2020 Year in Books
Notes from a cursed year of reading
“We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.” --Roberto Bolaño
Whoops. I woke up early this morning and went to work on my book. I’ve been doing a gang of interviews and the work is always exciting after a really good interview so I was eager to get to it and the time flew by.
I was in the middle of baking biscuits and boiling grits for my family when I realized: oh shit—my newsletter. Annie and Nuvia are both on winter break, and I had so much fun playing Catan and Ticket to Ride a new game called Skull (the jury is still out) last night, I forgot to do my homework.
So while the beans are soaking for chili, let’s get to my annual Year in Books. This is not a best of list. It’s simply a list of books I read this year broken into categories you may or may not find useful. Sometimes I write a few words about my favorite books in a particular category; sometimes I don’t. Taste is subjective and all the usual caveats apply.
If I reviewed the book, interviewed its author, wrote a profile, or have discussed the book in a previous edition of Message from the Underworld, I have provided a link. (If you land on a page and don’t see the book, keep scrolling.)
This list is intended to shine a light on the books that moved me the most, but it has a way of highlighting my biases and shortcomings. For instance, I read four books by Irish writers this year. Here we have a bias, because Irish writers are the best, and a shortcoming, because if they’re the best why didn’t I read more of them? I ask myself this question every year.
It goes without saying, this has been a strange year, and it’s been strange for different people in different ways. For whatever reason, reading did not bring me the pleasure it has in the past. It feels like I read a lot of books by authors I’ve read before but didn’t enjoy the experience as much. (Note: This doesn’t apply to any authors I know personally.)
I think I was asking a lot of books this year. I was doing some fairly intense research and wanted the comfort of something familiar or I was trying to distract myself from this god awful year and oftentimes reality was harsher, stranger, and more intense than the words on the page. As the year wore one, I stopped taking assignments or pitching books to review. There were so many books I wanted to read that I just didn’t get to.
Goodreads tells me I read 52 books in 2020, but the number is higher because of books published underground. No IBSN numbers, no bar codes, no rules, no values. I’m currently reading Sing Backwards and Weep by Mark Lanegan, a lowdown dirty rock and roll memoir and I love it. I’m halfway through, it’s 1993, Lanegan has got himself a bad heroin habit, and shit is about to go down. Closing out the year with a junkie in a crisis feels right.
Books That Made Me Question the Worthiness of the Human Project
The Fruit of All My Grief by J. Malcolm Garcia
Weather by Jenny Offill
The Big Yaroo by Patrick McCabe
Apeirogon by Colum McCann
Right off the bat I can point to three books on this list that were a letdown from previous books. I should have known 2020 was going to suck after a profile I wrote of Colum McCann was killed. He wrote a beautiful, reaffirming book, and last February I spent a pleasant afternoon with the author in San Miguel de Allende, but minutes after submitting my piece I learned about his vile and horrible behavior. I spent the better part of the afternoon trying to get it pulled. Long story short, the paper did the right thing and didn’t run the story, but I sure did waste a lot of time and energy on it when I could have been eating tacos in San Miguel de Allende.
Books That Reaffirmed It
Fuck you, COVID-19.
Books about Music & Musicians
Confusion Is Next: The Sonic Youth Story by Alex Foege
Spiels of a Minuteman by Mike Watt
Kids of the Black Hole: Punk Rock Postsuburban California by Dewar MacLeod
Turned On: A Biography of Henry Rollins by James Parker
Please Be Nice: My Life Up ‘Til Now by Gary Floyd
Art to Choke Hearts & Pissing in the Gene Pool by Henry Rollins
Spray Paint the Walls by Stevie Chick
Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad
Double Nickels on the Dime by Michael T. Fournier
Planet Joe by Joe Cole
Enter Naomi by Joe Carducci
Get in the Van by Henry Rollins
So I read (or re-read) virtually all of these books for research for my current book project. If this list doesn’t give you a big fucking clue as to what I’m working on, I don’t know what to tell you.
Some of these I’ve read before, but the titles on this list were either short or engaging enough to hold my attention all the way through.
This list would be much longer if I counted the parts of all the other books that I consulted; but I’m a completist. If I didn’t finish it, it doesn’t make the list. My favorite is a tie between Parker’s Turned On and Carducci’s Enter Naomi. Both have an idiosyncratic prose style I find unique and compelling. And if you haven’t read Our Band Could Be Your Life, I highly recommend the audio book. This interview I did with the author about it was one of the most popular pieces I published in 2020.
Books That Zapped Me into the Past
Welcome to Spring Street by William Brandon III
Weird to think of a story set during the Occupy movement as “the past” but after the summer of racial reckoning the Occupy events now sit squarely in their own pocket of time. Here’s the blurb I wrote for the book: “If Bukowski wrote about anarchists, dissidents, and reactionaries, the result would be Welcome to Spring Street. A prescient and delightfully discombobulating take on the American police state."
