My 2020 Reading List (Recommendations & Favorite Quotes)
At the beginning of this year, I told myself that I would try to read at least 30 books before December 31. I knew it was going to be a challenge because I also had a lot of plans for myself in this coming year. Little did I know that COVID-19 would disrupt so many of my plans… In a totally unexpected way, however, COVID-19 and mandated quarantine life has made it easier for me to fulfill this specific resolution. I no longer have have any excuse to put off reading. Stuck indoors most days, I now should have all the time in the world to curl up with a hot cup of tea and read. Reading is one of my favorite activities of all time - so I’ll take this as a blessing.
Enough rambling. Here’s my reading list so far and my notes about the books as well as my favorite quotes.
You’ll have to click on this link to expand the chart I have above, where I include more details about my thoughts and favorite quotes from each book.
I would love to hear what you guys think and I’m also open to book recommendations from you guys!
Below are links to the Amazon pages of the books and a few of my favorite quotes from the book. If you decide to purchase a book via my link, I would make a small commission from your qualifying purchases on amazon.com, at no additional cost to you! Appreciate your support!
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone - Lori Gottlieb
“We can’t have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same.”
“There’s no hierarchy of pain. Suffering shouldn’t be ranked, because pain is not a contest.”
“Relationships in life don't really end, even if you never see the person again. Every person you've been close to lives on somewhere inside you. Your past lovers, your parents, your friends, people both alive and dead (symbolically or literally)--all of them evoke memories, conscious or not.”
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - Mark Manson
“Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.”
“Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience. Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it or quash it or silence it, only backfires. The avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering. The avoidance of struggle is a struggle. The denial of failure is a failure. Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame.”
“Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and to tear it out is not only impossible, but destructive: attempting to tear it out unravels everything else with it. To try to avoid pain is to give too many fucks about pain. In contrast, if you’re able to not give a fuck about the pain, you become unstoppable."
Pilates’ Return to Life Through Contrology - Joseph Pilates
Educated: A Memoir - Tara Westover
“You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them,” she says now. “You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.”
“It’s strange how you give the people you love so much power over you.”
The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph - Ryan Holiday
“There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.”
“Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.”
“Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn’t mean you have to agree. Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn’t mean it is. We decide what story to tell ourselves.”
Pachinko - Min Jin Lee
“There was consolation: The people you loved, they were always there with you, she had learned. Sometimes, she could be in front of a train kiosk or the window of a bookstore, and she could feel Noa's small hand when he was a boy, and she would close her eyes and think of his sweet grassy smell and remember that he had always tried his best. At those moments, it was good to be alone to hold on to him.”
Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life - Yiyun Li
“What one carries from one point to another, geographically or temporally, is one’s self. Even the most inconsistent person is consistently himself.”
How to Think Like a Horse - Cherry Hill
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos - Jordan B. Peterson
Lost Connections - Johann Hari
The Archipelago Gulag - Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Figuring - Maria Popova