I read 9 self-help books during the pandemic and now I am a completely perfect person

Since March 2020, I have read 9 books that could fall into the category of self-help. In one way or another, these books have promised to make me a master of my own existence. I should be in control of my life, with a well-prioritised routine, a clean house and even cleaner sleep hygiene.

So, about a year later, am I now a smiling, well-oiled machine living my best life? Hahahaha! No! Absolutely not! But I did learn at least one useful thing from each of them, so I will present these things here and save you the time of reading everything else surrounding them.

My year in books: what I read and what I loved in 2020

Is 2020 done yet? No? Maybe this blog post is just wishful thinking then. But I’m planning to coast to the end of my reading year on a gentle sea of escapist froth, and so don’t think I’m likely to read anything else that would make me change my overall assessment of the year’s reading, so let’s do this.

Here are the books I loved the most, the book I liked the least, and just some general thoughts about how reading kept me going during this garbage year.

My month in books: September 2020

This blog post is very late, but I promise I did indeed read some books in September. 10 of them, even. And one of them was a new candidate for favourite book of the year – I’m just gonna cut to the chase, it’s In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado and it’s amazing – so I’m extra sorry to have withheld this valuable post from you.

This was a month of two halves: a lot of heavy capital-L Literature to start, and then a whole bunch of sci-fi (with a rom-com breather in the middle).

My month in books: August 2020

I am really into reading at the moment – writing, not so much.

Here are my thoughts on the 9 books I read this month, including two that will definitely be on my list of favourites for the year.

My month in books: July 2020

I feel more excited to write this blog post than I have in some time, because I really loved a lot of what I read this month, and I want to share it.

There’s a Victorian pastiche with cannibalistic dragons, a chapter that saved 16 hours of my life, and a romance that finally dares to ask the question: “What if Jonathan Franzen was hot?”

I hope at least one of those sounds intriguing. This will also be a long post, because I finished 9 books in July. Let’s go!

My month in books: June 2020

How is another month gone already?

June took me on literary trips up the Amazon River, onto a spaceship bound for an alien university, and behind the scenes of Palo Alto.

My month in books: May 2020

I ended up with quality over quantity this month – four very good books, which made me think about sleep, racism, cruelty and parenting. And also about flying, man-eating bears.

My month in books: April 2020

This month’s reading had it all. Bison! Romance! Killer plants from Soviet Russia!

Outside the world of books, things have been shit for obvious reasons. This definitely had an impact on what I chose to read and how I dealt with it. But at least I’m finally making a dent in my to-read pile, now that it’s less easy to replenish it.

My month in books: March 2020

Well. This was a month.

While I spent most of March indoors, I actually didn’t do all that much reading. This is mostly because my time was occupied by Animal Crossing. But I did manage to get through four rather different novels.

My month in books: February 2020

Overall, this was kind of a disappointing month for reading. I finished five books, and some were good, but none of them really knocked my socks off in the way that January’s highlights did.