My stand-out read of 2020 was a brilliant work of nonfiction. If you have not read it, you have to:

• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer, who is graceful, attentive, urgent, and supremely intelligent in her exploration of our relationships with the world of plants. The best sort of nature writing, and with messages we can’t ignore: about interdependence, consumption, reciprocity. I highly recommend the audiobook – the author is wise and good-humoured company, and her prose has a gorgeous tone. Also look out for podcasts with Robin Wall Kimmerer, such as this one from Emergence Magazine with Robert Macfarlane.

My other essential reads of 2020:

• The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes fired me up! A book about land, and who owns it, and who gets to share in its riches. Another essential read, particularly as Brexit brings into question any number of power relationships for the English. Resist, my friends, resist!
• Letters from Tove, by Tove Jansson. My hero! Edited by Boel Westin and Helen Svensson, and seamlessly translated from the Swedish by Sarah Death. It consumed me, I consumed it, and I shall be rereading. (There’s no audiobook yet … that would be perfect.)
• Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart. My novel of the year. I KNEW it would win the Booker Prize! There is outright literary justice.
• Surrender, by Joanna Pocock. Again, nonfiction exploring our relationship with the land, though here we are in the American West. I loved her curious mind.
• The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. I first read when I was thirteen, and it made a powerful impression on my emerging political consciousness. It came as a timely reread at the start of a year in which economic inequality and ecological degradation would be even more sharply obvious. CAN WE EVER LEARN?
• The Beautiful Room Is Empty, by Edmund White. Why hadn’t I read this before? Because it was waiting for the hot summer of 2020, I guess.
• Stasiland, by Anna Funder. Because East Germany. Very excited that we are getting Deutschland 89 in February.
• Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up In America, by Natalie Goldberg. I took her online Writing Down the Bones course again this year. What a treat, what a grounding dose of sanity, what an honour to share the freshly composed writes of complete strangers. Natalie’s memoir is exceptional in showing how the practice of writing can wake us up to the unexceptional magic around us. I also read The Great Spring and The True Secret of Writing. More Natalie to come in 2021.
• The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Because I love craft books, I love St Ursula, and I LOVE the essential idea here and how it challenges conflict-driven theories of the world.
• The Empress of Salt and Fortune, by Nghi Vo. This novella is a real feat of imagination.
• My Cat Yugoslavia, by Pajtim Statovci, in a translation from the Finnish by David Hackston that really captures a gorgeous tone in the telling. Because I love love LOVE it when works of literary fiction introduce the magical in not so everyday ways too. I’m reading his Crossings at the moment, and LOVING it.

Other notable reads:

• Flights, by Olga Tokarczuk. A different sort of book from Drive Your Plow, and perhaps not so obvious, and less accessible. But many of the best things require a little work, and this is one of them. I love her – love her intelligence and her spirit. St Olga joins my shrine.
• Ash Before Oak, by Jeremy Cooper. I’ve yet to finish this – I’ve been reading a few entries of this long novel in diary form at bedtime. On the surface it’s about the aftermath of the renovation of an old house in the country, and has some exquisite nature writing. Below, there is another sort of renovation taking place.
• How to Wash a Heart, by Bhanu Kapil. Yes, she is a friend! And that is why I am so thrilled this fierce long poem has been such a success.
• A Bite of the Apple, by Lennie Goodings. Another friend! I’ve recommended it to many writers already for its generous insights into publishing and the book business.
• Germany: Memories of a Nation, by Neil MacGregor. Lessons in a nation coming to terms with its history.
• A Field Guide to Getting Lost and Hope in the Dark, by Rebecca Solnit.
• Music and Silence, by Rose Tremain.
• The Confessions of Frannie Langton, by Sara Collins – whose audio narration of her own book is superb.
• The Natural Way of Things, by Charlotte Wood.
• Fierce Attachments, by Vivian Gornick.
• Supporting Cast, by Kit de Waal.
• Sabrina and Corina, by Kali Fajardo-Anstine.
• Dune, by Frank Herbert. Another reread, and another incomplete – I was rushing before the new movie, which I am MOST EXCITED ABOUT. And now we have to wait. Disappointment 🙁 I paused at a suitable pause halfway, and I shall resume. Another of those classics that’s so timely.
• Valley of the Dolls, by Jacqueline Susann. Yet another reread, and yet another incomplete, but I am COMPELLED to list it here as Jackie and Neely and Anne and Lyon have been the BEST company as narrated by Laverne Cox while I’m planting tulip bulbs for next year (some daffs still to go). Also, this was the last book I published in-house. Just sayin’.
• Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville. BECAUSE FINALLY! Ably helped by the Ahoy Me Hearties narration of William Hootkins.
• Cook, Eat, Repeat, by Nigella Lawson, not least because she is devoted to pleasure. I’ve never cooked so much from one book or tv series so quickly. That gingerbread! That red cabbage! THAT RICE PUDDING CAKE!

