Leonard Pitts Or a race against time to foil a terrorist plot. Or a zombie apocalypse. A zombie apocalypse would definitely hit the spot. As some of you will recall, I gave up those and other literary pleasures a year ago, bidding farewell to the likes of Robert B. Parker, Tom Clancy and Stephen King. Before we knew all the awful things that 2020 would be — The Year of Pandemic, The Year of Racial Reckoning, The Year of Endless Election — I stood at this podium and put my own stamp on it: 2020 would be The Year of Reading Women, I said. This, after realizing that I, avowed feminist and voracious reader that I am, seldom read female authors — that for years, I had been unconsciously but consistently ignoring them.