Photo by Jenny Rollo from FreeImages

Happy New Year, all!

Yes, I neglected my blog sadly last year. I realize I haven’t posted since March. Between having a small baby and having a toddler and struggling with massive depression related to the lockdowns, etc., I didn’t have a lot of energy to write posts. But I have been writing some, and much more than that I have been READING. I read 61 books last year, 11 past my goal of 50. And I loved it. I’ve set another 50-book goal for this year.

But I realized I never really stopped to share my thoughts on all the books I read last year, which were extremely varied in genre and subject matter. I really don’t enjoy writing reviews, but I do find reading reviews helpful, so I decided to go through my 2020 reading list and just write mini-reviews, one paragraph or so, of each book. Five per post, with the extra one tacked onto the last post. I hope you enjoy reading my thoughts, and I hope they’re helpful to you if you were thinking about reading any of these!

I only gave five stars to 11 books, and 4 of those I had read before. This was an excellent book to start the year out with, and I recommend it highly! I actually probably need to re-read it.

The subtitle basically says it all — Drew Dyck goes over some very practical and useful things about self-control based on both Biblical truth and scientific findings. It has actually helped me implement a few better habits over the past year (like reading more!).

This is by far one of my favorite books of 2020 (or maybe ever). As you can see, they year started out strong!

What can I say about this book? It’s charming, meaningful, extremely well-written. The slowly unfolding story, past and present, of what seems like just any other grouchy old man becomes a history of a character that you can’t help absolutely loving. Added in is a good dose of the importance and value of community. I laughed. I cried. It moved me, Bob.

There are a few swear words throughout, and a mention of a gay character (just a small side story, not a main feature). The movie on Amazon is also excellent!

At this point I started reading through some of the books I’d had on my Kindle app for so long that I couldn’t really remember why they were there, because I was awake comforting a baby a lot of the night and ebooks on a phone were easy to read in the middle of the night with one hand.

This one was fairly enjoyable. I have no idea why it was on my Kindle, but it was just what it claims to be — a clean mystery. The main character is a crime scene cleaner, which I found interesting. The book was Christian without being too preachy. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t super memorable, and I wasn’t driven to go hunt down the rest of the series. But if you’re looking for a clean mystery, I’d recommend it!

Contains references to murder, but I don’t recall anything too graphic.

I bought this one years ago at a Christian bookstore, and at this point finally read it because it was next on my bookshelf. It’s a collection of letters written by C.S. Lewis, selected from larger volumes of his letters.

It was, of course, excellent. There were so many nuggets of wisdom that I’m still thinking about almost a year later. Plus, it showed a lot of insight into his life that I hadn’t seen before, even with the amount of things I’ve read by or about him. Highly recommend this one!

It does contain some discreet discussion of sins or temptations he or his friends may have dealt with. Always very tasteful.

This was another one that was on my Kindle app for unknown reasons. It was an engaging, well-written read, but I can’t recommend due to language and some explicit scenes. I appreciate the fact that it occupied me during some long nights, but I’m not going to seek out the rest of the series.

I’ll be back in a few days with five more books to tell you about!