My Best Reads of 2020: Classics, Science Fiction and Plenty of Tears
So in honor of a particularly unlucky year (and because I read too many books to narrow the list further), below are my top 13 books of the year. I read a LOT this year, but these are the books that managed to capture my attention and interest in what was an otherwise pretty insane year.
This is an eclectic mix, including books about places from Egypt to Montana, classics, historical fiction, memoirs, and soaring science fiction and fantasy that takes you back in time to Troy and to distant planets filled with life. The one thing that surprised me is that while I did a lot of comfort reading this year, the books that cut through the fog were often emotionally charged and deeply moving or fairly intricate and incisive.
I divided these books by the month I read them, in part because it felt very telling that I read 5 of my favorite books in March and April, when I was mostly furloughed.
For more of my books and short reviews, you can also follow me on Goodreads HERE.
January
The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution by Peter Hessler
This is actually the first book I finished this year, and boy does that feel like a lifetime ago! This book was a really interesting account of Hessler’s time in Cairo with his family during the Arab Spring. What I found most compelling was the extent to which Hessler took the time to explain and explore Egyptian culture for his readers, and his ability to acknowledge when aspects of that culture where frustrating or confusing to him. I learned a lot about Egypt and Egyptian culture both past and present in this book and enjoyed that learning immensely.
For a longer review, you can read my initial post about this book HERE
A Place on Earth by Wendell Berry
Of all the books I read in January, this feels the most nostalgic to me now. This is the story of Port William’s journey through World War 2, as told by all our favorite characters from Jayber Crow to Andy Catlett. This is a story of loneliness, loss, survival and hope, and I was totally transported. I highly recommend it, but the reason it makes my best reads list this year is the fact that those themes ended up being a big part of the rest of 2020 in a way I could not have imagined in January.
I almost want to reread it now because I have a feeling it would be a very different read today.
February
This Will Only Hurt a Little by Busy Philipps
Don’t let the color of this book fool you. While this memoir contains just enough “celebrity” stories to fit the brief, the real life portions of this story are what make this book great. This is the story of a normal human being who had been through some SHIT, and because she happens to be famous, she gets to use her platform to tell her personal story and to affirm that these experiences are normal, and that you can work through them and move forward.
I wrote more about this book HERE
March
Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, Emma by Jane Austen
I got a full Jane Austen set for myself at the beginning of coronavirus stay at home orders, which have the pretty covers above, and boy was it a lifesaver. I’ve read them all before, but they were just as enjoyable this time (even more so in some cases)! I even blogged my way through the series, which you can read here. My all time favorite Austen is Persuasion, but I also really enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and Emma, which I had always found irritating.
If I had to choose which book I found most entertaining THIS year, I would have to give the spot to Emma.
In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire
I did my best to stay away from sequels in this list, but this book was too clearly wonderful to forget. This is my favorite installment of the Wayward Children series by far, and might actually be better if you haven’t read the rest of them.
The Wayward Children is a series of short novels (long novellas?) about kids who end up in other worlds and what happens when they return to the “normal” world. Think Alice (Alice in Wonderland) and the Pensive children (Narnia) at boarding school after their adventures and throw in a whole slew of diverse characters and imaginative worlds and you will get the idea.
This is an almost standalone installment about Lundy, a quiet girl who finds herself drawn to a magical world where logic rules, trades must be fair, and every bargain has a price.
Living and Dying Without A Map by Nancy Ewert
So my mom wrote a book. It is great (and not just because it is about my life). This is it! Living and Dying Without a Map is my mom’s synthesis of our family’s experience when my father was diagnosed with a brain tumor. It sounds heavy, and it is. I also think it is a wonderful tale of the human experience, and much like Busy Phillip’s book above, a great reminder that our day to day trials are both “normal” and worthy of being a story. If you or anyone you know needs to find a way through grief, this may be a good book to pick up.
Also, as an aside, the experience of reading about your journey through someone else’s eyes is unsettling, but also incredibly cathartic.
