The 2020 Book Review

Let's just get it out of the way - the obligatory "2020 was a rough year" comments. It was rough - but for me, it was good for reading - I read 81 books (I usually average about 50)! Reading was my port in the storm - or insert whatever cliched metaphor here that you would like. Reading sustained me. I've always been a big reader, but this year it was all that I wanted to do. It was an escape - but it was also a place of calm, where I could still my mind and take a break. We were on lockdown in China long before everyone else in the world was - and in a surreal twist that no one saw coming - we resumed a semblance of normal soon after. At the time we did not know it was "soon" (12 weeks of online learning seemed interminable - little did we know our peers in the rest of the world would be seeing whole semesters, possibly even a whole school year online). But despite the return to "normal" - nothing was normal. So reading continued to be a safe, solid place to find comfort in a truly crazy, heartbreaking, maddening year.

I hope 2021 is a calmer year, but I hope it still brings good reading - to me and to you!

On tracking my reading:

I have tracked my reading on Goodreads for exactly 10 years - in fact, on December 31, 2020 I read my 500th book - 500 books in 10 years.* (Yes, I did push to read just one more book to get to that number, of course - please note the time on the screen shot!). 

There have been some lean reading years and some fat reading years, so that's an average of 50 books a year, which is respectable. The 500 doesn't count all the books I read repeatedly for school, although I do record them the first time I read/teach them, even if I have read them before. It also includes re-reads, some of which I re-read during these past 10 years.

I also started tracking my reading in a physical notebook this year. I don't know why I haven't physically written down the books I've read before. It's been good because I see the books I have started but haven't finished, which is a little harder to see on Goodreads (I don't use the "currently reading" function by choice). I really like Goodreads, but I like having my private reading journal. Because of this I was able to finish 5-6 books before the end of the year that I had started but had set aside for one reason or another - books I liked but just got distracted by other, shiner books. 

Here are some of my notable (good and bad) reads of 2020.

Disliked

Normal People by Sally Rooney

I think it's a mark of a "good reading year" if you have to stop and think about the book you disliked because you can't remember intensely disliking one particular book, enough to write about. I did dislike books, but the good outweighed the bad. I had a lot of "2-star" reads (19 out of 81). My system for star-ratings is completely and utterly subjective. Sometimes it's because I just didn't like the book. Sometimes it's because it's poorly written. Sometimes both. I rarely give 1-stars, and I didn't have any, this year.

My least favorite book was Normal People by Sally Rooney. It was the 2nd book I read this year, and I don't really remember much about it. I remember the feeling of the book, which was "ick." It made me feel really, really, really sad. I feel really sad just writing about it, remembering it. This book was critically acclaimed and rightly so - it was well-written, and the characters were well-developed. It just showed a side of life that I really, really don't connect with.


Just Didn't Meet the Hype aka Unpopular Opinion Time

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwabb

I have a real problem. Hype up a book and I will not really like it. I won't necessarily dislike it, but chances are, I won't really like it. My critical, English-teacher brain will find what's wrong with it. I'm so sorry (to all my friends and book friends who loved it...), but Addie LaRue was one of those books. I'd been hearing about it since...Spring? On book blogs and podcasts from advance readers. Everyone - everyone! - loved Addie LaRue. 

It was fine. 

But I wasn't amazed by it. I think I wanted to be, and that was part of the problem. 

Addie LaRue is the story of a young French girl in 1700-something who makes a deal with the Devil or a god to live forever - the twist is that she is forgotten by everyone she meets. Immediately - if someone turns around they forget her. The premise is really clever. I found the book itself to be, well, fine. A bit too long, and I wasn't rooting for the main character. I wasn't not rooting for her. I just wasn't...cheering her on. 

I would recommend Addie LaRue but as a decent read (not an earthshattering, knock-your-socks off one). I think I would have liked it more if I hadn't been told how much I would have liked it. But that's my problem - not yours!

Food for Thought

The Power by Naomi Alderman

This is not a book I would recommend to most. It's really, really, really graphic (like even more than Game of Thrones in parts) but really, really, really thought-provoking. In the world of this book, women develop a power - an electrical current that they can zap people with. Slowly over the course of the book, the power dynamics between men and women flip - women become dominant, men become submissive. The thesis of the book is quite simple: it's not about gender, it's about who has the power. If women were able to be physically dominant over men, they would be as aggressive, as dominant as men. I would not read this book if you are sensitive (or even not sensitive) to sexual violence. This book is something I will think about for a long, long time, however.