I did other things in 2020. In addition to Natalie Goldberg’s class from Shambhala, I took another excellent online course – a training in Mindful Compassion – and I’ve just started a fascinating series of online classes on Buddhist history, philosophy, and practice; both come from my beloved alma mater Naropa University.

I watched lots of enjoyable tv. Highlights: Watchmen, Eastsiders, The Mandalorian, Unorthodox, Drag Race Canada, Mrs America, Disclosure, and Bridgerton. Schitts Creek was a particular treat; we watched four specially selected episodes on Christmas Day.

I cooked a lot, and baked, and gardened, and rediscovered Paper Mate pens. Way back in February I led workshops – in person! In London! In Cambridge! Closer to home, I tended to my friendships with tulips. I Zoomed, and FaceTimed with my mom as we walked the dog. We stayed close to home. I wore a mask, and so should you.

And I read a lot. Those above were the good books! The ones I enjoyed most. I do note that many of the books that left the strongest impression on me this year were works of nonfiction. Just as the first lockdown began, I started to read a novel I’d been waiting for, but somehow the mating habits of Manhattanites felt trivial. A lot of fiction felt trivial this year!

I know we can separate writing from writer, but I also fell a little out of love with a once favourite children’s book series for its author’s muddled yet insistent failings of imagination and empathy. It’s disappointing. The world changes, and so can we. This episode left me questioning the healthiness of feeding kids simplistic tales of good vs evil.

I craved nonfiction this year: the complexity, the rawness, the lack of sheen and artifice. The luminous truth of Tove Jansson as it shone through the voice in her letters. I did read some very good fiction, but even then Shuggie Bain and The Beautiful Room Is Empty and The Grapes of Wrath are rooted in autobiographical and documentary realities. A lot (A LOT) of other novels that I am not mentioning here felt overwritten, half-finished, and overhyped by their publishers or oversqueed on social media.

Of course, even nonfiction has blurrings, and so much of the reality we are fed is made up. The culture secretary wanted Netflix to issue a health warning that one of its tv shows is fiction, but as The Economist noted: ‘Does it matter if The Crown fictionalises reality? It is more truthful than the story the royals sold.’

And how about the lies and delusions sold to us by politicians who’d be in prison for fraud if they were in business? I type this as the UK finally tonight leaves the EU. I feel this is heart-breaking, not least as it was achieved so duplicitously; it feels as if people who don’t read are burning down the library. Part of me feels we’ll be back, but another part of me feels that the English with their entitlement don’t deserve it (and I say that as someone who’s 100% English). So instead, let’s hold them to their promise of a Global Britain.

Some of the most engaging writing I have read this year came in unfinished manuscripts, and I sincerely hope that this work makes progress to finding a publisher. A lot of the writing really does show a lot of promise. Though, too, I always say that publishing is not the most important thing about writing. There is a special spark that comes in reading works-in-progress and talking about writing with writers.

During the dark moments of this year it’s been important to shine a light when we can. Something else I often say, quoting a line from the musical Rent: the opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation.

Thank goodness for dogs and dog walks and gardens and plants and cooking and books – and a big thank you to all the doctors and nurses and teachers and drivers and other essential workers who’ve kept the world running this year.

Create! Resist! Create! Wear a mask! And shine a light when you can.