You can visit her website HERE
To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
While Becky Chambers’s Wayfarer’s series was probably my favorite discovery of 2019, To Be Taught, If Fortunate, a stand alone novel that falls more into the hard science fiction category, was undoubtedly one of my favorite science fiction books I have ever read.
I don’t even know what to say about this book except that if you like science fiction at all, you need to read this. Even if you don’t like science fiction, this may still work for you. Chambers has a more humanist positive perspective than many sci-fi writers, which I really needed this year, and this ode to science, reason and the human condition is a masterpiece.
April
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
This is a historical fiction book about the AIDS crisis in Chicago, and it was pretty wonderful (and also very sad). This is a dual timeline novel, and the “past” timeline is what carries the book, but it carries the book so well that I gave this five stars in spite of what I felt was a lackluster “present” storyline because the “past” storyline here is PERFECT.
I wrote more about this book HERE
May
Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb
So this book tickled all the nerdy naturalist bones in my body, and also featured some of the wildlife scientists I worked with during my grad program, which made it pretty much perfect in every way. Not only that, but it is written well and would likely be enjoyable and easy to understand even for people who are not already nerdy naturalists.
Also, beavers are just very very cool and you should read this to learn more about them.
I wrote a bit about it HERE, and also recommended some other great microhistories.
June
Swimmer Among the Stars by Kanishk Tharoor
I have a hard time describing exactly what made this book of weird and wonderful short stories so great. They are stories of cross-cultural interactions across multiple timelines and so many of them were excellent, which doesn’t always happen in a book of short stories. I don’t even remember them clearly anymore, but they left me feeling lovely and floaty and happy.
I also wrote a bit more about it HERE
July
I read some great books, many of which were close to my top 13, but none that made the final list. If you want a highlight of what I did read, you can read my reading summary HERE.
August
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
I read a lot of books about race and racism this year, and many of them made my monthly favorites lists, but this one was my hands down favorite of them all. It was cutting, relevant and easy to read even if it was dealing with uncomfortable issues. Oluo grounds all explorations of concepts like intersectionality and privilege in real life examples which are easy to grasp.
If you really want to dig into this work, a book like Stamped From The Beginning might be a better start, but if you want an intro, or you only have time for one book, this is not a bad place to start!
September/October
Remember the part of 2020 when we thought Trump might win the US election and the pandemic took off with a vengeance and we had all been dealing with chaos for the past 9 months? Combine that with taking a honeymoon, training new staff at work and writing a budget in the midst of a pandemic, and you get an idea of what my fall was like. I could have read the best book ever written and I doubt I would have truly appreciated it.
November
Bad Land: An American Romance by Jonathan Raban
This book is the perfect example of the way that a good author and the right setting can combine to make an otherwise boring subject absolutely riveting. This book is essentially about land allotments in Eastern Montana during the early 20th century and how that shaped the culture and landscape today. I’m an Oregon Trail fanatic who is fascinated by stories of settlers, and even I find this topic dry.
But what Raban does here is magical, and he transforms this subject into a story about hope and survival in the face of almost certain failure, a story about finding beauty and belonging in a broken and barren land. I also read this while sitting on the porch of a forest service cabin in Montana and watching coyotes, so between Raban’s incredible storytelling and the perfect setting, this hit home.
You can read more about this and a lot of other fun books HERE
December
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
I read Circe years ago and really liked it, and this has been on my list for a long time. I was nervous because Circe is a masterpiece and I wasn’t sure how you got that kind of magic twice, but this was actually even better!
Patroclus, the companion and lover of Achilles narrates this book, and everything about it is brilliant. Miller finds the human side of the Greeks, and her choice of narrator is perfect because the best part of this book is the way she examines what it is like to live as a normal human being in the midst of gods and the sons of gods. I enjoyed this SO much more than I expected and I hope you do too.
Here is to a 2021 that treats us better than 2020, and to good books, friends and family and wild things!