Favorite Reads (in order of reading)

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Reid Jenkins

Okay, okay - this is a book that was tremendously hyped-up (at least in my book circles) and, surprisingly, I thought it lived up to the hype. It's an "oral" history of a (fictional) 1970s band. It could be gimmicky but I think Jenkins pulled it off. The writing - the craft of words and sentences - was excellent (particularly for a book written in transcript-style). It's a book about the nature of true love, the sacrifices that people make for one another, and the people that carry us through the hardest times of our lives. This makes it sound maudlin - it's not. It's one of the...truest books I think I've read. As in, it contains a tremendous amount of truth. 

Country Driving by Peter Hessler

Hessler was a US Peace Corps volunteer in China in the nineties, and stayed on as a journalist in the aughts. He speaks Mandarin fluently and is really good at getting (Chinese) people to open up to him. This book is really three books in one - it's quite long, and took me probably about six months to read because I read it here and there, not in one fell swoop like I read many books. In part 1, he rents a car and attempts to travel the length of the Great Wall. He write about the people he meets along the way. In part 2, he writes about a small village outside of Beijing where he rents a house for a writing retreat. He befriends a local businessman and writes about their friendship and the changes that come to the village with the paving of the road. In part 3, he goes to Wenzhou in Zhejiang province (my province!) and spends time in a factory that makes bra o-rings (the little plastic coated rings that hold brassieres together). This book showed me a lot about the under-the-surface aspects of China I knew I did not know, but do not have the language or relationships (in part due to language) to access. I would recommend it to anyone who lives in China, but also to those who don't. I think China is going to be the dominant world power a lot sooner than we Westerners realize, and reading this book helps to humanize the people here. By this I mean so often China is presented as this cultural and ideological monolith and I think the individual 1.4 billion people are forgotten by most Westerners - but there are 1.4 billion individuals living here and the sum of them is more than their government and leadership policies that seem to threaten the Western way of life and ideology.

Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process by John McPhee

This slim volume is all about the craft of writing. If you have any interest in writing, read it. John McPhee is a writer for The New Yorker, Time magazine, and many others and he is a professor of writing a Princeton. Despite this fine writing pedigree, this book is quiet, realistic, and unassuming.

The Last Policeman series, Ben H. Winters

There are three books in The Last Policeman series. The main character, Henry, is a police detective in Concord, MA. In six months, the earth will be struck by a species-ending asteroid. Despite this, he is still committed to solving cases. The first book deals with a relatively ordinary murder, but the second and third, while still mysteries, are more about the effects of the impending asteroid on human society. I read these books spaced apart, because I typically do not "binge read" series (I find I get a little burnt out on the books if I read so many books of the same author all at once). I think these books should be read together, however. They are quite short, and the stories pick up one after the other, and they take place in the six months before the asteroid strikes. They are quiet, contemplative reflections on human nature in the face of impending disaster. 

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennet

The story of two twin sisters, one who choses to pass for white and who consequently cuts all ties with her Black family. This is a complicated story, and a well-told one - incidentally Brit Bennet is young (she published her first novel at 26) and writes so well. In a year where race was dragged (rightly so) to the forefront, I found fiction to be the best place to seek understanding of what has - or hasn't - been done and what needs to change. I read non-fiction about the Black experience and struggle this year, but it was in fiction that I found the best understanding and empathy. I don't exactly know why that is, but I think stories act as bridges to reality. I also read Brit Bennet's first work, The Mothers this year, which I also really liked and recommend. 

Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters

Yes - this is the same Ben H. Winters as The Last Policeman. This is a world of alternative history - what if the South won the American Civil War, and the southern states never abolished slavery? It takes place in contemporary America, but one in which slavery - a more polished, "humane" slavery - still exists. The main character, a Black man, is a bounty hunter for the Northern US government to apprehend runaway slaves and/or agents in the "underground airline." This book was incredibly thought-provoking, perhaps in large part because he creates a startlingly believable world - a world that is not that much different from the world we live in today. I think everyone should read it. It is not an easy read but important.

