I am an obsessive reader.
I say this because it's difficult for me to not finish a book. If the plot is anywhere close to mildly compelling, I have to know how it ends, and I'm a sucker for checking a box: I love adding a book to my completed book list and therefore I don't want any of my time to be wasted half-reading books. Just so you know, this is awful logic. Don't waste your time full-reading books that aren't worthwhile. You're allowed to call it quits. Please do.
So this is how it happens that in these first seven months of 2020, I have read 43 books.
I looked back at my list this week to see if I could pick out some favorites, and I thought it would be difficult to narrow it down, since I had read so many! But as it happened, it was fairly easy to pull out a few shining stars from the bunch. That isn't to say that the rest weren't good reads - these four just stood out above the rest.
I don't have too much to say about them besides that they were good enough to stand out from the crowd, so I'm just going to leave you with my initial comments that I put in with the titles directly after reading them. Here they are:
Still Life / Louise Penny // An Inspector Gamache mystery is like a good beach read but for the winter time next to a warm fire with a hot cocoa.
Letters to the Church / Francis Chan // I didn’t know this, but Francis Chan left his megachurch in early 2010’s because he didn’t like how the church had become about his personality and speaking style and also megachurch doesn’t look like New Testament church. In 2017 Chan started a house church in San Francisco. He lays out criticisms and encouragement for the Church. It’s led me back into Scripture and prayer. I would 9.99/10 recommend.
All the Light We Cannot See / Anthony Doerr // I listened to the audiobook, so it took me almost a month to get through but SO GOOD. Maybe a little slow at the end? The novel is about a blind French girl and a young German radio prodigy during WWII. Doerr is so good at vivid descriptions, it's beautiful.
Til We Have Faces / C.S. Lewis // Fantastic. Wow.
Here are the rest of the titles from the year so far. Most of them were really good; there are only really a few that I wish I had set down instead of pushing through to finish.
