange magical stories with TERRIFIC art by Steve Ditko. I highly recommend reading some if you have the chance. This year I’m hoping to bust into X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, and maybe even another volume of Avengers or Iron Man. Or even Dr Strange. Maybe all of them!
Paper Girls (v1-v3) – So I burned through the first three trades of Paper Girls this year based on people just *loving* this series. I was curious, plus Brian K Vaughn is an awesome writer. And there was talk about the 80s. I thought maybe I’d get some sort of Stranger Things vibe out of this. And that’s not wrong, but it doesn’t really do justice to what you get in this story. There’s SO MUCH going on here, and at any moment, you probably are only aware of 50% of it. There are constant revelations about things that already happened in the story that shed new light or change your perspective on the ongoing story. It’s amazing how well this is written considering how bananas the story gets. I mean BANANAS. The art is great, the titular “paper girls” are awesome, and it takes place in the 80s. I’m not going to spoil anything, just read it.
Calamity Jane: The Calamitous Life of Martha Jane Cannary by Christian Perrissin/Matthieu Blanchin – I found this on a lark for sale and grabbed it to read for my western podcast, Hellbent for Letterbox. And wow, it was super charming. The art is terrific. It’s black and white with some gray lowlights. It reminds me of those Japanese paintings with ink and brush. But the book tries to tell as accurate a story as it can from all the known facts about Mary Jane Cannary, aka Calamity Jane. It takes from several books, and some letters Jane wrote to her daughter. I loved this book and thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
Infinite Kung-Fu by Kagan McLeod – This book reminds me a lot of the above Calamity Jane book. The art is similarly fantastic. Black and white with lots of brush strokes. It felt like Kagan McLeod had found a lost 70s Kung Fu movie and illustrated it into graphic novel form. An evil emporer, his evil kung fu master generals, kung fu gods, and lots of limb tearing action. I really enjoyed this.
And those were my favorite books and comics I read in 2020. Hope you enjoyed this article and found something new that you may eventually love. Let me know if you do!
Lots more coming up, guys. Expect to see an I Read Movies novelization round up, as well as my favorite movies of 2020 list.
Cavalcade of Awesome 