Hellooooo to anyone out there reading this! Congrats on (barely) surviving 2020!
I’m popping in to write is about all the books, movies, TV shows, and theater I saw this past year. For recaps of my media and literary diet in years past, here are the links for 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019.
BOOKS
I read 32 books this year, which is only 2 more than last year. I am still devoted to the Libby app, which connects to your local library so you can rent e-books and audiobooks for free (I send all e-books to my Kindle). I’ve been able to borrow even the most popular titles for free from the library — it’s just a matter of waiting several weeks before they become available. It’s a small price to pay to get all your reading material for free! Though I did gift a few titles on this list to friends and family for Christmas.
Below is a list of all the books I read this year, in the order I read them. These were my favorites:
- Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
- Untamed by Glennon Doyle
- The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
- So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
- In Five Years by Rebecca Serle
- Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
- Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
On to the full list!
 | Work Optional (Tayja Hester) - 4 stars Admittedly, at age 36, I’ve given very little thought to a retirement plan… something I’ve felt behind on the past several years, knowing I should be smarter about financial planning. After hearing about this book on a podcast, I was curious to read more about how this couple was able to retire in their late 30s due to smart investing and saving. Reading this book was my first step towards making better long-term financial decisions in 2021 and beyond. The author's next book (out next year) is called “Wallet Activism: How to Use Every Dollar You Spend, Earn, and Save as a Force for Change.”
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 | The Last Black Unicorn (Tiffany Haddish) - 3 stars Listening to comedians tell their life story via audiobook is always enjoyable thanks to their natural storytelling ability. In this case, Tiffany Haddish’s life is alternately hilarious and harrowing. I had no idea the dark twists and turns she’s lived through. Her success in the face of these hardships makes her all the more inspiring. This is definitely for adults.
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 | This is How it Always Is (Laurie Frankel) - 4 stars A story about Claude, the youngest of five boys, who expresses that he is really a girl. Claude’s parents do the best they can to navigate this change, even moving to a new town to give Claude a fresh start. Interesting to see this story play out in a large family with many kids, and how they come together but also feel torn apart by this big change.
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 | Trick Mirror (Jia Tolentino) - 5 stars I loved this book of essays about modern life, on a wide range of topics from the internet, female beauty standards, drugs, campus date rape cases, and her epic takedown of the modern wedding ritual. Her incisive observations made this easily a favorite book of 2020.
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 | Talking to Strangers (Malcolm Gladwell) - 4 stars Real-life examples where people THINK they have an understanding of a situation, only to later find out they had misinterpreted something with disastrous consequences. Some examples: how Fidel Castro fooled the CIA, how police officers pulled over Sandra Bland for a minor traffic infraction that lead to her death, the trial of Amanda Knox, the proliferation of campus sexual assault, the crimes committed by Larry Nassar, and the suicide of Sylvia Plath. As enlightening as this book is, every chapter centers around something terrible, which makes it less fun to read.
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 | Writing Movies for Fun and Profit (Thomas Lennon & Robert Ben Garant) - 4 stars Are you a Reno 911 fan, like me? Then you will love the comedy stylings of its leads, as Thomas Lennon & Robert Ben Garant detail their screenwriting process on movies like the Night at the Museum franchise. It’s informative, irreverent, and hilarious. Plus there’s practical details like if you’re assigned to park at a certain lot at Warner Bros for your pitch, then they are not planning to buy your movie. Bonus: there’s a treatment for an unfilmed Reno 911 movie sequel.
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 | American Predator (Maureen Callahan) - 4 stars This true crime story about a murder in Alaska is terrifying! I can’t remember who recommended this to me, but I couldn’t put it down. A teenager goes missing in Alaska which triggers a nation-wide search for a killer who defies the typical murder profile because he kills at random. And has caches of weapons stockpiled around the U.S., buried in random places so he can come back later and commit a crime. Just horrifying.
