BEST BOOKS OF 2020 | Top 10 Books I Read in 2020

well hello everyone it's april and today we are going to be chatting about the best books that i read in 2020 so let's get into it it is a little bit dark outside i'm filming around five four or five and it's ottawa so here we are i've got the overhead light on sorry about the lighting if that's upsetting but i did want to share with you my favorite books of 2020. i had the best reading year of my life i read so many books i read over 100 books which i never ever do um but these are the best of the best and i want to share them with you and i have rated them in order so we're going to end with my favorite book of the year again this was really hard once we get down to like the top three or even four books i had a really hard time um distinguishing which one was going to be first and if you ask me tomorrow it's hard it's hard so let's dive in before we really dive into number 10 i just have one honorable mention i didn't want to have a top 11 so this is an honorable mention such a fun age by kylie reed i was sure this was going to land in my top 10 but i've read so many good ones this year but it just didn't um this follows a woman who is essentially a nanny for a white family she is black and the family asks her to take their young child in the middle of the night i think it's like 10 30 or 11 o'clock on like a weekend they ask her to take this child to a grocery store something's happened at home they don't want the kid at home for a little while so she goes and unfortunately she's stopped by a security guard and the security guard thinks that she kidnapped this child which clearly she hadn't and it is the ramifications of that it is about this white family reacting in a way that may be well-intentioned but may also be slightly insincere we specifically follow amira and her relationship with this white mother that she works for and the relationship between them is is really strange it's basically what not to do as a white person i i feel um and she's also dating someone in this book who is white who also reacts improperly as well and it was really fascinating to read this with my my 10th spot so i'm going to dive into that next but i really liked it i know that some it's kind of hit or miss for some people but i loved that book but here we go top 10 in the 10th spot we've got hood feminism by mickey kendall now i think i think i read this and then i read such a fun age and it was like the perfect pairing if you want a good non-fiction fiction pairing i feel like you can't get better than this maybe you can i i can't think of a better one this is a non-fiction book about how feminism is leaving behind black women indigenous women and women of color and it shows the myriad of ways that the white feminists are doing that uh whether intentionally or not um it shows how feminism mainstream feminism has at its core and its center the white woman as being what who feminism is for essentially and this um calls that into question and it raises um certain issues that you wouldn't have originally thought of as feminist as feminism like um hunger is a feminist issue gun violence is a feminist issue and these aren't issues that i as a white person shocking had even contemplated as being feminist before reading this book so this is the type of book that i would like to read kind of on a regular basis i highlighted all through this book and i don't regret it because i learned so much from this book and it was just wonderful it's also the only nonfiction on this list so you know it's good when number nine is a book that is going to make you cry and it made me sob this is hamnet and judith by maggie o'farrell um this is the story of shakespeare and his family we follow agnes his wife agnes had gone through so much in her history being a bit of an outsider um just having a really rough go of it in her childhood and and teenage years but she meets shakespeare and they fall in love and they have children one of those children is hamnet who dies very suddenly of illness and it follows their relationship and them having the children and then it follows them after hamnet dies and you you really are with them in their grief like this is probably the best exploration of grief aside from the light between oceans that i've ever read those two books just explore grief in such an honest and visceral way and by the end of this book i had finished the book and i was just sobbing and i just loved how they show how grief can bring people together but also tear people apart it's very realistic in what grief can do and i just thought it was brilliant number eight is the color purple by alice walker i'm so glad that i read this modern classic book finally and i still have to watch the movie i don't know why i haven't watched that yet but um this follows two sisters but mostly we follow celie um we follow celie um throughout her childhood where she had like a terrible terrible upbringing her father was abusive in all of the ways that you can be abusive he was horrendous she did finally escape her father only to marry a man who um was i don't know if equally abusive is right but also was quite abusive um but she writes letters to god and you read these letters in the first half of the book the second half of the book is her writing letters to her sister who she hasn't seen in many years and you follow her sister's storyline as well but this is really about female friendship like it seems when i first started reading the book i thought oh my goodness this is so hard and so sad and just it's just gonna be depressing and it was really hard but this also celebrated female friendship and