Thursday, December 31, 2020

2020 Reading List

(Year End Book Awards)


8. Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman September 18, 2020
9. Tales of Troy and Greece by Andrew Lang November 8, 2020
10. Frozen (Heart of Dread #1) by Melissa de la Cruz and Michael Johnston December 1, 2020
11. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien December 12, 2020


Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is a re-read, but I've decided to now count re-reads in my end of year wrap up.  
I also finished Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction by V.J. Cook and Mark Newson on December 15, but haven't yet written a review for it, and I've always sorted out my end of year reading list by the date of the published review.  (I'm planning on re-reading much of Chomsky's Universal Grammar anyway before I attempt to write up a review.)

So, 11 books this year.  Not great, but it's not even my worst year.  (In 2019 and 2016 I only knocked out 6 books).  
In 2014, I knocked out 41 books, but now that parenthood is here, I fear those days are long gone.

2020 has been an interesting year.  We spent a few weeks on lock down here in Vietnam, during which I had a lot of time at home, but didn't have a lot of time to myself. We had a toddler running around the apartment which required constant attention.  (I occasional would fantasize about how much reading I would have gotten done if that lockdown had happened before I was a parent.  But then again, it's not by any means assured that I would have used that time productively.  It might well have been sucked up by my television/Youtube addiction.)

But from August, I started a new job (while staying on part time at the old job) and then was juggling working overtime with taking care of the toddler at home.  I've never been so busy in my life as I've been these past few months, and it was hard to find time to read.
Not only to find the time to read, but also to find the time to write up the reviews!  The last four reviews on this year's list ( Norse Mythology, Tales of Troy and Greece, Frozen (Heart of Dread #1) and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH ) were all reviews that I sacrificed some sleep in order to write, since I didn't have any time to myself until after the toddler went to bed.  And the video reviews filmed for Tales of Troy and Greece and Frozen were both videos that I filmed when I was very sleepy, and I fear that this probably showed in the videos--especially for Frozen.  
I suppose if I had any sense, I would have stopped these reviews a long time ago.  But it's something that I value, and so I'm going to keep soldiering on. (I've decided to cut out all the other frivolous blogging I do, but I want to keep the reviews going.)

So, those are my excuses.  
That being said, this year once again I wasted tons of time on Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter.  I could possibly get a few more books knocked off if I stopped wasting so much time on the Internet.  That's my goal for this year.

I've changed the title of this post to "2020 Reading List" whether than "2020 Book Awards"--which it had been every previous year.  Making a big deal of awarding the best and worst books of the year made a lot more sense when I was reading 41 books in a year (and it was something I had stolen from Peter Bratt anyway.)

But, even though I've decided to no longer headline this post with the word "awards", I'll still go through the motions anyway.

Best Fiction
Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman 


It's fiction in the obvious sense that none of this stuff ever happened.  But it's partly non-fiction in the sociological sense--the sense you get throughout the book that you are not just enjoying some stories, but that you are also learning about a culture's mythology and belief system.  And I think that sense probably helped to increase my enjoyment.  "I'm not just reading a bunch of silly stories, I'm learning stuff! Isn't this cool!"  But regardless, this was the book I enjoyed the most this year by far.

Worst Fiction
Frozen (Heart of Dread #1) by Melissa de la Cruz and Michael Johnston December 


I don't want to criticize this book too much, because it's largely my fault for reading it.  (What was I thinking picking this off the shelves?)  But, yeah, when it comes to a worst book, this is the worst book.

Best Non-Fiction
Being Wagner: The Triumph of the Will by Simon Callow 

So, this one wins by default.  It's the only non-fiction I read all year.  (Not counting books I read for professional development, which I categorize separately).  But it was a fun little read, so it may have won out regardless.  It wasn't an overly serious or academic book, but just perfect for someone who likes to just dabble in history--a.k.a. me.

Best Book For Professional Development
Designing Language Courses: A Guide for Teachers by Kathleen Graves

I don't know if I'd go as far as to say that I enjoyed this book (it was for professional development after all), but I certainly found it very readable, and I appreciated the way the book illustrated it's informational content by integrating everything into the personal stories of teachers.  It helped me a lot to absorb the information.

Video Version of this list HERE and embedded below:


For all the video reviews of 2020, see HERE: 


Abandoned Books 2020
[Note: Usually a book has to sit unread on my shelves for quite some time before I admit to myself that I've abandoned it.  Such is the case with all of these.  I didn't actually read any of these books in 2020--they're all books that I stopped reading the previous year (or previous years).  But this is the year that I finally got around to admitting I abandoned them.]

Assessing Young Language Learners by Penny McKay ,
Children Learning English by Jayne Moon ,
Giết Con Chim Nhại bởi Harper Lee (HUỲNH KIM OANH & PHẠM VIÊM PHƯƠNG dịch) ,
Practical English Usage by Michael Swan (Third Edition) ,
The Complete Stories of Oz by L. Frank Baum, [Note: I still actually plan to read all these stories one day, but I'm going to try to read and review them individually in the future instead of reading the whole book all at once.  So I'm not abandoning these stories, just abandoning the idea of reviewing them as a complete whole.]
Vietnamese Stories for Language Learners by Tri C. Tran and Tram Le,
Wheelock's Latin by Frederic M. Wheelock,
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2 comments:

  1. Whisky PrajerJanuary 2, 2021 at 7:35 AM

    This post prompted me to take a fearless moral inventory. It looks like I read eight books from cover to cover this year, though I think I'm forgetting some fiction (it really was just that kind of year). That doesn't include comic books or "graphic novels" (not a fan of that term). And if I were to inventory what I read on-line ... well, where to start? But one of the reasons why I usually post a weekly list of thought-provoking links is to keep record of the better stuff I've encountered, even if most of these links will be 404 zones in a year or two.

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  2. Joel SwagmanJanuary 2, 2021 at 9:12 AM

    Thanks Whisky. That makes me feel a bit better.
    I've been in the Booktube orbit lately, where people are routinely blazing through several books a month. That has made me even more self-conscious than usual about my own reading list. But I wonder, what is the average amount a person reads.

    I have a hard time with those long Internet reads, by the way. Even the ones I'm interested in. In your most recent post, 9https://whiskyprajer.blogspot.com/2020/12/rattling-in-my-brain-pan.html) I found the Thomas Jefferson one very interesting. (I had seen it earlier from Phil's twitter, but I gave it another try when you linked to it), but I couldn't make it all the way to the end without getting distracted. Same with the one on Bonfire of the Vanities.
    Don't get me wrong, I'm on the Internet all the time. I have serious Internet addiction. But I just can't seem to concentrate on the long reads.

    All of which is to say, even though you've read less books than me this year, you're doing better than I am in the long articles.

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