BEST BOOKS OF 2020!!!

[Music] [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] hello everyone and happy 2021 today we are going to be talking about my favorite books of 2020 and my personal best books of 2020 so i am so excited to talk to you guys about the books that have made this crazy year so much better and so warm and cozy and it's just made 2020 so much better i feel like this video is kind of a big thank you to authors and to books in general for being a a home away from home for so many of us a way to travel when we can't travel a way to hang out with friends without hanging out with friends because i feel like fictional friends are some of the most loyal friends and it's a way that we can time travel without leaving anywhere it's it's just the most magical way to transport yourself and in a time where we can't travel and we can't see people and we have a lot of restrictions books are this great freedom and immerse yourself in somewhere you've never been with people you've never met and then at the end they become your closest friends they become part of your life and you have lived a life with them that is the beauty of books and the wonderful thing that has really opened up my eyes this year especially is to how much i appreciate literature and how much i appreciate books in general because i don't know what i would have done in 2020 without them they have brought me so much joy and i just this video is a huge thank you to literature and to books and to the authors that write these books thank you books thank you authors and just thank you literature in general for making 2020 so wonderful it's been a really hard year it's been really strange and there have been a lot of trials and tribulations but books have made it wonderful and amazing and it has been a wonderful 2020 reading year for me i reached 100 books which i actually filmed a whole reading vlog a little mini read-a-thon with myself at the end of 2020 i finished up i read i think eight books to reach 100 in the last three days of december so that will most likely be up after this video so definitely look out for that i have a few books that i read in that reading vlog that i'm actually mentioning in this video so that's exciting but yes i also just want to thank you guys for making my 2020 so incredible you have really been there for me been so supportive have made this year so special and even though 2020 has been such a strange year it was such a strange year because today is january 1st that i'm filming this um you have brought so much light and love into my life through youtube through my etsy shop through instagram through all these different ways that we can communicate and you have been the most wonderful virtual friends so i just want to give you all a very big hug and just a very big thank you and happy new year and best wishes and i hope you have some wonderful books ahead of you which i'm sure you do and yes so i just want to say a big thank you to you who are watching this um yes so 2020 was was a year it was a year and it was a year that i read my favorite book of all time it was a year i discovered some incredible incredible authors it was a year where my classics reading really blossomed it's the my first year of reaching 100 books which i've never read 100 books in a year before so that was an incredible feeling and now we are starting from scratch which is so exciting and also today emma and i announced our dickens versus tolstoy debate which if you haven't heard then it's the last video i posted before this one emma and i are hosting a book club series where we are debating and reading every other month a dickens and tolstoy book so if you want to hear a bunch of information about that i rambled on and on in that video so that will be linked down below it was a video previous to this one and we have a lot of dickinson tolstoy ahead of us and 2020 was really the year that my love for them uh bloomed and came about so i'm so excited without further ado i am going to talk about my favorite books of 2020. i have separated these into different categories so i also wrote them down in my journal i have honorable mentions and then my top 10 books and then i also have a favorite reread a favorite author that i read multiple books from and also a favorite series and i thought that i would start with my favorite series and that kind of wins into my favorite author as well i have one favorite series for 2020 and that was discovering the incredible graphic novel series that is heart stopper by alice oseman alice oseman writes and illustrates this graphic novel series so this is the first volume heart stopper volume one and then we have heart stopper volume 2 and then heart stopper volume 3 and heart stopper volume 4 is coming out in may of 2021 but it is available online through alice oseman's tapas and webtoons and i believe tumblr and that was my 100th book of the year i read most of heartstopper volume 4. it's not finished yet but i did count it towards my 100th book and it was an incredible way to end the year and heart stopper has brought so much love and romance and sweetness and diversity and acceptance into my life this is a boy meets boy boys become friends boys fall in love series and it is about uh diverse friendship groups and acceptance and these really hard topics that are handled so well there's a topic of eating disorder that i think is handled very well there's topics of anxiety and homophobia and not being accepted but also there is themes of love and friendship and kindness and support and healthy relationships and healthy parent-to-child relationships these books have so much in them that so many important things in them that i think young readers especially it's so wonderful to see it in a book and to hopefully have that influence how people uh act in their own lives i know reading about these different relationships and these different characters has changed me in a way and i don't know these books are just so incredible and i couldn't recommend them enough if you want a really light heartwarming beautiful and just wholesome book series then i can't recommend these enough because they have brought so much joy and comfort into my life and the main characters nick and charlie are one of the sweetest and one of my most favorite characters that i have met in the year of 2020 so please please please if you're looking for a comforting read read heart stopper because you will not regret it and then that leads into i have two favorite authors of 2020 i was going to pick just one and then i couldn't pick between these two so one is a contemporary author and one is a classic author and i wanted to not just pick an author that i read one book from because i could say dickens and i could say tulsa story and that would be very obvious but i wanted to pick an author that i read multiple books from this year so the first author is alice oseman i read heartstopper first and then i read solitaire which is her first novel and then i also read nick and charlie which is the yellow one and this