I just got Pelosi by Molly Bell from the library. I haven’t started it yet but a friend said her book club highly recommended it.
I’m reading The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich, one of my favorite authors. It’s set in the 50s and the details of the time, the transition from frontier to modernity, as well as the travails of one of the main characters, Pixie (Patrice), are gripping and heartbreaking.
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Has anyone mentioned “A Woman is No Man”? We just read it in our book group. Interesting, although flawed IMHO, book about Palestinian immigrants living in Brooklyn. Definitely worth a read.
Two memoirs I read this year and enjoyed: Oliver Sacks, On the Move and Negroland: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson.
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I’d strongly recommend “Mill Town” by Keri Arsenault. It is part memoir about growing up in a papermill town and part her investigation into the impact of the mill on the health of residents.
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I just finished “Jack” by Marilynne Robinson. I’ve read all the Gilead books, though not recently. The first two have become a little foggy to me. I really liked this one, though ultimately the level of sadness hanging over it (especially from what I can remember of the earlier books), is heavy. But the writing is beautiful as always, the characters were very real to me, and it had unexpected moments of quiet humor as well.
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Just finished “A Gentleman in Moscow” and loved it. It was unexpectedly very charming.
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Excellent book
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I really, really loved it.
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Late to the party but I just read My Brilliant Friend (Elena Ferrante). I love books that create and convey a complete world. This book does that. The violence and beauty of the urban slums of Naples come alive. Every slightly bookish girl who understands the difference between the ideal and the reality will understand this story. The novel also understands that for many (most) girls the formative relationships in adolescence are with other girls, not boys.
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Okay, readers: What were your favorite books of 2020? Not limited to books published 2020, just what did you like best?
I’ve read 81 books so far this year. I’ve liked many, for different reasons. Three stand over and above the rest for me:
Middlemarch - George Eliot. Thank you CC Book Club. I’d probably never have read it without the book club “push.” I ended up reading it twice.
The Selected Poems of Langston Hughes - Langston Hughes. Not my usual genre but thoroughly enjoyed.
Library Wars: Love and War - by Kiiro Yumi (Story & Art), Hiro Arikawa (Original Concept), Kinami Watabe (Translator). Manga, again not my usual but the series came highly recommended by an avid reader I know. While my first two choices rank high on the “literature” scale, Library Wars definitely doesn’t. However, it does rank high in terms of good fun. Evidently a big deal in Japan: book, manga series, anime, and movie.
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The Cat I Never Named by Amra Sabic El-Rayess. A coming of age story about the author’s life growing up as a Muslim in Bosnia during the war.
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Favorite Books read in 2020–probably forgetting something , but:
Middlemarch–George Eliot–my favorite book. So, a beloved re-read.
Transcendent Kingdom–Yaa Gyasi
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry–Rachel Joyce
The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry–Gabrielle Zevin
Saints for all occasions–J. Courtney Sullivan
Maine–J. Courtney Sullivan
Jack–Marilynne Robinson
Anxious People --Fredrik Backman
A Gentleman in Moscow–Amor Towles
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So far my favorite books have been rereads:
Classic novel: Middlemarch by George Eliot
Classic mystery: Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers
More recentish sci-fi fantasy: Conflict of Honors by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
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I read The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante (available from my county library online while I’m waiting for the rest of the Neapolitan novels I haven’t read). It’s her most recent and it is about a bourgeois only child who discovers the weaknesses and hypocrisies of her parents (her educated father is trying to flee his poor uneducated birth family and the main character discovers an affinity for his crazy sister with whom he does not communicate). It’s an unflinching and somewhat sad, but ultimately optimistic, coming-of-age story. The voice of the narrator/protagonist changes as she matures (from 14-16). It’s about a “young adult” but in no way is it a “YA” genre novel. It’s set in Naples but is blurry on exact dates. One tell is that the young people are not online all the time and aren’t using cell phones.
It also deals with the spiritual hunger of young people; the narrator becomes fascinated with a Catholic intellectual a few years older than herself, although she resists any attempts at proselytization. Our popular culture offers nothing for young people to believe in and I do believe that they hunger for meaning and substance. The novel addresses that problem. Cleverness is not enough.
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Loved Hidden Valley Road,
My Dear Hamilton,
City of Thieves (re-read, loved it even more this time)
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City of Thieves is when they are assigned to get the eggs for the birthday cake of the daughter of the apparatchik?
Many striking moments in that book; the privations and attempts to stay alive. The awareness that your grandparents may have done things you wouldn’t countenance in order to survive in tough circumstances and ensure that you were born.
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I’m bingeing Inspector Gamache books by Louise Penny. I want to live in Three Pines, Quebec.
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I’ll meet you there - love those books and sense of place.
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I need to try them again. I didn’t love the first one, but everyone tells me I will if I keep reading them.