The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt

I don't read middle grade very often (I think this one is in that on-the-fence spot between middle grade and YA) but I picked this up after the name kept coming up in various places. The story takes place during the Vietnam war. The main character is Presbyterian, and in his small New England town, every Wednesday afternoon the Catholic kids and the Jewish kids go to religious studies classes, but being Presbyterian (no religious studies classes offered), he stays back at school. His teacher is not happy about having to mind one student for the afternoon and at first is quite negative but eventually the boy wins her over. They start studying Shakespeare together which sets off a whole series of events; hilarity - and tenderness - ensues. It's a book that's hard to describe - but it's laugh-out-loud funny in parts. It's sweet and wonderful. 

The Searcher by Tana French

Tana French can write atmosphere like no one living today. She is maybe - maybe - matched by Edgar Allan Poe - but I think she could even give Poe a run for his money. When I read French's books I'm always left with a feeling, one I can't really describe - the feeling of when a mood in a room shifts but you don't know when the moment slipped from light to dark, the feeling of the sun setting on a cloudy day, the feeling of not knowing what's going on, but knowing you don't know. She writes about...the gloaming so well. This book is a stand-alone outside of her Dublin murder mystery series, nor connected to The Witch Elm (which I h a t e d). The main character is an American ex-police detective who moves to Ireland and buys a fixer-upper farmhouse in a small Irish farming community. He is approached by a young boy to help him find the boy's missing older brother. This is not a fast book. It's slow and criticized for being slow but I didn't notice that it was slow. She does pacing so, so well. You don't even notice you are holding your breath until you're gasping for air.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

I'm quite late to the All the Light We Cannot See party (it won the Pulitzer in 2016, I think) but I'm so, so glad I got there. I thought this book was beautiful. It's long - 500+ pages - but doesn't feel long. It follows the duel stories of Marie-Laure, a blind girl living during the German occupation of France in World War 2, and Werner, a German boy with a knack for radios who is fighting on the German side in the war. The writing is remarkably well-crafted. Incidentally, I never think I like World War II stories, and the funny thing is, I think I've liked every WW2 book I've read, from reading The Diary of Anne Frank in the fifth grade onward. This is a book I look forward to reading again. 

Miss Benson's Beetle by Rachel Joyce

I am not an audiobook person, but we are reading this book for our January book club and I decided to try the audiobook as I wanted to get some crocheting done over my Christmas break. I think I would have liked this book as much if I had read it on paper, but I really loved the audiobook, read by Juliet Stevenson (I liked her so much I'm listening to North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell also read by Stevenson). This book has so many of the things I love. I'm an Anglophile through and through, and I love books about somewhat eccentric English characters. Miss Benson is a 46-year old single woman teaching domestic sciences at a girls school in London and hates it. She quits her job suddenly one day and sets off on an expedition to find a rare beetle in New Caledonia. It's quirky, upbeat, heartwarming. It's not Great Literature, perhaps, but it was a really lovely read to finish out the year.

Honorable Mentions:

The Wayfarers Series by Becky Chambers - A fun, creative sci-fi series: Book 1 - Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Book 2 - A Closed and Common Orbit, Book 3 - Record of a Spaceborn Few

The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis (middle grade fiction) (p.s. This is Dev's (a former student) favorite book - and if you know Dev you know that's pretty impressive [he hates reading] - and it's why I read it. I'd have to say, if you only like one book, this is a good one to like). 

Kim Jijyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradel

Beach Read by Emily Henry

Anxious People by Fredrick Backman

The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion

Obviously I read a lot of good books this year. May this list inspire you for some good reads in 2021. I hope that 2021 is nothing like 2020 - but if it is (and it might be, friends, it might be) - I hope you find solace in books (and friends, and good food, and family, of course!)

What was the best book you read in 2020? 

Happy Reading!

*Incidentally, I have been writing these book reviews for 9 years now which coincides with when I started tracking my books on Goodreads (the first time I ever really kept track of my reading) - my first blog book review was about my 2011 reads. My favorite book of 2011 was The Help by Kathyrn Stockett - which I still wholeheartedly recommend.