Top reads of 2020

[lillielangtry]

It's 2nd January people! :-)

If you would like to rave about your favourite book or books of last year, this is the place!

My stats, as I enjoy being a book nerd: 88 books read - 62 by women, 23 men, 1 non-binary, 2 mixed anthologies
70 fiction, 18 non-fiction
26 in translation

Highlights were

Sally Rooney, Normal People - hm, this was right at the beginning of the year and it's faded, but I remember enjoying the style a lot. It got very mixed reactions at book club.

Hilary Mantel, The Mirror and the Light - worth the wait, worth the time investment

Nino Haratischvili, The Eighth Life - the 1000-page, multigenerational Georgian family saga you didn't know you needed in your life

Asja Bakic, Mars - science fictiony short stories from Bosnia

Shokoofeh Azar, THe Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree - Iranian magic realism

Also honourable mentions to: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell AND last but not least Ben Aaronovitch in general for being such great escapism.

I read a lot less for some months due to not commuting, but am back into it now and very happily so. Here's to lot more good books in 2021!

[Liiisa]

Ah yes, thank you lillie! This is always a cool opportunity to look back and be thankful that I put stars next to some of the books on my list because I can never remember anything before, say, November. I'll split it up into fiction and nonfiction, since I can't compare the two:

Fiction:
Jeff Vandermeer, Dead Astronauts: a little more disjointed than his Area X books, but I was into it despite
Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladwell, This is How You Lose the Time War: favorite of the whole year
Kevin Wilson, Nothing to See Here: little pieces of social analysis sneak into this weird plot about kids spontaneously catching fire
David Mitchell, Utopia Avenue: I know this wasn't universally beloved here, and I agree about its flaws, but I'm a big music nerd so I really liked it despite
Sarah Waters, Fingersmith: Wow, the plot twist!

Nonfiction:
Gretchen McCulloch, Because Internet: because I'm what she called an Old Internet Person & this book felt like home
Anthony Bourdain, Typhoid Mary: Bourdain's take on the subject was engaging and challenging to everyone's assumptions about her
Isabella Wilkerson, Caste: 100% true

I didn't get to 52 books this year because I decided to read a couple long history books, which for me can be a bit of a slog. We'll see how 2021 goes!

[mei]

Finally had a look at my 2020 list.

in terms of numbers:
30 read in total, which is a huge number for me.
10 of which by men and 20 by women. Didn't intend this, so it's a happy surprise.
12 non-fiction, all others fiction
8 of these books were read for my two bookclubs - so a pretty big proportion. I enjoy the bookclubs but sometimes think it takes so much time away from books that I really want to read just for myself...

About favourites. I read a lot of different things, but my top 3 is maybe:
Craft of Use by Kate Fletcher - on the use of clothing, and the creativity, craft, emotion and history that is connected to it. Really loved it.
New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson - sci-fi set in a flooded NYC.
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez - no need to explain anymore I think!

[lillielangtry]

Mei, your stats are very harmonious somehow, 2/3 women, 1 non-fiction a month! :-)

Totally agree on book club - I love mine and it's great when you "have" to read something that you end up loving, but it takes away from your own choices as well.

[Liiisa]

Ooh stats are always interesting to look at. I did ok on the criteria mei listed:

Of 49 books,
26 were by women
16 were nonfiction

49 is a pretty low number for me, mainly due to losing my bus commute in the pandemic. Well, and deciding I needed to read more American history in order to get some more background on the current shitshow.

[scrubb]

I've spent days trying to pare down my list to a reasonable number :-)

Stats: 102 books (I was hoping for 104 as that would be = to 2/week, but I didn't make it)
81 fiction, 26 non fiction
47 male, 55 female

I read some really good fiction this year. My favourites:

The Big Rock Candy Mountain - Wallace Stegner
Himself - Jess Kidd
My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferrante
Mountolive - Lawrence Durrell (third of the Alexandria Quartet)
To the Bright Edge of the World - Eowyn Ivey. (This one I am fairly sure I will decide after some time doesn't quite belong in this list, but I really enjoyed it.)

Special mention goes to "To the Lighthouse" (Virginia Woolf), "Tambourines to Glory" (Langston Hughes), and "Birdie" by Tracy Lindberg.

Non Fiction favourites were:
Nature Obscura - Kelly Brenner
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage - Ann Patchett
Lady Sings the Blues - Billie Holliday and William Dufty

[Liiisa]

So glad you liked "Nature Obscura" so much, scrubb!