The Next 50 Books I Read: March 2020 to February 2021

March 2020

• No Visible Bruises, by Rachel Louise Snyder
• The Night Watchman, the first book I read by Louise Erdrich, whose work is so engaging for me that I went on to read 12 more this year
• Out, by Natsuo Kirino

April 2020

• Lost Children Archive, by Valeria Luiselli
• The third part of the Wolf Hall trilogy, Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror & the Light, the ending of which was spoiled for me by an interview with the author I heard on public radio a number of years ago

May 2020

• Network Effect, by Martha Wells
• The City We Became, by NK Jemisin, the most right now book I read this year

June 2020

• Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel
• Midnight in Chernobyl, by Adam Higginbotham
• The Daughters of Erietown, by Connie Schultz
• Death in the Air: The True Story of a Serial Killer, the Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City, by Kate Winkler Dawson
• Elmet, by Fiona Mosley

July 2020

• The Dinosaur Artist, by Paige Williams
• Meet Me in the Future, by Kameron Hurley
• Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Becoming Duchess Goldblatt, by Anonymous
• Shame Pudding, a wonderful graphic memoir by Danny Noble
• Murder in Little Egypt, by Darcy O’Brien

August 2020

• Falling Free, by Lois McMaster Bujold
• Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
• Magic for Liars, by Sarah Gailey
• Inge’s War: A German Woman’s Story of Family, Secrets, and Survival Under Hitler, by Svenja O’Donnell

September 2020

• Safe Passage by Ida Cook
• Seducing and Killing Nazis: Hannie, Truus and Freddie: Dutch Resistance Heroines of WWII, by Sophie Poldermans
• The Painted Drum, by Louise Erdrich
• A Way of Life, Like Any Other, by Darcy O’Brien

October 2020

• The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, by Louise Erdrich
• Bunny, by Mona Awad
• My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite
• The Round House, by Louise Erdrich

November 2020

• The Shadow King, by Maaza Mengiste
• LaRose, by Louise Erdrich
• Archivist Wasp, by Nicole Kornher-Stace

December 2020

• Future Home of the Living God, by Louise Erdrich
• Severance, by Ling Ma
• The Master Butcher’s Singing Club, by Louise Erdrich

January 2021

• The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett
• The Plague of Doves, by Louise Erdrich
• Shocking Life, The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli, a very entertaining gift from my brother Andy

February 2021

• V. E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
• My Life in France, by Julia Child
• The Birch Bark House, by Louise Erdrich
• Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons
• Shadow Tag, by Louise Erdrich 
• Paddle to the Sea, by Holling Clancy Holling
• Four Souls, by Louise Erdrich
• Tracks, by Louise Erdrich
•  Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernadine Evaristo
• The Game of Silence, by Louise Erdrich