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 | A Place for Us (Fatima Farheen Mirza) - 4 stars Saga of an Indian-American Muslim family as they immigrate to the U.S. and set down roots. As their children grow into adults, family relationships strain to a breaking point while they navigating faith, education, drugs, and love.
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 | Untamed (Glennon Doyle) - 5 stars Easily one of the best books of the year. Glennon’s writing is approachable, insightful, and brutally honest. She writes about her life – leaving her husband, marrying soccer star Abby Wambach, raising three kids in their blended family. She writes about making hard decisions. She writes about gender expectations, privilege, and racism. Highly recommend.
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 | We Are the Weather (Jonathan Safran Foer ) - 4.5 stars From the title, this book sounds like it’s about climate change (and it is!), but really it’s a call for humans to significantly reduce their consumption of meat. Because if we collectively did that, we could reverse climate change. I found this book FASCINATING for a few reasons. First – if you set aside the call for veganism / climate change, this author is really interrogating how one goes about making change in his or her life. Like, despite knowing all the facts about how eating animals is bad, the author could not resist eating burgers while on a book tour to promote his earlier book about industrial farming. He felt like such a fraud! I loved his perspective on breaking habits and committing to a decision. Second – there is a chapter where he’s talking to his higher self, trying to parse why he makes certain decisions. It reads like a play and someone (me?!) should produce it. Bottom line – the message of this book is profound, and the way the author experiments with form is fascinating.
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 | Normal People (Sally Rooney) - 3 stars Popular novel turned into a popular Hulu series. It’s about teens in Ireland exploring their sexuality, fraught with social dynamics, popularity, class, and body issues. I didn’t love it? Or I liked the book well enough, but was turned off by the first few episodes of the Hulu series.
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 | Seriously... I'm Kidding (Ellen Degeneres) - 3 stars This audiobook was recommended by a friend, and it made me laugh out loud while taking walks during quarantine. It was a nice break from podcasts. And as mentioned above, I love listening to audiobooks of comedians telling their life stories.
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 | Chosen Ones (Veronica Roth) - 3 stars I very much enjoyed the YA series “Divergent” by this author many years ago. Her latest book dives into a dystopian world that takes place 10 years after the main characters (the "chosen ones”) defeated a major threat to society. It's an interesting structure – this book is essentially a sequel, even though it’s a stand-alone book, because it glosses over the events from 10 years ago and focuses on the return of the threat. It’s sci-fi / fantasy, which isn’t usually my jam, but WOW I appreciate the world building this author had to do in order to fully flesh out this imaginary society filled with time-bending magic.
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 | The Glass Hotel (Emily St. John Mandel) - 5 stars One of the best books I read in 2020. There are many threads of stories which seem disparate but then meld together in ways that feel both unexpected and inevitable. It’s primarily set in a high-end hotel on an isolated island in Canada. I don’t want to be reductive because this novel is gorgeous and sprawling, but it ends up centering on the 2008 financial crisis.
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 | Almost Everything (Anne Lamott) - 4 stars Anne Lamott is a very wise writer, and her observations in this book are clear-eyed. Like Glennon Doyle in “Untamed,” she’s here to examine life, loss, truth, pain, joy, love. If you’re the kind of reader who highlights meaningful passages (*raises hand*) then you will be flagging lots of her words.
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 | Stamped From the Beginning (Ibram X. Kendi) - 4.5 stars Whoa. This book. First, you should know there are two versions – one for adults that reads like a long and fascinating text book, and one for teenagers (or adult audiences with shorter attention spans) that is more digestible. I read the longer version, but have linked to the shorter one here. It's about the history of race in America, as told through five major historic figures whose lives collectively span from the 1600s to present day: Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Angela Davis. I love this format – taking a myopic view of an individual’s life and using that as a grounding place to chronicle larger events of an era. I’ve learned so much history that was not taught in school growing up.