winter which is the red one so she has a whole chronology of her books on her different social media but the first book she ever wrote she wrote this as a teenager actually this is her first why a and this is about this main character tori spring who is very pessimistic she is a bit cup half empty and this is also about her family her two brothers uh charlie and ollie or oliver and it's really about her going through school it's coming of age of a lot of different aspects of growing up and i just think it's a wonderful book to read so i loved this and then she also wrote nick and charlie which is a solitaire novella and this is about nick and charlie the main characters of heartstopper charlie is tori's brother she first wrote solitaire and wrote about nick and charlie and then wanted to give them more of their own story because she was really intrigued by how they came to be in a relationship and it sort of spiraled into this own separate thing so tori is in um charlie's sister and nick is charlie's boyfriend this is set in the future after heart stopper and after solitaire where nick and charlie are in the relationship and nick is about to go off to university and charlie is a year younger than him he's dealing with should they stay together should they break up what should they do is their relationship strong enough and it is a great and realistic uh example of growing uh out of a relationship but also growing into a relationship and just maturing in terms of a relationship in general so i absolutely love this book and then we have this winter which is set on christmas day and this is about the spring family tori charlie and their little brother ali and their different struggles that they are facing currently and how it affects them on christmas day this was an incredible book that i read this december and these are also solitaire is not illustrated but nick and charlie and this winter do have illustrations throughout them which i just absolutely loved and then of course we have hearthstopper which you guys know i absolutely love so alice oseman has been such a wonderful writer to discover this year i have enjoyed all of these books so much from her she is such a beautiful writer because she talks about very difficult and touchy subjects in the most careful and delicate ways and i feel like i don't read a lot of why a because sometimes i read why i and i see these different problematic elements and i don't think they're handled in the best way and i've seen that a lot in in young adult but reading alice oseman which she is a young adult writer the way she handles these topics is the exact way that i've always wanted them to be handled in those other books so it's just so validating to see that come to life in her work and her writing is simple but there's beauty in that simplicity and i just adore her so yes alice oseman is definitely one of my favorite writers of 2020. my next favorite writer is more of a modern classic writer and i read three books from him this year and have fallen head over heels in love with his writing and that is ian forster i love em forester with my whole heart and soul i read three books from him this year the first one that i read it was a room with a view and then i read i believe this is the order that i read them but i may be wrong and then i read maurice and then i read aspects of the novel which is a non-fiction about the novel in general i adore em forester the way that he writes is unlike so many writers that i have come across and his writing is so emotional but blunt and honest and lyrical at the same time he juxtaposes these different literary elements in the most vivid way the way he creates a character the way he creates a setting and scenery in general is just stunning and he is he's just a genius so i absolutely loved these three books for different reasons aspects of the novel i i loved hearing because those are a series of lectures that he gave at cambridge university about just the novel form he talks about a lot of different writers like tolstoy and dickens and jane austen and these different writers but that really made me appreciate him as a man um in general not even just as an author so i'm just a fan of him as a person but also his novels that i read this year maurice and a room with a view both very different books but also very similar in their style and i'm going to talk a little bit more about them later so i'm not going to say too much but yes em forester is an author that i think everybody needs to read and he's a bit he's a bit under hyped and if you want to take anything away from this video please think about picking up em forester or pick up ian forster in 2021 because you will not regret it he is an amazing writer that deserves so many readers so so so many readers and i can't wait to read more from him in 2021 now i'm going to talk about my two favorite rereads of 2021 and the first one is normal people by sally rooney i first read normal people in 2019 and fell in love with it i think it was one of my favorite books of 2019 it should be if it's not then i take that back it's definitely one of my favorite books ever and i also re-read it because the amazing hulu series came out this year and i actually reread this with one of my dearest friends kira from her channel kira foster and there is a whole 24-hour reading vlog of me and kira rereading this this book so that is on my channel i will link it down below and this is a coming-of-age story about these two characters connell and marianne and how they keep coming together and breaking apart and coming together throughout their lives they have this sort of turbulent relationship where something happens and to break them apart but then they always end up coming together breaking apart coming together so it's this really beautiful realistic honest and true relationship i felt like while reading this and while watching the show i kept having to remind myself that carolyn these are fictional people because i was getting so emotionally invested in them and in their lives and in their choices where it was making me very tense and just emotional in general so this book is an incredible work of fiction the way that sally rooney writes is is very unique she doesn't use a lot of quotation marks she doesn't use any quotation marks and it sort of molds the inner monologue and the inner narration with the dialogue and i feel like that kind of is how the mind works or how emotions work so i feel like even though a lot that could be jarring to a lot of people and at first it was for me but i think it really made the whole book flow and sort of felt like this one cohesive thing and it wasn't broken up with dialogue and description it was just there as a whole and i loved it and kanala and marianne are one of my favorite uh literary pairings of 2020 as well in 2019 but yes also love the show so much that was a joy to watch in 2020 so definitely a favorite reread of this year or last year it's not 2020 anymore oh my goodness and then my second favorite reread i actually reread i think