Novel Reading in 2020

Following my annual practice, I have listed here my “novel” reading for 2020. This is a way of documenting what I get through in a year’s worth of reading on the commute to work, in the evenings after work, and while travelling outside of my “normal” academic reading – albeit there was no such international travel throughout the year. My use of the term “novel” reading is loosely adopted, as you will see from the list and, yes, it is inflected (but not infected) with COVID-19 elements as well as a slight spike in reading longer books and more numerous books in total.

1. Steven L. Davis (ed.) The Essential J. Frank Dobie (Texas A&M University Press, 2019).
2. Brett Christophers, The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain (Verso, 2018).
3. Charles Bowden, Blues for Cannibals: Notes from the Underground [2002] (University of Texas Press, 2018).
4. Bruce Pascoe, Salt: Selected Stories and Essays (Black Inc., 2019).
5. Jeanine Cummins, American Dirt (Tinder Press, 2020).
6. Charles Bowden, Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing [2009] (University of Texas Press, 2018).
7. Luis Alberto Urrea, The Devil’s Highway: A True Story [2004] (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014).
8. Charles Bowden, Dakotah: The Return of the Future (University of Texas Press, 2019).
9. Charles Bowden, Juárez: The Laboratory of Our Future (Aperture Foundation, 1998).
10. Charles Bowden, Desierto: Memories of the Future [1991] (University of Texas Press, 2018).
11. Albert Camus, The Plague [1947], trans. Stuart Gilbert (Penguin, 1960).
12. Fernanda Melchior, Hurricane Season [Temporada de huracanes, 2017] trans. Sophie Hughes (New Directions Publishing, 2020).
13. Emiliano Monge, The Arid Sky [El cielo árido, 2012], trans. Thomas Bunstead (Restless Books, 2018).
14. Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness [1968] (William Collins, 2018].
15. Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race & Class [1981] (Penguin, 2019).
16. Carlos Fuentes, Destiny and Desire [La voluntad y la fortuna, 2008], trans. Edith Grossman (Random House, 2011).
17. C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution [1938] (Penguin, 2001).
18. Charles Bowden, Jericho (University of Texas Press, 2020).
19. David Ireland, The Unknown Industrial Prisoner [1971] (The Text Publishing Company, 2013).
20. Marlene Hobsbawm, Meet Me in Buenos Aires: A Memoir (Muswell Press, 2019).
21. C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary [1963] (Vintage, 2019).
22. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West [1985], intro. Philipp Meyer (Picador, 2015) [re-read].
23. Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic (Jo Fletcher Books, 2020).
24. Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses, The Border Trilogy: Volume 1 (Picador, 1992) [re-read].
25. Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing, The Border Trilogy: Volume 2 (Picador, 1994) [re-read]
26. Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain, The Border Trilogy: Volume 3 (Picador, 1998) [re-read].
27. Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men (Picador, 2005) [re-read].
28. Cormac McCarthy, The Counselor (Picador, 2013) [re-read].
29. Juan Rulfo, The Plain in Flames [El llano en llamas], trans. Ilan Stavans with Harold Augenbraum (University of Texas Press, 2012).
30. Rachel Kushner, Telex from Cuba (Vintage, 2014).
31. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha [1604], trans. John Rutherford (Penguin, 2003).