I've begun to be much more systematic about what I read, and it's a habit that may trace its way back to my MFA days at Bennington where one professor encouraged us to "fill in our gaps" as we compiled our reading lists for the term. For me, that meant some classics I had overlooked, especially in the Shakespeare oeuvre. Also women writers -- now a full-time project, reading as many women authors as I can. (I want to be a woman author, I want to translate women authors so I need to read women authors. And it's surprising how even an avowed Feminist like me wakes up one day to find she's read far fewer women authors than merit would have.)
So I set out to fill in my gaps. Nonetheless, the year in reading is always an adventure, right? I did want to read a Primo Levi biography, but I had no plans to read The Death of a President by William Manchester. No plans to re-read it obsessively, no plans to pore over it on sleepless nights. But once I stumbled upon it in a cabin in Vermont lined with old paperbacks, I couldn't put it down.
Indeed, two of the books that I lingered over the most -- partly because of their lengths -- were the biography of Primo Levi (The Double Bond: Primo Levi A Biography by Carole Angier) and the Manchester book. It didn't seem coincidental; one book covered in excruciating detail the demons that brought down a survivor (and literary legend), 40 years after he left Auschwitz and the other, also with excruciating detail, summed up the climate surrounding one of the most devastating public events of the last 100 years of American history -- the assassination of JFK.
I also wound up reading a lot of Italian fiction! That's pretty typical, except this year I was a judge for the Italian Prose in Translation Award, a prize that's given by the American Literary Translators Association, of which I am a member.
What I didn't do was read 50 books, an informal goal I've set the last few years. Do I get credit for re-reading parts of lots of books? Reading parts of books I am auditioning for reading lists? Unclear.
I have all kinds of ideas for books I'd like to read in 2021, including Will's Boy by Wright Morris; Art and Ardor by Cynthia Ozick; What You Have Heard Is True; The Spy Who Came in From the Cold; Little Drummer Girl; Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey; and A Stranger's Pose, by Emanuel Iduma.
Here's what I read in 2020:
Books I planned to read and did
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid
Le Piccole Virtu, Natalia Ginzburg
Books I did not plan to read but did and LOVED:
The Death of a President by William Manchester
Nobody's Son by Mark Slouka
Pedigree by Patrick Modiano
Zinky Boys, Svetlana Alexievich
Bad Feminist, Roxana Gay
Books of Italian fiction (select)
La vita bugiarda, Elena Ferrante
I Am God, Giacomo Sartori (translated by the late, great Frederika Randall)
The Bishop's Bedroom, Piero Chiara (translated by Jill Foulston)
At the Wolf's Table, Rosella Postorino (translated by Leah Janeczko)
Arturo's Island, Elsa Morante (translated by Ann Goldstein)
Ithaca Forever: Penelope Speaks, Luigi Malerba (translated by Douglas Grant Heise)
Books I read for reviews
A Girl Returned (Kenyon Review, March 2020)
(Read the review here: https://kenyonreview.org/reviews/a-girl-returned-by-donatella-di-pietrantonio-738439/)
Review: Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories (edited by Lahiri; reviewed for Three Percent Jan 2020)
(Read the review here)
Books I planned to read or re-read when I began this list but did not:
Tutti i nostri ieri -- Natalia Ginzburg (AGAIN)
Jesse Wegman, Let the People Pick The President: the Case for Abolishing the Electoral CollegeTutti i nostri ieri -- Natalia Ginzburg (AGAIN)
Il Partigiano Johnny by Beppe Fenoglio
Mavis Gallant, Paris Notebooks
The rest of the list of books I did read
La strada che va in citta' -- Natalia Ginzburg
Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit
I Could Tell You Stories, Patricia Hampl (memoir)
The Art of the Memoir, Mary Karr
Handling the Truth, Beth Kepkart
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami
Nobody Knows My Name, James Baldwin
Essays from the Nick of Time, Mark Slouka
Pedigree, Patrick Modiano
The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, David Grann
Dante's Inferno
An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, Elizabeth McCracken
The Other Wes Moore, Wes Moore
Upstream, Mary Oliver
One Brief Shining Moment, William Manchester
Happy reading!
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