2020 was... an interesting year for the whole world! The people, animals, forests, oceans and even the atmosphere were all affected by the new pandemic of COVID-19. The countries around the globe have gone under a prolonged lockdown state, many businesses (small and large) were affected, the global economy collapsed... More importantly, the entire healthcare system was overwhelmed with the immense number of cases rolled in the hospitals. The medical teams were chocked up in hospitals for days in a row with a vague outline on how to treat the patients diagnosed with COVID. Then the dilemma of unavailability of personal protective equipment (PPE) kits for the medical teams anywhere!
The people had nowhere to turn to but each other...
A lot of people suffered in 2020, and a lot more were lost to the disease... Nevertheless, the familial relations have grown stronger, the environment healed a bit and opportunities for new businesses arose! The pharmaceutical companies were prompted to develop a new vaccine and end this global dilemma.
Setting all that aside, us normal folk stuck at home had all the free time on our hands! I took major advantage of that and set out to read all the books that I could (lol)! You can have a look through my 2020 reading challenge
Out of the 50, only a few were on my favourite-book-list for 2020:
by Heather Earnhardt, Frida Clements (Illustrations)
A bug's life is suddenly changed when a wandering goose finds his way to her garden. They become close friends, exploring and playing in the lush garden, exchanging poems, hopes, and dreams, and eventually confessions of love. When goose begins to feel his instinct to wander, Bug's life changes again, but she comes to learn that she is surrounded by enduring love, even in loss.
by William Sieghart (Editor)
In the years since he first had the idea of prescribing short, powerful poems for all manner of spiritual ailments, William Sieghart has taken his Poetry Pharmacy around the length and breadth of Britain, into the pages of the Guardian, onto BBC Radio 4 and onto the television, honing his prescriptions all the time. This pocket-sized book presents the most essential poems in his dispensary: those which, again and again, have really shown themselves to work. Whether you are suffering from loneliness, lack of courage, heartbreak, hopelessness, or even from an excess of ego, there is something here to ease your pain.
The Rumi Daybook
by Rumi, Camille Helminski (Editor), Kabir Helminski (Editor)
When the words of Rumi enter your heart, something softens, breaks, and is subtly reborn. That he wrote the words seven hundred years ago in a medieval Persian world that bears little resemblance to ours makes their uncanny resonance to us today just that much more remarkable. Here is a treasury of daily wisdom from this most beloved of all the Sufi masters—both his prose and his ecstatic poetry—that you can use to start every day for a year, or that you can dip into for inspiration any time you need to break through the granite of your heart.
The Sickness unto Death
by Søren Kierkegaard, Alastair Hannay (Translator)
One of the most remarkable philosophical works of the nineteenth century, The Sickness Unto Death is also famed for the depth and acuity of its modern psychological insights. Writing under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, Kierkegaard explores the concept of 'despair', alerting readers to the diversity of ways in which they may be described as living in this state of bleak abandonment - including some that may seem just the opposite - and offering a much-discussed formula for the eradication of despair. With its penetrating account of the self, this late work by Kierkegaard was hugely influential upon twentieth-century philosophers including Karl Jaspers, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. The Sickness unto Death can be regarded as one of the key works of theistic existentialist thought - a brilliant and revelatory answer to one man's struggle to fill the spiritual void.
by Rumi, Coleman Barks (Translator), Michael Green
In the mid-thirteenth century, in a dusty marketplace in Konya, Turkey, a city where Muslim, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist travelers mingled, Jelaluddin Rumi, a popular philosopher and scholar, met Shams of Tabriz, a wandering dervish. Their meeting forever altered the course of Rumi's life and influenced the mystical evolution of the planet. The bond they formed was everlasting--a powerful transcendent friendship that would flow through Rumi as some of the world's best-loved ecstatic poetry.
Rumi's passionate, playful poems find and celebrate sacred life in everyday existence. They speak across all traditions, to all peoples, and today his relevance and popularity continue to grow. In The Illuminated Rumi, Coleman Barks, widely regarded as the world's premier translator of Rumi's writings, presents some of his most brilliant work, including many new translations. To complement Rumi's universal vision, Michael Green has worked the ancient art of illumination into a new, visually stunning form that joins typography, original art, old masters, photographs, and prints with sacred images from around the world.
The Complete Fairy Tales
by Oscar Wilde
The Complete Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde includes the two definitive story collections The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1891). This volume collects exquisite and poignant tales of true beauty, selfless love, generosity, loyalty, brilliant wit, and moral aestheticism, such as "The Birthday of the Infanta," "The Selfish Giant," The Nightingale and the Rose," and "The Happy Prince," among others.
I haven't listed the books in any particular order, for they were all just too good! True gems! I'm keeping my fingers crossed for more this year!
Thank you for reading!
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