Observing Leslie

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Books I've Read: Q2 2020

This quarter, I read my first-ever book in French! A picture of my vocabulary board and the first two French books I purchased. Lausanne, Switzerland. May 20, 2020.

A list of the books I read in the second quarter of 2020, in rough chronological order:

  1. Cantoras, by Carolina de Robertis

  2. Wow, No Thank You, by Samantha Irby

  3. The Ancestor, by Danielle Trussoni

  4. And Their Children after Them, by Nicolas Mathieu

  5. The Years, by Annie Erneaux

  6. The Mirror & the Light, by Hilary Mantel

  7. Meaty, by Samantha Irby

  8. The City We Became, by N. K. Jemisin

  9. The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett

  10. Circe, by Madeline Miller

  11. Riot Baby, by Tochi Onyebuchi

  12. We are Never Meeting in Real Life, by Samantha Irby

  13. Half-Blood Blues, by Esi Edugyan

  14. The Friend, by Sigrid Nunez

  15. Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan

  16. Ablutions, by Patrick DeWitt

  17. The Cat’s Table, by Michael Ondaatje

  18. How Much of These Hills Is Gold, by C. Pam Zhang

  19. Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal, by Wendy S. Walters

  20. Tyll, by Daniel Kehlmann

  21. Pizza Girl, by Jean Kyoung Frazier

  22. Avalanche Hotel, by Niko Tackian (French-language edition)

  23. The Patron Saint of Liars, by Ann Patchett

  24. Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine

  25. The Soul of an Entrepreneur: Work and Life Beyond the Startup Myth, by David Sax

As in the past, I’ve bolded the books that really wowed me and that I would recommend highly.

Also of note in this past quarter’s reading list: I read my first book in French! A language-exchange partner recommended Avalanche Hotel because the author had set it in our region of Switzerland, the writing looked simple enough, and the book comes in at only approximately 200 mass-market-paperback pages. Though each page of the book took me an age to get through (with a dictionary always at hand and frequently referenced), I made it. A milestone!

Want to check out the best books I read in Q1? Read my list of books read in the first quarter of 2020 here. (Update: You can check out the books read in Q3 2020 and Q4 2020, too. And you can click here for my list of the best of the best reads of 2020.)

I’ve you’ve read any of these, please share your thoughts!