a week ago were a little less than a week ago and that is the invention of hugo cabre by brian selznick and if you want to hear me ramble about this book a few reading vlogs back i ramble about this book so i will link it down below but if you want to hear why this book is very very special to me then watch that clip or the whole video if you want to but basically this book is the book that inspired me to be an illustrator and to be a writer because it is told in words and pictures so there are pros and pictures as well so throughout the whole book it is told through images and through description dialogue narrative it is about this orphaned boy who is a clock keeper in a paris train station in i think around the 1920s i'm not sure if it actually says but i think it's around the 1920s it is about cinema and film and a bookish girl that he befriends it is about his loneliness him dealing with the loss of his father and it's about how you can find family in the most unlikely of places and with the most unlikely people it is about a mystery involving the filmmaker georges melies it is about the beauty that is cinema the beauty that is storytelling this is a book that changed my life at a very young age and it means the world to me so if you haven't read it definitely read it it is a middle grade but i always say this that middle grades i think are even more important to read as an adult because you get so much out of them they're meant to have those um those lessons and those morals for children to kind of grow up while you know reading those but i think adults can get so much out of middle grade and especially in this case you can get so much out of this book like i was saying this book involves the cinema and reading this book feels like a cinematic experience even the way that brian selznick introduces us into the story he takes us from a far away shot of the moon and we get closer and closer so now there's a paris landscape or paris skyline and then a paris skyline again closer brings us into the location nearer to the location inside the train station and then we meet hugo so it feels like it's the way that a movie opens up it feels like the opening of a movie the way that the camera moves so the way that he uses camera angle as an illustrator is just genius so please just please read this book okay i'm done please read it now i'm going to talk about my honorable mentions i have six of them i was going to try to narrow it down to five but that sixth one i just couldn't not mention so here they are at number 16 we have the tinderbox by hans christian anderson i read this book last week i believe right after i finished hugo or the day after i finished hugo rereading hugo and this is a collection of hans christian anderson's short stories he is obviously known for his very classic fairy tales my favorite in this collection is the steadfast tin soldier i grew up reading a picture book of the steadfast in soldier and i just love the story so much i feel like hans christian andersen is one of the most influential writers especially on children's lives because we have grown up with so many of his stories and just him as a storyteller is just thinking about it you know blows me away because he has really shaped what literature is today and has even shaped what cinema is and movies and storytelling and narrative in general he's a genius and i loved this little collection this is a penguin little black classics and i it took me no time at all to read but while i was reading it i was just having the most wonderful experience rereading these stories that i grew up loving so i had to mention it here because i just love it so much and i can't wait in 2021 one of my goals is to reread or read more of hans christian anderson i have my eye on a few collections of his like a big collection of a lot of his stories so very excited to read that in 2021 and absolutely loved reading this in 2020 so that is my first honorable mention number 15 is brideshead revisited by evelyn i believe even eva linwa because i said evelyn but i believe it's evelyn and this is a gorgeous penguin modern classic this is a modern classic and it is about the it's very kind of light academia um it's about these characters that have a specific station in society it's about memory and friendship and love and uh and society it's this is really a um a character study and it's a slow it's a slow-moving book but it it has a lot to say and i don't want to give too much weight because i kind of feel like these are one of those books where it's sort of another like internal monologue a lot about the characters a lot about um their emotional responses to what they go through so this is set um at university i believe they're oxford uh these two main characters sebastian and charles yes charles and sebastian um and their relationship with one another and how that friendship blooms and grows and how their family kind of influences their relationship so it's very interesting uh study on class and expectations of society and everything like that so typical typical class modern classic book set around the oxford scene so loved this a great great book at number 14 we have letters from father christmas by j.r.r tolkien i first read this in the beginning of december this is my first full tolkien book i haven't read the habit or the lord of the rings for any of his other books and i think that this was such a great way to introduce myself to tolkien as a writer because this is his letters acting as father christmas to his children in 1920s oxford and he basically wrote acting as father christmas he drew illustrations for his kids and wrote little letters and um talking he created this whole world of the north pole with a polar bear assistant and the different elves and all the letters involved the adventures that father christmas would kind of go on or deal with every year the um scrapes that he would get through and all the different things that would kind of mess up at the north pole he would talk about to the token children so we have pictures of the letters and also them uh typed out as well so they're a bit easier to read but these were just so wonderful to experience and it made me nostalgic for my own childhood believing in santa and just the spirit of christmas and everything involving the holiday season my parents also always left my sister and i letters from santa every christmas morning so that kind of spoke to my childhood as well and this was just an absolutely gorgeous and lovely and heartwarming book and i loved every second of reading it so love it at number 13 we have the amazing phantom of the opera by gaston leho this i read in october for the dark academics book club with my amazing friends and i always loved the story of phantom of the opera but this was actually my first time reading the original text and it was so incredible to see the story that i loved so much in its original textual form it made me think about the characters differently the way that i pictured the story developing came about differently than i expected