BEST books of 2020 (so far!!!)

hi everyone welcome back to my channel today is going to be a very exciting book video because i'm going to be sharing with you my favorite books of 2020 so far now that we are officially in the month of july 2020 is halfway over which is actually a little bit insane so far this year i've read 39 books and from those books i thought i would pick some of my favorites and share with you in this video also if you guys are regulars on my channel you'll know that i recently moved so right now i'm in my library office space i've started decorating my bookshelves it's a great time so if you guys want to see some of my interior decor moving vlogs make sure to subscribe to my channel and you can check those out on there anyway i am now going to jump into some of my favorite books of 2020 so far the first book that i'm going to be talking about is a review for me this is jane eyre by charla bronte this is a classic that i honestly think everyone should read it follows the story of jane who is an orphan who we first meet as a young girl growing up in an unhappy household she then gets moved to a school for girls and you see her grow up into a very capable woman she then becomes governess at a wealthy estate and we follow a interesting nuanced and troubled love story between her and the man of the estate mr rochester i feel like most people have an idea of what the plot twist entails but just in case you haven't read it i'm not going to spoil it i would highly recommend this book if you like gothic literature it is very dark it is foreboding there are actually a lot of scenes in this story that kind of spooked me they were pretty haunting and i really loved it a great gloomy day read so definitely check this out if you haven't already the next book is by rebecca solnit this is the first work that i've read by this author but i wanted to check her out for a long time and the book i read is the far away nearby this is a book of essays and it's really interesting because on the page of contents the contents basically follow a certain kind of circular structure and i think it's really cool because we have the exact same chapter names going up to not and then the knot is unwound and then we get the exact same structure back i just think that's really satisfying and it's such a beautiful small touch this book is just full of these small and thoughtful touches throughout and to kind of describe the unifying thread or theme of these essays i think is to talk about storytelling and the power of narrative throughout our lives how these narratives shape our lives and she goes into a lot of very just interesting stories from far away that still somehow connect to us on a basic human level this was a beautiful book to read rebecca solnit has such beautiful and lyrical writing style so i had a great time reading this reading this book felt like feeding my soul and i really really enjoyed it the next book that i really enjoyed was the woman destroyed by simone de beauvoir this is a book containing three short stories um i don't want to give anything away all i have to say is if you enjoy devastating french literature this book is for you the next book i have is a compendium of graphic novels and that is sega by brian bohan and fiona staples i don't read a lot of graphic novel series but this is one that i've been wanting to check out for quite some time and i really enjoyed it i highly recommend you get the compendium because it has all of the volumes that are currently out all packed together into this one big beautiful bunch to give a very basic premise of the story there is a war that is occurring between one planet and its orbiting moon and this war has basically carried over to the entire galaxy this story follows the intergalactic love story between two characters that each come from one of these opposing factions or segments together they have a child and we follow them dealing with the consequences of their love and trying to raise a family in this turmoil of war and politics one of the strongest points for me in this story were the character development there are so many amazing side characters and this is just such a fun story to read from the art style is absolutely fantastic as well like there are just so many gorgeous illustrations in here super entertaining and fun to read i love this book out to quite a few of my friends to get them to read this book as well so if anyone wants to borrow my copy i'm just saying highly recommend this book would happily lend it out the next book that i absolutely need to talk about is the education of an idealist by samantha powers samantha power was an advisor for barack obama during his presidency he also served as the united states ambassador for the united nations so she is a powerhouse of a woman and in this memoir we follow her childhood in dublin her personal struggles dealing with her parents relationships and how she moves through the united states as an immigrant and then ultimately becomes a political advocate i think her journey is so interesting and i find her just to be such an inspiring person because from the start she didn't necessarily have the goal of becoming a political leader yet we follow her and her desire to make change in the world on these crazy adventures that i just can't believe are her real life for instance she was a war correspondent in bosnia i believe and you really see how these experiences shaped her values and how she carried that over into politics something else that was really interesting for me was reading a better time working in the united nations i got a lot better understanding of the system and the intricacies of this political structure and i also became aware of just how difficult it is to make these political decisions it makes a lot of sense now why it takes so long to make political and social changes but i think a huge message that power embodies in her book is that we can never give up and we have to continually strive even if it is just these small changes the next book i have is