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 | So You Want to Talk About Race (Ijeoma Oluo) - 5 stars This book is essential reading for understanding race (and white supremacy) in America. It’s largely meant to aid white people in understanding our complicity in a system designed to hold down people of color, and to identify ways we can actively reject white supremacy. Key points: understanding privilege, examining intersectionality, police brutality, the school-to-prison pipeline, cultural appropriation, microagressions, and more. Ijeoma Olou writes about these complex issues in a clear-eyed and comprehensible way.
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 | Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (Kathleen Rooney) - 4 stars It’s New Years Eve 1984, and an elderly woman takes an impromptu walk all over the island of Manhattan as she recalls highlights and lowlights from a life well-lived. In her heyday, she was the top-paid female copy writer in New York City. Now in her later years, she has a long perspective of someone who’s lived through world wars and the Great Depression. This book is a love letter to New York City, and the people crazy enough to call it home.
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 | In Five Years (Rebecca Serle) - 5 stars This was a fun book, among my favorites of the year. Dannie has just gotten engaged to her longtime boyfriend when she has a vivid premonition that takes place five years in the future, where she is involved with another man. She manages to push it away, until she meets the fantasy man IN REAL LIFE (who just happens to be her best friend’s new boyfriend). As the five-year clock winds down, Dannie can’t escape the shadow of that vision – is it possible that her predictable life will flip upside down? The author sets up this delicious premise and it’s a wild, emotional ride to the end.
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 | Such a Fun Age (Kiley Reid) - 5 stars Top notch book. Emira is a recent college graduate babysitting for a wealthy white family to make ends meet. After an incident of racial profiling in a grocery store, Emira begins dating a white man who came to her aid. Turns out he has a connection to other people in her life. I won’t spoil any more here, but the twists and turns are good. It’s a story very much rooted in present-day America in regards to race, privilege, education, and technology.
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 | Writers & Lovers (Lily King) - 4.5 stars I’m not sure this book is for everyone, but I loved it. A young woman in Cambridge, MA is lost after the death of her mother. She’s an aspiring author working as a waitress, and meets an older established writer who is widowed with young children. She also meets a fellow writer her own age with whom she hits it off. But it’s not a novel about romances – it’s about a woman trying to find herself and determine the next chapter of her life in the midst of hardship.
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 | The Vanishing Half (Brit Bennett) - 4.5 stars In one of the most talked about novels of 2020, this book is about twin girls from the south who run away during high school and land in different parts of the country. One twin is light-skinned enough to pass as white, while her sister is not. This, of course, affects the trajectory of their lives. The book follows these sisters over the decades as they marry, have kids, and eventually return to their hometown. I was delighted to find the story shift to Los Angeles, and that many chapters take place backstage in a theater AND on a soap opera set.
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 | Where the Crawdads Sing (Delia Owens) - 3.5 stars I was inspired to listen to this audiobook while on a road trip to Savannah and Charleston for work several months ago. After hearing so much buzz, I think my expectations were too high, as I envisioned an evocative cultural exploration of this part of the country, when in reality it was more of a swamp soap opera. By the time I realized that the story was really about a girl in the swamp picking between two men, I was already half-way through so I kept going. Shout out to the narrator of this audiobook (Cassandra Campbell), as she captured a LOT of different voices quite effectively.
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 | Nothing to See Here (Kevin Wilson) - 3.5 stars This book is so delightfully weird! Lillian has been down on her luck her whole life. When her rich and connected friend from boarding school (for whom Lillian took the fall in a drug scandal, dropping out of college to protect her friend’s reputation) reaches out to ask about a lucrative job nannying her stepchildren, Lillian agrees because she needs the money. But there’s one catch: the stepchildren routinely catch on fire when they get mad. Like, they don’t get hurt from turning into fire, but they cause massive destruction and are a freak of nature. Lillian surprises herself by how quickly she turns her life around to care for them, showing them a love they desperately need, and receiving love in return.
