2020: A Literary Memoir
In 2020, I read 42 books. 10,991 pages. Here is my year, in review, according to the books I read.
Here’s 2019, 2018, and 2015 too.
January
I wake up to Sandstorm by Darude blasting through portable speakers. Still warm from bed, I creep downstairs to wish everyone a happy new year. The air is thick with smoke from the Black Summer fires, and we embrace amid the chaos and destruction and uncertainty.
On the first day of 2020, I drive out to the Murrumbidgee River to pitch my tent. Earth is the colour of sky is the colour of river: red ochre. I finish Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner while texting a boy from a dating app who is reading the same book. He is sitting in a cafe in Sydney, me in a fold-out chair on the dirt in Gundagai. I find the ending unsatisfying and the characters whiny and irritating. 3 stars.
The boy asks me what my next read is. I send him a picture of Trick Mirror, a book of essays by Jia Tolentino. “No way, me too”, he says. An image of his hand holding up the same book in his loungeroom blinks on my iPhone screen.
We read Trick Mirror together, texting throughout. Some of the essays (particularly about what it’s like being a woman) are very good. 4 stars.
Weeks later I meet the boy who reads the same books. We have breakfast and swim in the ocean and end up drinking tea on my balcony where he tells me that referencing my group of friends on the south coast as ‘the boys’ is ‘problematic'. I think about this a lot. We never see each other again.
I start working as the Director of IC, a communications agency I acquired from my business mentor in 2019. I sit in an office in Miranda while smoke alarms go off in buildings where there is no fire. The sky is still orange, nobody is shaking ScoMo’s hand and everyone is saying we knew this would happen and where are the resources and why weren’t they allocated. 47 million acres were burned.
I read Lanny by Max Porter, because his book Grief Is The Thing With Feathers is one of my favourite pieces of prose/poetry and his style seems like magic to me. 4 stars.
I read Here Until August: Stories by Josephine Rowe. I haven’t read many collections of short stories but this is a delight. This is the first book in my WellRead subscription, which sends reliably good new releases to your doorstep each month.
She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey is next. I am interested in how the Weinstein story broke, and these journalists leave me frustrated at the lengths that entire industries go to silence survivors of sexual assault. Read this for a deeper understanding of sexist systems. 5 stars.
I read The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1932. It is a gift from a client, and follows a farmer in old agrarian China. I read it while camping in Geroa. The sand is black with ash. 4 stars.
February
I fly to Melbourne and meet a hot air balloon pilot in a bar with some friends. He takes us up for free, and we float out over the Yarra Valley at sunrise, the sea of morning fog sweeping across the ground below. We drink mimosas for breakfast.
A friend teaches me how to fly a plane and I take the yoke for 10 minutes, before handing it back, paralysed by the responsibility of holding a handful of friends in a carton of metal in the sky.
I spend a few rainy days in Lorne and my friends and I walk along the coastline under an umbrella of grey. I read Journalism at the Crossroads by Margaret Simons on the couch, but find it mostly outdated.
I spend a couple of nights in an Airbnb in the bushy outskirts of Melbourne on a work retreat with a friend. I have many baths. We climb up to Hanging Rock and I finish Orchid and the Wasp by Caoilinn Hughes, who spoke at the Sydney Writers Festival in 2019. It is at times verbose, but mostly hilarious, and I enjoy it immensely. 4 stars.
I read Past the Shallows by Favel Parret but find it difficult to care about the world that has been crafted. 2 stars. I read Room by Emma Donoghue for book club and rate it 3 stars. I’m not a genre-fiction reader and struggle to determine whether it is a lack of interest in this kind of literature that leaves me unsatisfied or a matter of writing style.
Friends get married in our backyard and they walk themselves down the aisle holding hands. My best friends surprise me at their engagement party (of which I arrive late to) by getting married, too. I cry profusely.
Of course, I read Normal People by Sally Rooney. Everyone is talking about it. I post it to an old lover afterwards who reads it and tells me it makes his heart hurt too. 5 stars.