and it was just such an incredible reading experience reading something that you perceive one way from the musical and the music and the movie adaptation but then reading gesson lojo's original form was so interesting because you kind of saw those little changes and the things that they took and ran with and in the way that he creates and describes the characters uh i think raul is the main diva of this story christine daye they describe as a diva but i think raul's the biggest diva and i loved that i loved the different characters and talking about it with my friends was just an incredible experience so this was such a wonderful part of 2020. coming at number 12 is father christmas and me by matt haig this is the third book in the christmas series that matt haig has written and this is a middle grade about father christmas and this other little girl who is the main character of the second book amelia wish heart it is about them at the north pole or elf helm as they call it and it is about not fitting in as a human and also a malicious bad elf that wants to ruin christmas and ruin father christmas and have amelia go away saying she doesn't belong in elf home but it is about belonging and finding family where you least expect and acceptance and it's just really the essence of christmas is in this book it is set in the past it is set i want to say in the late 1800s like the victorian era i want to say they mentioned charles dickens as being amelia's favorite current author it also victoria queen victoria is a character in the second book so this is set late in the late victorian period i want to say but it's such a great modern classic it has that very nostalgic feel to it it feels like i'm a kid again when i read this and i actually read this and finished it on christmas eve and that was a wonderful way to finish christmas eve because the book ends um around christmas eve or just before the end it's on christmas eve and it was just such an incredible experience i loved every second of it it put me in a really cozy holiday christmasy mood and that's all that i want out of christmas books is to just make me feel warm and cozy and that is exactly what this book did and matt haig is just such an incredible emotional and and lovely and comforting writer so this was an incredible incredible book and made my 2020 wonderful at number 11 my last honorable mention is the yellow wallpaper by charlotte perkins gilman this also has the short stories the rocking chair and old waters and i read this as one of my last books of 2020 so it is in that reading vlog of me trying to get to 100 books before the end of the year and i first read the yellow wallpaper in one of my short fiction classes and i remember reading it and being blown away because this story was groundbreaking and it still is groundbreaking and especially the rocking chair and old waters all three short stories have one thing in common and that is turning the trope of the tragic death of a woman especially in shakespeare's tragedies a lot of the women have really brutal and tragic deaths like juliet and romy and juliet and cleopatra and ophelia and lady macbeth and all these different female characters and charlotte perkins gilman takes the male and female characters and the character that meets their demise in each story is the man and i think that that's so just groundbreaking and incredible and i could go into so much literary analysis about each one of these stories and they're so short so i don't want to give too much away about each one because i think the best way to go into these stories is not knowing very much just knowing that they're groundbreaking and incredible and very thought-provoking and on the back of this edition it says this horrifying semi-autobiographical feminist story of imprisonment and madness scandalized 19th century society and there that's specifically talking about the yellow wallpaper but the rocking chair and old waters does the same thing as well this story is just incredible and i wanted to put it in my top 10 but i didn't have room so it is at number 11 but that was really hard to kind of place because even though i read this at the way end of the year i wasn't expecting it to be a favorite but it definitely is a favorite and ah just please read it because it's so short it'll take you about an hour not even and you can get so much out of this so if you're looking for really great feminist fiction read these stories they're incredible drum roll please we are now up to my top 10 favorite books of 2020 this was relatively easy to actually put together they are from least favorite of the 10 to the favorite even though my 10th book is still one of my favorite books of all time so yes this was a pretty easy configuration figuring out which one was my tenth and which one was my first i know you guys all know what my favorite book of the year is but i'm very excited to tell you guys the top ten so without further ado my tenth book at number 10 we have mrs dalloway by virginia woolf i read this for one of the rory gilmore 24-hour readathons that i host with my lovely friend kira we both are crazy gilmore girl fans and we do a 24-hour readathon now and then and we are definitely due for another one where we read books that are referenced on gilmore girls and mrs dalloway was one of them and so i read it for one of the 24 hour readathons i read it in a day this book is set in a day and it is stream of consciousness about this group of friends that sort of it's kind of like a love actually situation where we follow them separately but they all know each other and they all kind of come together in their own way and it is mainly about mrs dalloway looking back to her her youth sort of early 20s into up until her like middle age where she's basically the whole book is set around her getting ready to host a dinner party and this book deals with a lot of things that i didn't expect it to deal with like ptsd before it was diagnosed as ptsd and same-sex relationships and societal expectations and virginia woolf is just an incredible writer i first read a room of one's own by her at university and this was the first book of hers that i read out of university and i definitely want to do a reread of a room of one's own now that i have read and fallen in love with mrs dalloway so this year has also spurred a greater interest in reading more of virginia woolf's books so loved mrs dalloway love everything that it has to say i think her writing is so singular and unique and amazing the way that she tells a story is captivating because it kind of feels like you're going down this like spiral effect of you enter the story and then it sort of like takes you in and wraps you around it and it's just a gorgeous experience one of my favorite things about this book was the way that she talks about a lot of different flowers one of the the opening lines i believe is about her buying flowers for the dinner party and flowers have a big role in this book in a subtle way my favorite character out of this whole entire book is septimus