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 | Hood Feminism (Mikki Kendall) - 4.5 stars The mainstream feminist movement has largely been steered by white women, but Mikki Kendall redefines what it means to be a true feminist who goes to bat for all women – especially POC whose needs have largely been pushed aside. She explores the tenets of feminism which must be rewritten to widen the scope of women they are meant to champion, as well as to address specific concerns for non-white communities: how education, crime, poverty, and politics intersect differently for woman of color. A must-read for anyone who want to be true allies to all women.
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 | Mindfulness for Beginners (Jon Kabat-Zinn) - 3.5 stars Surely mediation is something we all explored – even just a little? – in 2020, more than any previous year. Like most people, I wish I was better at practicing it. This audiobook is relatively short and opened my mind up to new ways of thinking: how to cultivate a beginner’s mind, practice non-striving, and work on acceptance.
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 | Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (John Berendt) - 4.5 stars A delightful find! This book is technically non-fiction, but it reads like fiction – there's a colorful cast of characters the author captured during his time in Savannah. They leap off the page: a local drag queen, a hot-blooded bisexual heartthrob, high society couples, corrupt local politicians, and a voodoo root doctor. The book centers around a murder that occurred at a famous home – the older wealthy man who owns the home shot his younger male lover in a fit of passion. And the local townspeople have a LOT to say about it.
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 | The Book of Delights (Ross Gay) - 3.5 stars Series of daily observations (“essayettes”) made by a poet. As the title suggests, they are indeed delightful. The breadth of Ross Gay’s musings – big and small, shallow and deep – read like a jazz player effortlessly riffing on a piano (yes, I did watch Soul on Disney+ this past week). This book made me happy.
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 | Anxious People (Fredrik Backman) - 5 stars How do I begin to describe this book? You could say it’s a murder mystery set at a real estate showing. As if that’s not enough drama, there is also a bank robbery and a hostage situation. But it’s really about the human condition, mental health, and connections we form (and break) with those around us. It takes place in Sweden. It is alternatively very funny and very sad, while always tapping into very real emotions. I teared up regularly while reading it.
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 | The Mothers (Brit Bennett ) - 3.5 stars After reading “The Vanishing Half,” I was inspired to read Brit Bennett’s earlier book. It’s set in Oceanside, CA (about 90 minutes south of LA) and chronicles the relationship between a promising young black girl and the pastor’s son. After going through a traumatic experience, she leaves town for college while he stays behind and finds love with her best friend. But their orbits continue to cross, with troubling consequences for both of them.
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 | Silver Sparrow (Tayari Jones) - 3.5 stars I read this earlier work by Tayari Jones after LOVING her devastating book “An American Marriage” two years ago. This book is about two half-sisters with the same father who grow up in the same town – one is the “real” daughter recognized in public, and the other is his daughter only in the shadows. (The “real” daughter is unaware that she even has a half-sister, which makes things all the more painful for the daughter living in the shadows.) The novel switches perspective half-way through and the author brings us inside both girls’ heads. Inevitably, their lives intersect, with lots of suffering for everyone involved.
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 | A Promised Land (Barack Obama) - 4.5 stars To hear our former world leader tell me his life story via audiobook (a whopping 29 hours long) brought great joy. And he only gets halfway through his time in office…! There will be a volume 2 coming in future years to cover the second half of his presidency. REALLY fascinating to hear details from the inside as he navigates state, congressional, and senate campaigns in Illinois before running for president. Plus the ins and outs as his team struggled to fix the economy from the 2008 recession, narrowly pass health care legislation, and monitor unrest in the middle east with less-than-obliging heads of military. Obama gives some personal details from his youth and family but primarily focuses on the events of his political career. This biography dovetails nicely with Michelle Obama’s “Becoming” in that her book dug deeper into their early life together as a couple and as parents. Highly recommend the audiobook as it’s so comforting to hear Obama’s voice.