March
I fly to Tasmania for Panama Festival with a handful of girlfriends. We rent a convoy of vans and cry during Julia Jacklin, our hands held tight on International Women’s Day. We recover in an old church while the first cases of Covid-19 are announced in Hobart and I finish In The Dream Home by Carmen Maria Machado in the bath. It is an experimental memoir that plays on literary techniques and is nothing short of genius. The author explores her experience in an abusive same-sex relationship in an accessible yet heartbreaking way. 5 stars.
I fly home with The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel A. van der Kolk. It quickly becomes the most instrumental piece of academic literature I have ever read. It is dense, but will leave you with practical, science-based actions to help you heal. 5 stars. I think about this book as I learn Muay Thai at the fighting gym in Wollongong.
The first ban on gatherings, due to the rapid spread of Covid-19 across the globe, happens March 16. I drop out of my Masters. A week later I sit on the faded floorboards with my housemates in front of the fire, glass of red in hand, and watch ScoMo greet the nation from my laptop screen. National lockdown.
I decide to close the company. We have lost too many clients due to the impacts of the virus on certain industries. I have to call my staff member and let her go. My hair starts falling out at the immensity of stress, and the weight of the debt from the business feels like an isolating burden to carry.
I close Sydney Exvangelicals, the online group I founded for deconstructing Christians who needed safe places to talk about their conservative upbringing and their newfound beliefs. I cry beneath my sheets. I felt the group was moving in an unhealthy direction. Us vs. them. The very thing I despised about the church. I was in a position to stop it…
I don’t know if it is the right thing to do but I do it anyway. I say goodbye and feel a mixture of betrayal and loss and lightness.
I read Three Types of Solitude, a short essay by Brian W Aldiss (3 stars) and don’t pick up another book for the rest of the month.
April
Lockdown. I play games over FaceTime with friends. Someone sets up their decks and hosts a rave on Zoom. I do what I do when I feel nervous or unsure about something, I read an old favourite. Usually it’s The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson, but this time it’s Cloudstreet by Tim Winton. I love Winton, I love the way he paints landscape and makes me feel like I’m home. Cloudstreet is no different. 5 stars.
Drawn by Kathleen Travers.
I meet a boy on a dating app and, after joking about hazmat suits during a phone call (he, walking around a park in the city, me in the bath at home), he brings two on our first date. We spend hours in them, riding across the river in the Royal National Park on water trikes, popping champagne and going on bushwalks encased in white fabric. We delight in having moments of intimacy during a pandemic, and spend a few weeks hiking and cooking until the world resumes again and we are swept up in the pace.
I read Just Kids by Patti Smith for book club and feel inspired to create, despite the unknown and the global state of flux. We gather on Zoom to discuss it. 4 stars.
I decide to push on with the business. I feel insecure and unsure and stressed and alone. I don’t know it yet, but this will end up being the best year in the business’ 5-year history. For now, in April, I have to learn to swim again.
May
I turn 26 and go for a bushwalk and make popcorn on my hiking stove and swim in the river naked. I tend to spend significant dates alone so there is no risk of disappointment. It is not a healthy approach, but I revel in the control.
There are so many birthdays in May in my sharehouse of 6. We dress up in formal attire and make wood-fired pizzas and play cards to pass the time. We pitch our tents in the backyard, vowing to sleep in them, but they remain empty. Isolation continues.
I read Self Help, a book of short stories often told in the second person by Lorrie Moore. “After four movies, three concerts, and two-and-a-half museums, you sleep with him. It seems the right number of cultural events.” is written on the cover. I know I will enjoy it. 5 stars.
Wake up one morning with a man you had thought you'd spend your life with, and realise, a rock in your gut, that you don't even like him. Spend a weepy afternoon in his bathroom, not coming out when he knocks. You can no longer trust your affections. People and places you think you love may be people and places you hate.
I read Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton because the internet is telling me it is amazing. I don’t enjoy it and find it riddled with cliche. 2 stars.