warren smith i had to make sure his first name was septimus because i knew it was warren smith but i checked it septimus warren smith he is a survivor of the world war and he deals with a lot of post-traumatic stress when no one knew it was post-traumatic stress and his experience dealing with that everybody thinking he's going mad and his poor italian immigrant wife living in england trying to deal with her not really knowing what's wrong with her husband is an incredible thing to read about and virginia woolf makes him he's not a main character but he sort of felt like a main character he definitely is one of the main characters there are many main characters but this book was a joy i loved meeting septimus warren smith and my heart will always go out to him and love this so much at number nine we have letters to a young poet by raynor maria rilke and this was my first ever wilka book i read this for another rory gilmore 24 hour readathon and this is another penguin little black classic and i just love these because it's a great introduction to an author and this was my introduction to rilka's books and roca's works and words and he really spoke to me as he does for many people i know my friends emma and lucy um both adore him and have read much more from him so this was really my introduction to rilke and i'm so excited to read more i have his book of hours actually is on my shelves in my poetry section of my bookshelf and i can't wait to read more from him um this is his letters to a friend talking about different aspects of writing and life and hope and solitude and all these incredible aspects of living and even death as well so he is one of those writers that you can't help but be affected by the way he writes and what he writes and he has just a gorgeous gorgeous way with words and i can't believe that i haven't read more from him but i'm very excited too in 2021 so this is definitely one of the books that was a highlight of my year the next one is another poet and essayist and i don't think she's actually written a novel i was gonna say novelist but i don't think she has and that is more of a modern classic that is upstream by mary oliver this is my first mary oliver book and i oh gosh i want to reread this book so badly i read it around the time i was reading anakin and it was a great kind of change because even though i was loving anika nina it was very different so the way that i think the best way to describe this book is just read the back because i saw this at the bookstore was taken aback by this cover because it's just absolutely stunning i love anything to do with nature and so when i saw this cover i immediately gravitated towards it and then i read the back and i thought this is me in book form one of my favorite poets is walt whitman and even though i read walt whitman in 2020 i didn't finish a collection by him so he's not on this top 10 list but if i did finish a collection by him it would be on this list but i feel like i talk about him all the time so he doesn't really need to be on the favorites it's just known that i love walt whitman anyway i shall read the back i had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it before i knew it all who i was what i was and what i wanted to be so begins upstream a collection of essays in which revered poet mary oliver reflects on her willingness to lose herself within the beauty and mysteries of the natural world and the world of literature emphasizing the significance of her childhood friend walt whitman who inspired her to vanish into the world of her own writing oliver meditates on the forces that allowed her to create a life for herself out of work and love throughout this collection oliver positions not just herself upstream but us as well as she encourages us to keep moving to lose ourselves in the awe of the unknown and to give power and time to the creative and whimsical urges that live within us i don't even have to say anymore honestly just this book is me in a book i discovered my love for mary oliver this year and i actually just got a very big collection of her poetry for christmas from my parents that i simply cannot wait to read the way that she wrote sort of felt like my own inner monologue my own inner dialogue with myself and with literature in general and the fact that she thinks of walt whitman as a friend i think of walt whitman as friend and now i think of her as a friend i feel so emotionally attached to this book it talks about my my greatest passions which are literature and nature and walt whitman and poetry and life and just the emotional connection that humanity has to nature is is incredibly written in this book and it means so much to me so i can't recommend this book anymore um please read all of these books because that's why they're in this video okay mary oliver's upstream this is number seven and that is a separate piece by john knowles i love this book oh my gosh this was a bit of a surprise because i knew i would like it but i i didn't know i would love it so much to put it at my number seven spot but this had a really great impact on me i read it this summer um there is a reading vlog of me most of these books i've probably mentioned in reading vlogs before but this is sort of light academia and on the back it says jean was lonely introverted and intellectual phineas was handsome taunting and a daredevil athlete and it's really about these two roommates and friends sort of opposing each other because they're so different but also gene kind of admiring phineas and wanting to be phineas and sort of being obsessed with phineas's perfection quote-unquote perfection and it's about them at a boarding school and all boys boarding school it has a lot of dead poets society vibes and it's about the war and obligations to go to war and how the war affects um affects these boys but in a kind of indirect and also direct way i love aspects of war and fiction i find it fascinating i also find a school setting fascinating especially within all boys school i feel like it's such a different dynamic and going at it from a female perspective i think it's just very interesting to sort of step into a world that women weren't present in and sort of looking at it from a different perspective so i loved this book it handled so many important themes of loneliness and friendship and honesty and loyalty and um and war and just so much so much is in this book and i loved every second of reading it so yes this is a separate piece by john knowles at number six we have tess of the derbyvilles by thomas hardy this book i tabbed like crazy this was an emotional rollercoaster of a reading experience i read this with two of my amazing friends mary from mary amongst stories and lucy from crescent pages and that in itself was an amazing experience because i loved talking to them about this book while reading it this is the tragic tale of tess um her name is tessa derby field but her family is very poor and doesn't have a lot of money and they believe that they have this very wealthy ancestors the derbervilles