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TV SHOWS
John Mulaney’s The Sack Lunch Bunch
Parks & Rec (S6, S7, S1)
Fosse/Verdon
Game of Thrones (S1-S8)
Tiger King
Dave (S1)
Difficult People (S1-S3)
Dave Chappelle Mark Twain Award special
Neal Brennan’s “3 Mics” Netflix special
We’re Here (S1)
Middleditch & Schwartz
Hannah Gadsby’s Douglas
Ben Platt Live from Radio City Music Hall
Queer Eye (S5)
Will & Grace (final season)
Reno 911 (reboot season on Quibi)
The Politician (S2)
Homeland (S8)
Big Sur: Wild California (NatGeo)
Lost on Everest (NatGeo)
BlackAF (S1)
Expecting Amy
I May Destroy You (S1)
Search Party (S1-S3)
The Good Place (S3-S4)
Killing Eve (S1-S2)
Run (S1)
Watchmen
This Way Up (S1)
PBS Great Performances: In the Heights
Emily in Paris (S1)
Bert Kreischer’s “Hey Big Boy” Netflix stand-up special
Katherine Ryan’s “Glitter Room” and “In Trouble” Netflix stand-up specials
Great British Bake-Off (Collection 4)
Dash & Lily
The Undoing
The Flight Attendant
Saved by the Bell (reboot S1)
Schitt’s Creek (S3-S5)
TV highlight of the year for me: I watched the entirety of “Game of Thrones” for the first time ever. So good.
MOVIES
Brittany Runs a Marathon
Honeyland
American Factory
One Child Nation
1917
Young Frankenstein
Where’d You Go Bernadette
Knives Out
Bombshell
Biggest Little Farm
I Feel Pretty
Dolomite is My Name
Rocketman
Just Mercy
Harriet
Queen & Slim
American Masters: Every Act of Life (Terrence McNally)
Miss Juneteenth
Crip Camp
Palm Springs
Becoming (Michelle Obama doc)
We are Freestyle Love Supreme
Uncorked
Howard (Howard Ashman doc)
The Social Dilemma
Forrest Gump
Peanut Butter Falcon
Borat 2
The Prom
Anna and the Apocalypse
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Boys in the Band
40 Year Old Version
Reefer Madness
Soul
THEATER
We lost live, in-person theater in mid-March 2020 and who knows when it will fully return?! This is horrifying to everyone who loves this art form, especially those who make a living in the industry. Please donate to the Actors Fund to support those struggling right now. The arts matter SO MUCH and live performance in particular has taken such a big hit – it would be devastating to lose artists forced to find work in other areas, in order to pay rent and keep themselves fed. I hope we, collectively as a society, can sustain theater artists through Covid so that the industry can come back some time in 2021.
Here are the shows I saw before the pandemic kicked in. Then the list of digital events I’ve seen since March. I have trouble paying attention to digital theater – I’m usually sitting at my desk, obviously on my laptop, so there’s a tendency to multitask. I just want to sit in a dark theater surrounded by strangers, where I can be 100% focused on the work in front of me.
THEATER (in NYC) = 0 shows
2020 is the first time since 1997 that I have not seen a show in NYC.
THEATER (outside NYC) = 14 shows
Uncle Vanya (New American Theatre)
17 Border Crossings (Broad Stage)
Nowhere on the Border (The Road Theatre Co.)