I read The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton. The author wrote this book in high school. I read it in one sitting. If you loved The Clockwork Orange or Requiem for a Dream, you’ll love this one too. 5 stars.
I read And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie for book club in my tent on the side of the road and find myself enjoying the murder mystery genre. 4 stars.
I spend a week in Byron Bay wearing matching K-mart pyjamas with my girlfriends and play the doughnut game: 15 doughnuts attached to string and hung from the loungeroom light, ready to be consumed at rapid pace by hungry mouths.
June
#BlackoutTuesday and the horrific injustice in America and the complications of the black square. I buy books by black writers because I need to be active in my unlearning and I don’t listen to enough voices that have suffered (and continue to suffer) from racial injustice.
I speak at a media conference with the NSW Police, announcing the launch of the #noexcuse video campaign I pushed for. It sees extensive media coverage across all major television stations and newspapers. I celebrate with a stranger on a date who I will never see again, because I feel proud of this small achievement, and because I don’t want to burden my friends with my pride.
I go camping on Mongarlowe River and read The Wife Drought by Annabel Crabb. “Why, after all these decades of campaign, reform, research and thought about how we can best get women into the workplace, are we so slow to pick up that the most important next step is how to get men out of it?” For any cis-het woman finding themselves resentful at the amount of work they are doing to sustain the family home, read this. You have a right to feel that resentment. 4 stars.
I read The School of Life: An Emotional Education by Alain de Botton. I highlight something on every page and want to hand a copy to every person I have ever encountered. 5 stars. A necessary read. It will make you a better person.
Anxiety deserves greater dignity. It is not a sign of degeneracy, rather a kind of masterpiece of insight: a justifiable expression of our mysterious participation in a disordered, uncertain world.
July
The world is still grieving. I read Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge. While focused on race relations in Britain, it is an important and relevant read for the global north. It is the only book I read this month.
I go snow-shoeing across the mountain ranges in Kosciuszko National Park with my cousins. On the way home, with clumps of mud and melting snow still sitting in the folds of my waterproof pants, my friend Luke calls.
“Rubes, they found him.”
“Found who?” I ask, ushering the front of the car to turn down the music.
“Paolo.”
I had been gone too long to know he had been missing, but I knew him well enough to know the outcome.
I spend the rest of the drive staring out over the arid landscape. Hilltops of snow, the outline of white gums, the odd burnt-out car, large sandstone rocks resting where tires once were. I try to squeeze feeling out of me but nothing comes. I spend his birthday in a church, mourning the loss of a friend who found life too painful, too cruel.
August
I start the month in the Blue Mountains in my tent, next to two other tents, each with a heart and mind that I love. We wake for sunrise and watch the rocks turn golden in the morning light and drink our tea.
A couple of weeks later I am back, settling into an Airbnb in Blackheath with two wild and wonderful women – also self-employed, creative, passionate. We round out the week next to a river in our tents, taking hours to build a fire in the pouring rain. I read How To Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee (4 stars) by the fire and The Spare Room by Helen Garner (4 stars).
August is like July is like June. Working from home. Feeding the cockatoos as they perch on my bedroom window sill. Reading in the winter sun in the garden, next to Ernie, the dog. Having a bath in the middle of each day, while the emails filter into my inbox. Interviewing candidates for a new role I’m advertising. Writing each morning, fuelled by the anger of Paolo’s death and the institutions I blame for it. I am mostly numb this month, but I don’t know it.
September
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason arrives in the mail from WellRead. Dry humour, heartbreaking content. 4 stars. I read it in Bellingen, and out by the river in Platypus Flats in my tent, while my north coast friends roll awake in the backs of their vans. I drive home and flop on my bed and receive a group call: my best friends from high school announcing their engagement on FaceTime. I cry with joy.
I read Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday. It is far too meta for my liking and I finish it with nothing but question marks. 2 stars.
October
I read How to Be Both by Ali Smith. Some editions start with a different part of the story. I like the first half of mine, but lose interest in the second. I don’t know what to make of Ali. I adore her writing and then suddenly, I am lost. 3 stars.
