My best books of 2020 (and other distinctions)
I read more books this year (93) than I have in any other year since I started keeping track. Reading has always been not only a hobby for me, but also an escape. And this year, the ability to lose myself in a book for a few hours proved to be essential to cobbling together whatever semblance of well-being I could manage during any given month. Thank goodness amazing people are out there writing good books for us to read! This year didn’t have as many clear standouts as last year. Instead, I read a lot of pretty good books and a few really good ones. Here are my favorite books from 2020 and some other fun distinctions.
Agent Sonya, by Ben Macintyre. This author is so good at telling the most interesting parts of a story. There is plenty going on in this book with the main plotline about Agent Sonya, but Macintyre also knows when to spend a few minutes on side characters and the fascinating things going on with them, too. Plus, this book has Women Making Childcare Decisions While Spying, which is just the kind of thing I love!
The Home That Was Our Country, by Alia Malek. I loved the mix in this book of personal family history and the history of Syria itself. It was the perfect clear-eyed but comforting antidote to last year’s incredibly good but incredibly distressing Assad Or We Burn the Country.
The Winter of the Witch, by Katherine Arden. RUSSIA and FAIRYTALES and MAGIC and RELATIONSHIPS and CHANGE and ANGST and STUNNINGLY LYRICAL STORYTELLING. This book was everything to me.
Pilgrim’s Wilderness, by Tom Kizzia. This was an absorbing book to read in the late spring/early summer as the world crumbled around us. A friend on Goodreads described it as “Into the Wild meets Educated” and that about sums it up. Each time you thought, while reading, “oh, THIS is the main conflict; I don’t see how things can really get worse,” well…
The Satapur Moonstone, by Sujata Massey. A delightful mystery book (part of a series, hooray!) set in 1920s India! Absolutely delicious.
Other distinctions:
Most unexpectedly good book: The Ten Thousand Doors of January. I picked this up after hearing it mentioned in passing on the podcast Reply All and it was really good!
Most unexpectedly bad book: Caging Skies. The movie (Jojo Rabbit) was so good! The book was SO bad!
Most-read book: Well, I read We Die Alone TWICE this year. Otherwise, I read Code Name Verity and The Scorpio Races for at least the third time each.
Best bad book (the guiltiest pleasure): A Discovery of Witches. Look, I know time-travelling vampires are not the most edifying topic out there but have you considered that ACTUALLY MAYBE THEY ARE??
Worst good book: I actually do want to name a book in this category this year! It’s Notes on a Foreign Country. I think about this book probably once a week and I still find it so deeply unsettling. Or even worse, accurate.
Worst book I didn’t finish: The Surface Breaks (a dark, feminist retelling of The Little Mermaid). I read reviews of it after I stopped reading and was so glad I hadn’t given it more of my time.
Worst book I DID finish: Probably The Betrothed, but I went into it knowing it would be a hate-read so it ended up being kind of fun! In a way!
Worst cover: Call Down the Hawk. For the longest time, I thought this book wasn’t even real because how could anyone make Maggie Steifvater have a cover like this?!?
Best cover: Under A Painted Sky
Worst title: Hmm, I think all these titles are working really hard and doing their best! I am getting slightly tired of “The ________ of _________ and ________” titles, though. Let’s work on that for next year.
Best title: The Widows of Malabar Hill. Don’t you want to read a book called that? Also The Man From the Train. Just tell it like it is! What is this book about? Oh, you know, THE MAN FROM THE TRAIN. Also Memory of Water. Very evocative title.
Logorrhea books: This year, I could NOT stop talking about We Die Alone, Agent Sonya, The Home That Was Our Country, Flashes in the Night, The Man From the Train, and The Brothers.
Something that made almost every book better this year: Google Maps! I often had Google Maps open right alongside my book (non-fiction in particular) so I could follow the action spatially and geographically as well as narratively! It made every book better.
The year of amateur books: A few books that I read this year were written by amateur historians/novelists and I really appreciated their work! The Man From the Train, The Princess Trials, Flashes in the Night: I see you and appreciate you!
Here are some weird coincidences that I kept track of.
Books written in the 1950s about WW2: We Die Alone, The Long Walk
Books where someone’s ear gets bitten: The Fountains of Silence, The Long Walk
Books with Finns! We Die Alone, The Long Walk, City of Thieves, A Discovery of Witches, Agent Sonya
Books with Nazis: We Die Alone, The Fountains of Silence, The Long Walk, Caging Skies, The War Outside, They Went Left, The Light in Dark Places, The Yellow Bird Sings, City of Thieves, Agent Sonya, The Enigma Game, Code Name Verity
Books where a princess is nicknamed Killer: The Royal We, American Royalty, The Heir Affair
Books where someone kills someone else against their will and then vomits: Ash Princess, All Your Dirty Secrets, Code Name Verity
Books where someone has magic and suppresses it: The Midnight Lie, Ash Princess, A Discovery of Witches
Books with little girls in dormitories: Death in St. Petersburg, The Midnight Lie, The Tenth Girl (note: this must be an autocorrect because I did not read a book called this and I am not sure what I meant. The Downstairs Girl, maybe?), The Yellow Bird Sings
Books that mention wearing felt boots in dry snow: Death in St. Petersburg, Tisha, City of Thieves
Books that have quaint attitudes toward indigenous people: The Long Walk, We Die Alone, Tisha
Books that mention the contents of chamberpots being dumped into the streets and thus lending their names to the streets: The Guinevere Deception, Very Very Very Dreadful
Books in which the heir to the throne is not allowed to love who he or she wants: The Royal We, American Royals, The Betrothed
Books with honey coffee: Ash Princess, Under A Painted Sky
Books where a small object in a pocket is a talisman of a loved one: Outrun the Moon, Lady Smoke, The Yellow Bird Sings
Books that mention Tristan and Isolde: The Guinevere Deception, Heavy Lies the Crown, The Betrothed, Code Name Verity
Books that tie knots in hair: The Scorpio Races, The Guinevere Deception, Memory of Water
Books with powdered dragon scales: The Ladies Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, The Ten Thousand Doors of January
Books where the author is married to a famous person but I don’t figure it out for a while: Catch and Kill, Untamed
Books with expert forgers: Call Down the Hawk, The Midnight Lie, The Light in Dark Places, Agent Sonya, The Enigma Game, Code Name Verity
Books where people bury valuables in the ground: Voices from Chernobyl, Desperate Passage, The Yellow Bird Sings, Agent Sonya
Books that brag about a character’s typing speed: Such A Fun Age, They Went Left
Books with an inscrutable older brother named Declan: Call Down the Hawk, Two Can Keep A Secret
Books where Polish Jews stitch names into clothing during WW2: They Went Left, The Yellow Bird Sings
Books set in Poland during WW2 where someone insinuates that a Jewish girl in hiding will have sex for food: They Went Left, The Light in Hidden Places, The Yellow Bird Sings
Books where the main character’s parent comitted suicide and later the character is kidnapped by Somali pirates from Gilcayo: The Desert and the Sea, Hostage Three
Books where people try not to drown: Flashes in the Night, Refugee, The Enigma Game
Books that are obsessed with tea: Darius the Great is Not OK, The Satapur Moonstone, Memory of Water
Books where not flying below the cloud ceiling is a major plot point: Into the Abyss, The Enigma Game
Books where Norwegian fishermen help soldiers escape from the Nazis: We Die Alone, The Enigma Game
Books where a pilot re-purposes the log book as a notebook after a crash landing: Into the Abyss, Code Name Verity
Books where bodies are found in the Scottish Highlands: The Hunting Party, The Pearl Thief