female love so much that i just ended up caring about all of the characters immensely and it was actually quite joyous and i will never look at the color purple again the same way and you will understand if you've read the book moving into number seven we've got my dark vanessa by kate elizabeth russell this was a hard book to read but i also think it was an important book for me at least um this is about sexual assault and sexual abuse we follow a woman who is reflecting on her high school experience in which she had a romantic relationship with her english teacher she has always considered it a mutual romantic relationship she's even still in contact with this guy mr strain and it's only years and years later that she discovers women are coming out and saying this mr strain guy sexually assaulted me as as a child i was a teenager and you watch her re-imagine and re-discover what that relationship actually was and you watch her realize what she actually experienced and this is so important i think for people to read because it explores um what happens with grooming and the grooming process that sexual predators do it explains why a lot of victims have a very hard time um understanding that they were abused and understanding that the abuser is not such a good person like oftentimes people who have been abused are protective of that person a lot of people don't understand why it's because of the grooming process and this explains it so beautifully it is infuriating at times mr strain is like my least favorite character probably in all all of the books that i've read i probably hate him the most wonderful book i'm so glad that i read that okay next is the only thriller on the list and no one will be surprised that it's blue monday this kind of stands in for the whole free decline series which i read this year all eight of them were fantastic um this is by nikki french which is a husband and wife duo they are fabulous they are wonderful wonderful writers we are introduced to free decline in this book and she is a psychotherapist she has a uh a patient who comes to her and he has been dealing with infertility he and his wife have been trying for years and just nothing and he is telling her you know i keep dreaming of this redheaded boy and like he has red hair and so he wants this redheaded boy and then a boy of a very similar description goes missing like three days later and so she wonders like did this guy do something so she goes to the police and talks to the police about it and gets involved in the case and that's the beginning of it there is also a thread of a mystery that like lingers throughout all of the books which is why you can't just hop in and out of the series you have to start at the beginning and then read your whole way through which is a treat and frida herself is such an onion she's a beautiful onion to unpeel it feels like a privilege to get to know frida because she is a bit standoffish very kind but standoffish and guards her heart very much i just loved her and i miss her immensely coming in at number five which is surprising because i thought this was going to be my favorite book of the year for a good long time and that is queenie by candace carty williams this is a contemporary story about a black woman living in london she has a good career but it's kind of hanging on by a thread um she's desperately hoping to keep her job um she is also going through a breakup let's be honest she doesn't fully know it though um her boyfriend has moved out and said like i need a break we're on a break and then months pass and she's like it's just a break it's just a break but you know that they've broken up and he's moved on and so she's having sex with all of these men who treat her improperly they are physically like there's some situations in here where the sexual relationships are but they're kind of violent and she doesn't say anything and she's just treated rudely repeatedly by many many men and it's it was triggering for me because it brought me back to some of my earlier dating days where i allowed myself to be treated less than by men um and didn't just kick them to the curb and you watch her um develop self-respect over time and i just loved her i felt like she was very realistic she's frustrating sometimes because you just want to shake her at moments but i also wanted to hug her i more wanted to hug her um and she's got a group of friends who like stick up for her and are there for her and she calls them her corgis i just adored this group and queenie for sure number four is the dutch house by anne patchett this was such a wonderful surprise i didn't know what to expect i knew i liked ann patchett's writing i read bill canto like oh gosh 10 years ago or even more maybe and i really liked that but i didn't know if i would continue to like her but this just blew me away this is about a sister and a brother who live in a place called the dutch house their father has bought a very grand home that is in disrepair and he works on fixing it over the course of their childhood their mother isn't thrilled about it their mother actually leaves them and he remarries and he remarries terrible woman it's about their relationship and the importance of siblings and house only your sibling can really understand you and your childhood and there is home in a sibling relationship it also explores the importance of place and how there are certain places in in your life that it's just magical that is also home um and so this this sister and brother will often like drive by like years later in their adult days they'll drive by the house or they'll like drive and stop by the house and then just sit and