Books That Anticipate the Future
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa & translated by Steve Snyder
Another letdown by one of my favorite authors. In a year that felt like a bad dystopian novel, my appetite for science fiction was pretty low.
Books I Read for Research
The Disaster Tourist by Yun Ko-eun, translated by Lizzie Buehler
I have an idea for a story I’ve been kicking around for years and when I read the description of The Disaster Tourist, I was afraid the author had beaten me to it. Thankfully, the book is nothing like my idea and I can continue to not write it.
Books That Don’t Rhyme
Voyage of the Sable Venus by Robin Coste Lewis
A Coney Island State of Mind by Gaia Schilke
In 2020 I learned that the phrase “A Coney Island State of Mind,” which was famously used by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and less famously by Gaia Schilke, was coined by Henry Miller. I should probably read more poetry in 2021. Apologies to those of you who sent me poetry books I didn’t read. (Hi Justin!)
Books That Make Me Wanna Commit Some Crimes
Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden
Books of Lamp & Banners by Elizabeth Hand
Dark Passage by David Goodis
I read crime novels in my free time and I didn’t have a lot of free time this year, but all of these were very good.
Books That Go Bump in the Night
Kubrick Red by Simon Roy, translated by Jacob Homel
Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay
Come Closer by Sara Gran
The Outsider by Stephen King
There are two kinds of horror fans: those who know that Paul Tremblay is the real deal and those who haven’t read him yet.
Books with Pictures in Them
Good Talk by Mira Jacob
I don’t feel badly about the smallness of this list because I read a bazillion punk rock zines in 2020 and any day spent looking at old punk rock zines is a good day. It’s like bible meditation.
Books That Are Difficult to Classify
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
The Skinned Bird by Chelsea Biondolillo
Attack of the 50-Foot Indian by Stephen Graham Jones
American Harvest by Marie Mockett
Little Constructions by Anna Burns
The Taiga Syndrome by Cristina Rivera Garzam, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana
The Poor Mouth by Flann O’Brien
In the Dream House was probably my most disappointing read all year, whereas Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, The Skinned Bird, Little Constructions, and The Taiga Syndrome all exceeded my expectations. I didn’t think I’d enjoy spending 400+ pages with Evangelicals, but everything Marie Mockett writes is a delight.
Books with Short Stories in Them
The Low Desert by Tod Goldberg
Henry Miller by Black Spring
Song for the Unraveling of the World by Brian Evenson
And I Do Not Forgive You by Amber Noelles
The Decapitated Chicken & Other Stories by Horacio Quiroga, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden
I started but didn’t finish so many short story collections this year. The last fiction I read in 2020 was Tod Goldberg’s The Low Desert, a linked collection of gangster-ish stories, some of which are set in the world of his Gangsterland novels, which I love. Goldberg writes deeply memorable characters and some of the best dialog since Elmore Leonard. He’s also a good egg.
Books Recommended without Reservation
Sabrina & Corina by Kali Farjardo-Anstine
Good Morning Destroy of Men’s Souls by Nina Renata Aron
Great writing, fearless storytelling, memorable characters, and big feelings. What else do you want? These books deliver.
Book That Had the Biggest Impact
Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time by Ben Ehrenreich
I’ve thought about this book more than any book I read in 2020. It’s a book that defies easy classification or categorization. It’s a book of tangents. It’s a book about the stars. It’s a book about the way our collective imagination has failed the planet and that if we want a better future for our children we need to imagine what that world looks like and plot a path for how we can get there.
One of the frustrating things about writing about this book, which I did in this profile for the Los Angeles Times, is that it’s so easy to make the book sound dire or shrill when it is neither of these things. It’s full of hope and passion and wonder. I went into more detail my newsletter this summer, which was a clue that the book had gotten its hooks into me in a deep way. I’m always thinking about it, I recommended it to Annie last night, and now I’m recommending it to you.
I also had a book published in 2020, Do What You Want: The Story of Bad Religion, which I wrote with the band. Do What You Want is my fifth book, which means that most years I do not have a book to celebrate. (I didn’t in 2019, and I won’t in 2021, but keep your fingers crossed for 2022.) It was also published in Germany, Italy, and Brazil, which were all firsts for me. So I’m going to celebrate the book one last time here with you.
This was a rough year in which to publish a book, but it was much harder for fiction writers and first-time authors. The conversations about the pandemic, the president, climate change, and racial justice took up so much attention that at times it felt borderline irresponsible to focus on anything else. Weirdly enough, Do What You Want has been the best publishing experience I’ve ever had thanks in large part to the band and to the fans. Bad Religion fans are the best. As Keith Morris would say, “We don’t need to go any further.”
If you bought a copy of Do What You Want, or any book this cursed year, I thank you. I hope 2021 is happier and healthier for all of us.