What the Constitution Means to Me (Mark Taper Forum)
Cages (immersive show in downtown LA)
It’s Only a Play (Morgan-Wixson Theatre)
Eurydice (LA Opera)
Revenge Song: A Vampire Cowboy’s Creation (Geffen Theater)
Plano (Steppenwolf little theater)
Graveyard Shift (Goodman Theatre)
West Adams (Skylight Theatre)
Hurricane Diane (Old Globe)
Found (IAMA Theatre/LATC)
The Father (Pasadena Playhouse)
City of Angels (Garrick Theatre in London)
DIGITAL THEATER (staged productions):
Oklahoma (National Theatre at Home)
One Man Two Guvnors (National Theatre at Home)
Phantom of the Opera at Royal Albert Hall (The Shows Must Go On)
Kill Move Paradise (TimeLine Theatre)
Sea Wall (w/ Andrew Scott)
A Streetcar Named Desire (National Theatre at Home)
The Colored Museum (PBS 1991)
Antigone in Ferguson (‘House Seats’ on PBS)
Gloria: A Life (PBS)
Midsummer Night’s Dream (National Theatre at Home)
Twilight: Los Angeles (PBS)
Notes from the Field (HBO)
Les Blancs (National Theatre at Home)
Hamilton (Disney+)
Scraps by Geraldine Inoa (Matrix Theatre Company)
Pass Over (Amazon)
Carousel (Live from Lincoln Center)
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (The Shows Must Go On)
Three Kings by Stephen Beresford (Old Vic In Camera)
What the Constitution Means to Me (Amazon)
The Gabriels: Hungry (Public Theater – via BroadwayHD)
The Lion (Geffen Playhouse – via BroadwayHD)
Thom Pain (based on nothing) (Geffen Playhouse – via BroadwayHD)
The King and I (Lincoln Center production – via BroadwayHD)
42nd Street (London – via BroadwayHD)
Julius Caesar / Henry IV / The Tempest (dir. Phyllida Lloyd – via BroadwayHD)
Bright Colors and Bold Patterns (via BroadwayHD)
DIGITAL THEATER (via Zoom or YouTube):
Four Woke Baes by Jonathan Caren (PlayPerView)
Rinse, Repeat by Domenica Feraud (PlayPerView)
Crying on Television by R. Eric Thomas (PlayPerView)
Buyer & Cellar (Broadway.com)
The Homebound Project – series 1 (May 6-10, 2020)
Inspired by True Events by Ryan Spahn (Vineyard Theatre)
Sandblasted by Charly Even Simpson (Vineyard Theatre)
What Do We Need to Talk About? by Richard Nelson (Public Theater)
The Homebound Project – series 2 (May 20-24, 2020)
Eureka Day by Jonathan Spector (PlayPerView)
Our Lady of 121st Street by Stephen Adly Guirgis (Labyrinth Theater Company)
CITIZEN: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (Fountain Theatre)
one in two by Donja R. Love (The New Group / Pride Plays)
Diana Oh’s My H8 Letter to the G8 American Theatre (Ma-Yi Theatre)
Pues Nada by Aziza Barnes (MCC)
When by C.A. Johnson (MCC)
Kernel of Sanity by Kermit Frazier (Bard at the Gate)
Tartuffe (Moliere in the Park)
The Line (Public Theater)
Heroes of the Fourth Turning (PlayPerView)
The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity (PlayPerView)
Visiting Hours by Jami Brandli (The Road Theater Co.)
Title and Deed (PlayPerView)
Toni Stone (PlayPerView)
A Touch of the Poet (Irish Rep)
Between Two Humps (MCC)
Elephant Room: Dust from the Stars (Ahmanson Digital Stage)
proud revengeful ambitious (PlayPerView)
AUDIO PLAYS:
Nevada Tan by Leah Nanako Winkler (Audible)
The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey by James Lecesne (Audible)
An Act of God by David Javerbaum (Audible)
Sakina’s Restaurant by Aasif Mandvi (Audible)
The Assembled Parties by Richard Greenberg (LA Theatre Works)
DIGITAL CONCERNTS:
“Take Me to the World” for Sondheim’s 90th birthday
SMASH’s “Bombshell” concert
Two of Joey Taranto’s monthly concerts!
OTHER DIGITAL THEATER EVENTS:
NYTW masterclasses with playwright Jeremy O. Harris
NYTW masterclasses with director Whitney White
Vineyard Theater’s The VT Show: with Michael R. Jackson
Vineyard Theater’s The VT Show: with the cast of “This is a Room”
Plus other miscellaneous panels about LA theater
Thanks for following along! What were the best books / movies / TV shows / theater YOU saw this past year?
NOTE: I used Amazon Affiliate links for the book titles; should you purchase one, I’d receive a tiny commission.