reminisce for hours on end and it was wonderful i listened to this on audio and please listen to it on audio because it's narrated by tom hanks oh my goodness if he does any more anymore narration of audiobooks i would be thrilled and would listen to anything by him because he's just fantastic number three is a book with probably the greatest plot twist um i've ever read in a book not a thriller it's the nickel voice by coulson whitehead this is the first book i've read by colson whitehead and it will not be the last i think he's one of the most important people writing right now he's just stunning um this is a book about a little boy i shouldn't say a little he's actually a teenager named l wood he's a black boy he is wonderful he's studious um he has like a part-time job he's he listens to a lot of martin luther king like i just you fall in love with elwood right away this is a short book and i think you follow him for about 50 pages before things in elvis life go in a downward spiral um and in those you know 30 50 pages you fall in love with him already already and then um a police officer accuses him of doing something that he did not do and they move elwood to the nickel academy which is not an academy they just call it an academy it is a place of horrors essentially the boys at the nickel academy are being abused in every single way possible some boys don't make it out alive and it's based on a real place that existed in florida which i don't remember the name of now but um and it's about his experience at the nickel academy the friends that he makes but it's incredibly heartbreaking 200 pages packed the biggest punch what a brilliant brilliant book this was i'm so glad that i read it number two is miracle creek by angie kim i read this at the beginning of the year this is a courtroom drama and it follows a cast of characters all of them are linked by something called a miracle submarine which is this like medical concoction that gives you like heavy doses of oxygen to help a number of ailments so some mothers have brought their children there um for things like uh adhd one man is there for infertility and one day there is a fire that breaks out in the miracle submarine some people are killed some people are horribly injured and some people are fine and one of the mothers of one of the kids being treated is on trial for having set fire to this contraption on purpose to kill her child because she can't she can't handle him it's following the case within the courtroom we follow all of these people going up to the stand to testify and we also but we we follow each and every one of the characters in their own perspectives and we get a chapter from this person a chapter from that person and you see how they in their own lives have been victimized misunderstood judged and you also see them judging and this is such a grey book nobody in this story is really really good and nobody in the story is really really terrible it's this mix and i think it's such an important um lesson in the importance of not judging you don't know what someone is going through and i i really loved it i really hope that angie kim writes more courtroom dramas because she is a lawyer a trial lawyer i just think that she could do it with so many different stories she did this so beautifully and i can't wait to see what she comes out with next and the top my favorite book of the year to a lot of people might be a silly one but i was very pleasantly surprised by the southern book club's guide to sling vampires this is a horror book by grady hendrix this is about a a book club a women's book club in the 90s they get together excuse me and read true crime books together one day a man moves into town and the main character patricia thinks he's a vampire and it goes from there and that sounds ridiculous and in some ways it is a little bit ridiculous like that is kind of funny but at the same time it is it has so much more depth to it um you discover that a lot of black children are going missing and nobody like no officials no police officers are getting involved trying to help so it really explores the issues of race in here it also explores the issues of misogyny in here patricia's husband is a horrible human being and it explores that it then it explores female friendship of course these women coming together um to fight a monster and i loved this book i just fell completely in love with it because it had moments of terror there were so many gross moments in here grady hendrix doesn't shy away from disgusting moments um there were moments where i was truly scared um but there were also moments where i felt like there was a deeper story being told here it's definitely my favorite horror book of all time now um but yeah it landed into my heart and is now number one for 2020 so let me know in the comments below if you've read any of these books and also what was your favorite book of 2020 i would love to know um also please like this video if you enjoyed this and also subscribe i love to hang out with you more here hope you're doing well and i'll chat with you soon bye everybody

Channel: Getting Hygge With It

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Keywords: Best books of 2020, Favorite books of 2020, Favourite books of 2020, best books of 2020 so far, favorite books ever, book recommendations 2021, book recommendations 2020, book recommendations fiction, book recommendations nonfiction, my favorite books to read, best non fiction book recommendations, non fiction book recommendations 2020, my favorite books ever

Id: 0F3LYu9plMk

Length: 21min 30sec (1290 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 03 2021