and tessa's family sort of forces her to um to create ties and to meet up with this ancestor of the derbervilles and to sort of see if they can get anything out of that relation and that is really the turning point of tess's demise ultimately this is about two men and two very different men in her life and how they influence her journey this book you definitely need to read with a box of tissues right next to you because it will rip your poor heart out and stamp it on the floor and make you very angry this whole book was me just being very very angry and very upset but in the most wonderful way i love books that make me really emotional and emotionally attached to the characters and honestly i just wanted nothing but good things for tess and to say that she didn't get good things would be quite an understatement so this book was a journey but a wonderful one in a very traumatic and emotional way so that is tess at number five we have the amazing emma by jane austen i buddy read this with my friend emma from her instagram emma redwood she and i actually go to universities together and we love buddy reading and then going to see movie adaptations whenever there's a book to movie adaptation we saw little women together when that came out and then we wanted to see emma because emma was coming out in 2020 and so we have a lot of the same classes together actually and so we love talking about books whenever we are working on different assignments and she and i were in the middle of reading emma by jane austen when everything happened with the pandemic actually so this reading experience was very interesting because it just reminds me of the craziness of this year and when everything sort of hit the fan this was a great distraction to what was going on in the world it was a lovely escape sadly we weren't able to actually see it in the cinema because everything closed but we did have a really sweet at-home video movie viewing where we watched the movie at the same time and texted each other throughout the whole thing freaking out about the different characters and the different scenes and what we liked and and we ended up both adoring the movie it's one of my favorites of this year this is now one of my favorite books of the year as well so the movie and the book have a very special place in my heart i also did a book cover design which i showed in my last video i believe but i will show it again i did my own design for the book cover of emma by jane austen i designed it as a penguin deluxe edition for their penguin deluxe classics and sadly it is not actually going to be published because it was just a hypothetical situation but that's my reasoning behind the french flaps and kind of the style that i was going for was the paperback penguin deluxe editions and so now as you can see i was definitely uh thoroughly influenced and in love with the book enough to want to make a cover for it this book follows emma woodhouse who as the first line says is handsome clever and rich she is a matchmaker for all the people in her life all the single people in her life she is very wealthy as handsome clever and rich so she feels like she is not in need of a husband but everybody else who is single just has to find a soulmate has to find someone to fall in love with and she very willingly takes it upon herself to matchmake for them it's about how that kind of blows up in her face doesn't always end up the way that she expects i believe it to be one of the first romantic comedies i've heard that said before and also that was my uh that was my inspiration and uh the meaning behind my own personal book cover for emma acting as the sort of cupid of her little social circle and this is just a wonderful wonderful book it is witty it is funny jane austen kind of at her best i think um i love pride and prejudice it's my favorite uh austin novel but emma is a very close second some of my favorite characters in this book are mr woodhouse emma's father and also mr knightley which is emma's sister's husband's brother yes so emma has this very close friendship with this man named mr knightley who kind of acts as her silent um protector he kind of acts as an older brother but in a more loving way and it's also about her trying to figure out her own love life saying that she never sees herself marrying but maybe that will change and so emma is just an incredible book jane austen is just jane austen how can you not love jane austen jane austen is actually right here i got these incredibly adorable um ornaments from my aunt for christmas and this one is of jane austen we also have charles dickens emily dickinson and edgar allan poe so those are sitting up here watching me we also have jane austen here uh tolstoy dickens shakespeare virginia wolf oh here's mr nightly you can't i don't think you can see him but there's johnny flynn as mr nightly from the 2020 adaptation of emma the emma film so yes love this book so much definitely a highlight of 2020 made the craziness of the pandemic just a bit funnier because of the wittiness of jane austen at number four we have a room with a view by ian foerster i read this book in the springtime and that was absolutely the most perfect time to read this book because it is sun drenched this book just is sunshine in book form and i think it's perfect for the warmer weather so if you want to pick this book up at the perfect time then it's definitely perfect for the warm weather this is set in florence and in england and a bit a bit in rome but not really it's mainly set in florence this is about a main character lucy honey church which i just love her name and her older cousin charlotte who acts as her chaperone they take a trip to florence and they meet a wonderful group of people and it's about how that group of people influences lucy's life and it's about her um her experience with love and marriage and relationships and it's just an incredibly romantic love story it's kind of a romance that sort of goes against conventions and against sort of social standards there's a really great little blurb on the back it says sun drenched and optimistic and exploring many issues at the heart of edwardian life radical thinking women's suffrage the constitutions of english social rules this is a brilliantly witty love story and it definitely is iam foster like i said earlier is one of my favorite writers of this year he can do no wrong in my eyes the way that he created characters made them feel like friends it didn't feel like i was reading this book it felt like i was living in this book and just as lucy was falling in love i was falling in love these characters don't feel like characters they feel like friends and that is the greatest thing while reading is feeling like you are a part of something and a part of something that you can't physically experience something that i always feel so sad about is that time travel doesn't exist i wish it did um but books exist and you can time travel into books i can't wait until i can reread this book so i can reunite with my amazing friends that are