In 2020, I was busy with, I don’t know, surviving a worldwide pandemic while trying to finish my second semester MA courses virtually (good-bye, Shanghai 😢 ), so I didn’t read for fun as much as I would have liked. Regardless, here’s my very late round-up of what I read in 2020. Bolded are my highly recommended recommendations, and some of the children’s fiction on there was a result of me teaching online classes to Chinese students! It was fun to revisit those stories. Anyway, here’s what I read!

Fiction:

• The White Book by Han Kang
• Fox 8 by George Saunders
• Dancing Arabs by Sayed Kashua
• reread: The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
• reread: The Magic Treehouse Books 1-7 by Mary Pope Osbourne
• online: Paired with the Potterhead by Kersten Noelle
• online: Grey Matter by Taylor Rae
• Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
• Little Bee by Chris Cleave
• The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
• Historically Inaccurate by Shay Bravo
• online: Crossword by Imogene

Stage Plays:

• The Slave by Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones
• We Are Not These Hands by Sheila Callaghan
• She Kills Monsters by Qui Nguyen
• Ghosts by Elford Alley
• The Weirdest Plays of 2020 collected by Rachael Carnes

Manga:

• Songs to Make You Smile by Natsuki Takaya

Nonfiction:

• No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg
• Red Flags: Why Xi’s China Is in Jeopardy by George Magnus
• Educated by Tara Westover

Poetry:

• Unseen Hand Poems by Adam Zagajewski and translated by Clare Cavanaugh
• Swimming Lessons by Lili Reinhart

Literary Magazines/Chapbooks:

• Poetry Lab Shanghai Spring 2020
• The B’K Volume 11 Issue 2
• some scripts literary magazine Issue 3: “The Era of Climate Change”