This is a project of endurance, from the author painting the biggest news headlines every day for a year as they happened, to those of us who survived the annus horribilis, and for me as I slowly slogged through this book for over a month as I revisited the shitshow that was 2020.

Starting January 20, 2020, with the growing mention of a coronavirus outbreak in China, the book winds through the lockdowns, the death of George Floyd, the demonstrations, the election, the denial and insurrection, and ends with the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 21, 2021.

Reading this book is a masochistic act. It doesn't help that the art is a blotchy mess with squished or haphazard layouts and the author has no real talent for capturing likenesses of the many people involved. The hand lettering is usually a sloppy mess in light gray that is difficult to read, but the editors at least took mercy on my poor eyes and transcribed them into type below the illustrations.

I admire the author's persistence, but I'd be surprised if this is a book many people would choose to read, much less make it all the way through. ( )

4.5 stars. I have been looking for something like this: documentation of that crazy year, 2020. This an almost daily painting of the year 2020 based on headlines from the news. The author/painter is from New York, but she does a nice job of including world events. It felt traumatic going through the year visually, so be aware. It took me a while to start but then found it hard to stop. It goes a little past Dec 2020, to get the inauguration in. I found it fascinating that she was unable herself to include paintings from the first week of the shutdown/shelter in place orders. I will need to revisit this book again. ( )

For several years, Elise Engler has had an ongoing project where every day she draws a small bit of artwork inspired by that morning's top news headlines. As you can imagine, this was an... interesting exercise... in 2020. Although, actually, this volume covers, as she puts it, "the period from January 20, 2020, when COVID-19 made its first appearance in my drawings, to January 21, 2021, the day after President Joe Biden's inauguration."

I thought this sounded like a really interesting project, but having read through it now, I genuinely am not sure what I think about it. The first few pictures already kind of had me questioning whether this was as worthwhile an exercise as I'd anticipated, because it seemed set to mostly be an endless parade of politicians' faces. Once the coronavirus got going in earnest, though, and Engler was drawing representations of what was going on literally all around her in NYC, the pictures took on a frantic, energetic, almost surreal tone for a bit that was interesting to see, and certainly quite effective.

Did it remain that effective for the whole year? Maybe, maybe not. It's honestly hard for me to tell. I thought I was ready for a day-by-day retrospective on 2020, but I think maybe I'm still not quite capable of processing it, perhaps because, somehow, it still doesn't quite feel like that year is over. So part of me thinks this would have worked better if I'd waited and come to it a few years later. And yet, I don't know that this is going to turn out to be the right work to capture the experience of that year for posterity, either. Too many of the headlines really only make sense when you're able to remember the events personally and in context.

In the end, it was certainly an interesting idea, and I'm not sorry I read it, even if it did kind of depress me. But it also doesn't feel quite like it did whatever I was hoping it would do for me. I'm not at all sure precisely what that is, though. Help to give me some new, loftier perspective on the events of 2020 that would result in it all making more sense for me? If so, well, that may really have been entirely too much to ask of anyone.

Rating: I'm giving this a 3.5/5, because I feel like I have to give it something, but I think that rating is even less meaningful than usual. ( )

I thought this was awesome, though I realize a book about 2020 may not be for everyone. Engler sat down every morning and made a small painting about the day's headlines for five years as part of a bigger project, but a publisher saw her work online and suggested she turn 2020 (or rather 2020 plus 20 days, to end with the inauguration) into a book. I like her painting style a lot, but it was also fascinating to see the year presented in one visual block like this—the element of interpretation, but also the confirmation that yes, that year was just as horrible as I remember. I found myself glued to it, turning the pages to see what happened next, even though I KNEW what happened next. The presentation was everything, and it was moving in ways that a straight-up collection of headlines wouldn't have been. ( )