found in a room with a view we are now up to the third book so these are my top three at number three we have maurice by em forester i had a hard time picking between a room of the view and maurice being my third pick because they're both very different although similar in writing style what i have sticking out here also plays a part but i loved maurice so much that i watched the movie adaptation with hugh grant which i again was another favorite movie of all time and in the movie there is this incredible image of the two main characters holding hands in this very emotional scene and so i took that and i painted it so this is a still from that moment and this is an oil painting that i did it is a print of it the actual oil painting is hanging on my wall but these i sold on my etsy shop i believe a few of them are still available actually on one side we have em forster on the page of maurice and then on the other we just have the oil painting and because of copyright issues i couldn't use this for one of my university projects but for one of my university projects i had to do a book cover i had to do many book covers because that's what i want to do for a living i want to be a book cover designer and so for that i was thinking about doing a book cover for maurice because i loved it so much but obviously for copyright issues i couldn't use a movie still because of copyright um but i thought well what if i did something similar but sort of made it my own and redesigned it so my redesign is this image it is still two hands holding in a romantic yet subtle way and i also have this side with the text so i loved this book so much that i painted it not once but twice and i really am so happy with how this came out i don't want to say too much about the meaning behind each of the hands because there are two characters that um that fall in love and i don't want to say too much because it kind of gives the story away but um this book is an incredible incredible work of fiction because it is semi-autobiographical um because iam forster was going through a lot of what the main characters were going through it is a male male love story it is during the edwardian period so it is during a time where having um a same-sex relationship was illegal i can't even imagine how iam foster would feel thinking about it really makes me emotional so this is about our two main characters there's another side character but our two main characters are morris or maurice and clive and their relationship with one another they are trying to fight these urges of love for one another the things that are talked about in this book are so important so so so important i feel like no words will do this book justice there are themes of homophobia sexuality in general love family relationships society societal expectations um society being a hindrance to you mental manipulation this book just deals with so much that it's so hard to even describe and on the back um there's a little quote and it says people were all around them but with eyes that had gone intensely blue he whispered i love you and oh god it's just the most beautifully tragic and yet heartwarming i mean it's not really heartwarming but it warmed my heart um a beautifully tragic love story and the ending is hopeful but but sad and just oh god this story is so emotive and so powerful and moving and groundbreaking um iam forster actually dedicated this book with the most emotional dedication it's so simple but so emotional and i think that's the book in its entirety this dedication could also be a dedication to 2020 or to 2021 i should say it says begun 1913 finished 1914 dedicated to a happier year now i think that this video is dedicated to a happier year so ian foster actually wrote this in 1913 finished in 1914 and did not publish it until after his death in 1970 because he didn't want to deal with the repercussions of writing about a homosexual relationship because that's that's what he was he was a homosexual so he felt like he couldn't be his true self in his own society in his own world he was actually friends with virginia woolf which i just love that i love learning about authors lives and relationships with other authors and this book i just i could talk about it forever but i think the thing that speaks most about it is just that it talks about so many important topics that are very timely and this book is just about acceptance accepting yourself and accepting others and it's about love in its pure form love is love and that's it we are now up to my second favorite book of the year and that is i think by no surprise great expectations by charles dickens this book was an incredible incredible reading experience as was so many of these but this was my first full dickens novel and i fell head over heels in love with his writing style there's so much that i can say about dickens so much um he became one of my favorite authors of all time i love a christmas carol which was my first ever dickens book dickens short story but this is my first full dickens novel emma and i actually both discovered a love for dickens this year as well and so hearing about the tickets and tolstoy debate you could hear a bit more about that but this book is just brilliant it is brilliant in so many ways the way that dickens writes is is singular and unlike any writer and the way that he creates images the way that he uses the fantastic and combines it into reality he makes normal everyday things magical he makes things that shouldn't be funny funny he is humorous in the wrong places he is silly he makes characters over exaggerated he is theatrical he is exaggerated exaggerative he exaggerates in the most wonderful way and just entertains you from page one to the last page he is there to make you laugh to make you cry to make you smile to make you mad to make you nervous he is like a little puppet master because the way that he writes he manipulates the reader he knows what makes people feel a certain way and he is just so great at making people react to certain things the way that he knows they will react and he is just an actual literary genius this story is about an orphan pip who lives with his sister and her husband and then through certain situations and certain things that occur he gets an anonymous benefactor and he has the opportunity to become a gentleman and there's also this other portion of the book where he has an opportunity to go to this wealthy woman's kind of decrepit house her name is miss havisham to play with her and her young companion that she took in estella and it's just about pip's experience with all these different people how they influence him how evil he influences them and how one little decision that he makes at a very young age manipulates his entire life and it's like a ripple effect not only the story itself is brilliant but just the way that it's written it is incredible and this is the actually actually this is the edition that i read the book from so it has all of my annotations i wrote on almost every single one of the pages the spine is just