another inspiring non-fiction read and that is thick and other essays by tracy mcmillan cotton tressy's book primarily focuses on the experience of black womanhood as she approaches this topic in such a provocative and thoughtful way there were so many things that i booked mark because they were just such thought-provoking ideas that i had never really encountered or figured out on my own for instance she talks about the intersectionality between socioeconomic status and race she talks about the different ethnic standards and cultures within blackness and one idea that i really really loved was how she talked about beauty standards she didn't argue that it was wrong to consider one person more beautiful than the other but she raised the question of why we value beauty in the first place who profits from this if we consider the capitalist structures that are prevalent in our society then it's pretty scary to think that we are at a point where we value beauty above all else and what does that mean for our society who is ultimately benefiting from this and where does that leave the rest of us there are so many interesting ideas from this and like a lot of others i really want to elevate black voices and other minorities so i think this is a great book to read if you want to educate yourself more on other perspectives highly inspiring read really really enjoyed it the second to last book i have to talk about is sons and daughters of ease and plenty by ramona also bill so this is a book that i got from the library because of the pandemic i actually don't have to return this book for a while so i've had this book for months now but anyway this is a book that follows a wealthy family and the two heads or parents in this family come from very different backgrounds the father basically associates money with morality and he sees that having money and trying to accumulate money as essentially evil and greedy so this becomes kind of a problem when the family money basically runs out and the family can no longer sustain their usual quality of life because of that their familial relationships basically falls apart in order to survive someone basically has to get a job but that kind of goes against the ethos of the father figure i do want to put it out there that this story does contain cheating which is something that i essentially disagree with and i do not like reading about but i feel like it was resolved in a way that was satisfying to the story at first i found a lot of the characters to just not be very likable and i found them to be kind of one-dimensional ultimately i really enjoyed the story because it touched on a lot of interesting ideas and it was a really beautiful exploration on a lot of themes such as money marriage family independence so i have to say that ultimately the strongest selling point for this novel for me at least was the whole journey of exploration that was carried on throughout the novel and finally the last book that i have to talk about is a room of ones owned by virginia woolf i read quite a few books by virginia woolf and i have to argue that a room of one's own is probably my favorite so this story is kind of more like an essay that's written with a fictional narrative as well as a fictional narrator ultimately this essay explores the theme of woman in literature both as characters as well as writers of literature wolfe explores why we don't have as many female historical writers and why this might be the case i love reading feminist literature and i think that this is a classic so if you are interested in those sort of writings i would highly recommend you check this out and even if you're not interested i still think that you should read this because this book is still extremely vital and relevant to modern society it provides a really interesting perspective to consider how other minorities may be oppressed by systemic structures the main thesis that will brings up is that in order to create they need a room of one's own to block out interruptions and she puts this in the context of the historical roles that women played where they were the primary caretakers of all the children and they had to run the household and they just never had time to themselves in order to create i think that historical context was extremely interesting because she observes that there are still a lot of improvements that need to be made but she also acknowledges that we've come really far there's also a very inspiring and kind of kick butt message that basically motivated me to just do something there are so many things that we need to acknowledge and that we need to improve i think this book is such a great thing to read at this moment in time because it acknowledges that we can't take the opportunities that we do have now for granted we need to use the rights and the privileges that we do have to elevate others that are currently being oppressed even though these efforts may not seem immediately fruitful ultimately we are providing for the next generation and we have to do our best to make it better for them love love love loved this book please check it out so those are some of my favorite books of 2020 so far in my last book video i talked about a few more great five star reads so if you haven't seen that yet make sure to check it out but i hope you enjoyed this video let me know what some of your favorite books this year has been i love getting new book recommendations and i would love to hear what you guys have to say so that is all from me for today thank you so much for watching and make sure to subscribe so that i can see you in my next video very soon thanks so much and see you next time bye [Music] you

Channel: TheDailyMundane

Views: 3,772

Rating: 4.9064326 out of 5

Keywords: book recommendations, books i read recently, favourite books, best books of 2020, best books to read, books to read, book haul, reading recommendations, booktube, tooktuber, premed books, nonfiction books, fiction books

Id: 72d5xop7qZo

Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 05 2020