I meet a boy who likes orchids. He teaches me a lot about pace and communication. I admire his calm assuredness and his appreciation for simplicity. We hike along the coast together.
I read Heart Berries, a memoir by Terese Marie Mailhot on the train. It is about mental illness: about the author’s struggle with bipolar and PTSD, and navigating relationships with her parents. 3 stars.
I read The Monkey’s Mask, a book of poetry by Dorothy Porter. It is engaging, fast-moving. Each poem follows the one before it. 4 stars.
As I’m on my way out to the Warrumbungles, I read The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative by Vivian Gornick. It is mostly an academic book. 3 stars.
I pitch under the remnants of an exploding volcano from 17 million years ago and spend a few days on my own: hiking, cooking over a fire and reading in my tent. Another friend dies suddenly, one I am not close to. It opens the wound of Paolo’s death and I give myself space to explore grief. I read A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis and it comforts me. 4 stars.
November
I finish H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald in an Airbnb in Armidale. I find myself alone again. I decide I am running away. The book feels repetitive and I lose interest quickly. Worth reading if you have an appreciation for hawks. 3 stars.
I spend a weekend in Crescent Head with a number of friends, so many it feels strange. Covid restrictions have eased. The surfboards are under the tree, the hammocks hung. It feels nice to meet new people and wash dishes in a bucket of soapy water under the moon. Some of us are worried about the US election, and we refresh our phones throughout the day.
I drive to Byron Bay afterwards, and spend a few days in nice restaurants and along deserted beaches. When I’m home, I read Shaun Tan’s new children’s book Dog (a true delight) and Joan Didion’s A Year of Magical Thinking. I don’t connect with Didion’s writing and struggle with this book. 3 stars. I try another afterwards, The White Album, but I get bored and leave it in the dashboard of my car.
The boy who likes orchids buys me Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink. It helps me understand how to motivate my team and I appreciate the ease of books about business. 4 stars.
December
I enter routine. I bring on a business partner and I lease a private office in Miranda. The team is together again and we are hiring our fifth. I deactivate Instagram and delete the Facebook app. Suddenly, my screen time changes from 4.5 hours a day to less than one. I catch a train to work and read. I come home and read. I swim in the ocean and read on the sand.
I read The Accidental by Ali Smith in an Airbnb with my family in Port Macquarie. It is the first time we have gone away together. There were no hotels or motels or campsites growing up. Now I’m working a good job, I can afford to support the adventure. We swim in rivers and drink champagne on a wrap around veranda. The holiday breaks my heart a little.
Sabrina, the graphic novel by Nick Drnaso is next. It is a recommendation from the boy in January who reads the same books. It is astounding. 5 stars.
I read Annie Leibovitz at Work by Annie Leibovitz on the beach at home. She has taken some of the most influential portraits of our time and I appreciate the frankness with which she discusses her art practice. 4 stars.
I read Getting Off: One Woman’s Journey Through Sex and Porn Addiction by Erica Garza and find the writing lazy and the content numbing. 2 stars.
I Choose Elena by Lucia Osborne-Crowley is next. I appreciate her writing style and the way in which she speaks about her sexual assault and its impact on the body, and her career as a gymnast. I recommend it to other survivors of assault. 4 stars.
Real Life by Taylor Brandon is a beauty. I read this in an Airbnb on the Hawkesbury River with a friend. The cover is similar to A Little Life, one of my favourite novels, and the content is similar too. It takes me a while to appreciate this novel as a separate entity. It makes me cry many times. 4 stars.
I start planning the year ahead. I write down my goals (buy a house, do a few more Masters subjects, do the Lara Pinta and make it out alive). I write down my health goals (more swimming and Muay Thai and no Coca Cola in 2021, please). I have booked the same campsite out by the Murrumbidgee River over New Years with a couple of girlfriends. I am planning on finishing the year on the same red sand that I entered it on.
Hopefully the year ahead has a little more hope and a little less pain.
~