completely cracked to bits but i could not love this edition anymore because it just looks like like you can tell that i just loved this book so much just by how it's worn and torn and this edition just looking at it just makes me so happy thinking about my reading experience it was wonderful and dickens is just such a masterful writer and i can't say anything else because i just feel like no words will do him justice this was just one of my favorite books of all time my second favorite book of 2020 and i love charles dickens absolutely love charles dickens and i love great expectations so i can't wait to read more of dickens in 2021 it's going to be amazing and now another drum roll please my favorite book of 2020 are we surprised that it is are you ready are you ready are you ready i don't know if you're ready ana nina by leo tolstoy guys guys guys guys guys guys guys guys everyone the best book ever written right here i'm holding it in my hands the best book on the face of the earth it is here i am holding it it is amazing it is beautiful it is by leo tolstoy i just don't think any words like not one word we'll do these thousands and thousands and thousands of words justice i really can't say anything that will merit the incredibleness that is this book i yeah i mean i wanted to film a whole book review for this book right after i finished it in february of 2020 and i never did because i would sit down and try to formulate thoughts and none of it everything that i wrote down just it just didn't seem like enough like i couldn't put into words how incredible and how much this book means to me and how amazing it is and why it's the best book ever and so trying to talk about it i think is so hard because i love it with my whole heart and soul i think this is the best book ever written i think leo tolstoy is a writer that that deserves all the praise in the world and i just i think what i loved so much about this book is that it didn't feel like i was reading a book it felt like i was experiencing something in the dickens vs tolstoy debate that intelligence square hosted that emma and i inspired us to do the dickens versus toastery debate is the scholar that is um on team toastway said this quote um or said this thing about tolstoy that reading tosui is like he opened up a window and let you crawl inside of the world and you were standing among the characters you were living with them you weren't ex you weren't reading the book you weren't watching a theatrical performance kind of like dickens you were one of them you were there you were feeling what they were feeling tostoi puts you into every situation he puts you into the headspace of the characters he makes you feel everything i felt every single emotion under the sun while reading this book i felt for the characters and my favorite literary character on the face of the earth is the main character of this book and that is constantine dimitrovich levin levin deserves all of the most wonderful best greatest most amazing things in the world because he is perfect he is the love of my life and i love him i want to protect him with all of my soul and i know that sounds so silly but meeting levin meeting these characters meeting anna was an experience that i can't describe if you are nervous about reading this book because it's huge don't be nervous by it i was so scared if you look back from now like a year ago now january of 2020 i was petrified of reading this book and i asked you all to convince me to read it i even think i was wearing this shirt in one of the videos now that i think about it anyway if you are nervous about reading this book don't be it is so easy to get lost in you don't just read this book you live it you experience it this translation is the mod translation and the way that it's written is lyrical and beautiful and captivating and vivid and stunning but in a way that is so incredibly easy to read i was so nervous going to this book thinking it's going to be dense it's going to be hard to get through i'm going gonna get lost in the language no no it was perfect it this book is everything that i want a book to be and that's why it's my favorite book of 2020 and that's why it's my favorite book ever please read this book it is worth every single word dot comma page paragraph sentence it is worth everything this book will bring so much to you and i can't say i can't say enough about this book i really can't lea tolstoy thank you thank you thank you um yes thank you i could keep going on and on but i just feel like it won't do anything because you know no words do this book justice so if you want to read ana karenina with me and emma we will be reading it in june and july for the dickens versus tolstoy debate and if you want to read war and peace with us we will be reading it in march and april for the dickens vs tolstoy debate and we will be reading more of dickens in the other months as well so if you want to go on these incredibly bookish journeys with me and with emma then we will be doing that in 2021 but 2020 was an incredible year and it was a great reading year this is the most i've read my classic's passion really grew and bloomed and blossomed in this year and even though this year was not what we all expected i really think it made us appreciate the things that were right in front of us that maybe went unseen a bit or unnoticed and my love for books and my appreciation for books have has grown immensely um so yes i want to uh to thank ana karenina and all of these books for being the most loyal friends and for you for being the most loyal friends throughout this journey with me this year or last year and i just want to say a really big thank you and a really big happy new year thank you so much for watching this video i know it has been so long but i feel like i just i can't help but make these really long rambly videos because i can't summarize my feelings in a short amount of time it's just not possible so i hope you have enjoyed this video i hope you had an amazing 2020 reading year please let me know your favorite book of the year or maybe your top five of your top 10 or your favorite author or your favorite series i would love to know the books that have made your 2020 very special and i just want to thank you all so much again for being the most wonderful friends and for making this year so special my booktube has really bloomed this year as well so that in itself brings me so much joy and so much happiness and just to have all these amazing friendships means the world to me so thank you so much for watching this video i hope you have enjoyed it and gotten some bookish recommendations out of it please read annika danina that's pretty much it just please read it and i hope you are having a wonderful start to your 2021 and i hope that you read amazing books this year i'm sure you will i will see you soon in another video happy reading and happy 2021 [Music] you

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Length: 71min 51sec (4311 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 03 2021