Favorite Books Of 2020

hello everybody my name is rachel welcome to my channel kalanadi today i'm here to do one of my favorite end of the year videos favorite books of the year now i'm not the kind of person who forces myself to pare down a list of just five or the top 10 favorite books of the year i kind of let the year and what i read dictate how long the list should be sometimes it's short sometimes it's long and interestingly even though 2020 was a trash fire year and i found it very difficult to read and to find the motivation to finish books i came away with 15 books that were solidly favorites of the year and another nine that almost made the cut but not quite and that i'm going to include as honorable mentions this year so it's a long list it's gonna be a long video get some tea buckle up here we go i don't rank my favorites lists in any particular way sometimes i do them in the order in which i read them this year it's a little bit arbitrary it amused me so much that i have four books written by authors named elizabeth that i'm going to group them together and do them first but then the rest of these are kind of grouped by genre because they flowed together that way so let's get started with the four books written by women named elizabeth first up i read all of elizabeth acevedo's books in 2020 and i listened to them on audiobook which is an experience i highly recommend hearing the author perform her own work which is in verse i think absolutely elevates her books to incredible experiences and she's the first author ever i think to get two separate books on one of my favorites lists usually i do make myself choose when there's more than one by a single author but i really couldn't choose between clap when you land and with the fire on high i read clap when you land first it's her newest book i think it came out in early 2020 and i was absolutely blown away by it i just thought it was one of the most incredible things i read in the year and the story the way it made me feel it stuck with me for so long after i read the book and then i read with the fire on high which was one of the books that made me happiest while reading it i think this is very interesting with both of acevedo's books that they are they're young adult contemporary novels and inverse and these are all things i don't read that much of or usually find that much of interest in and yet acevedo crafted two very different stories of young women and i couldn't really relate to anything personally in the stories the characters their situations their cultural backgrounds are so incredibly different from my own and i think that's why i enjoyed them i learned something from them and with the fire on high in particular it just delivered some happy moments where things went right and i was like celebrating every moment through the book so i highly recommend both of these i'm not going to say too much about them or their plots here because this is a favorites list not a review and these books are extremely popular on booktube and a lot of people have talked about them um but i'm so glad that basically i bought into the hype and finally read them because i just knew right away that they were really really good next up is machine by elizabeth bear this was a kind of a shoe in for favorite books of the year it's the last book i read in 2020 and i knew it was going to be one of my favorites because it's the second white space novel and the first one ancestral night was also one of my favorite books of last year um so yes basically i love this universe the white space the universe this far future world where um i think very importantly um psychology um and mental health are viewed and treated very differently there's this concept called right minding which is in our terms probably very invasive ways of handling people's um brain chemistry and therefore their emotions what they're feeling and their mental health and it's a very interesting concept that um bear goes into even more depth with in this book um that the concept of right-minding um but also in this particular book um kind of disability and having external mobility aids is is a big thing as well for the main character and i just love the way that she does like these convoluted mystery plots it's it's so neat and this kind of like aspect of almost archaeology and historical work in space and with various alien species it's fantastic so i love the concept i love the characters i love the plot and i really enjoy the way that bear just writes this the voice that it has it speaks to me in some way then there is a wilding hall by elizabeth hand this is a novella or short novel about members of a defunct folk music band getting together many decades later to discuss the summer in which they made their most famous album and when their lead singer disappeared while they were at a place called wilding hall i loved this and when i went into reading it did not realize it was horror um it's one of two horror stories on my favorites list this year even though i keep saying i'm not a horror person i'm apparently determined to prove myself wrong um so yes i absolutely loved this story i loved the concept but i think that the way it was told and that hand knew how much to explain how much to reveal and how much to just leave up to your imagination it was perfect i did do a separate review of this if you would like to know more of my thoughts on that and it'll be linked down below three of the nonfiction books i read this year made it to this list and the first one has to be how to be an anti-racist by ibram x candy this book is one of the most important things i read in 2020 um and it was a lot of firsts packed into one but basically the first book i ever read on racism on anti-racism and systemic racism within the united states and it has informed a lot of my thinking since i read it and a lot of how i analyze what's been going on in my country and in the world has shifted a lot because this book changed my perspective on things and taught me some things that i really needed to know and i'm very grateful to it for that the next non-fiction book is incredibly different from anything else on this list but if you've been following along with me in 2020 you'll probably not be that surprised it is vanishing fleece adventures in american wool by clara parks so this is an exploration of the wool industry and specifically what remains of the wool industry in the us um parks got a gigantic bale of saxon merino fleece and she took it through all of the processing steps to turn it into yarn that you could knit or crochet with and by doing this parks kind of uncovers and spotlights some of the very very last remaining facilities that handle steps in this wool processing it was very informative though oh maybe a tiny bit out of date i think the events that she talks about in this book are about 10 years ago and i think there have been some shifts in the fiber industry and fiber arts since then but it's still um a very very good read if you are in the us and you're very interested in fiber arts and you want to know like where yarn comes from and why is so much yarn um processed outside of the united states um this very very helpful as well as just being a very enjoyable read oh yeah i think i did a separate review of this book as well that's the thing that i did next up is ace what asexuality reveals about desire society and the meaning of sex by angela chen um so this is a great exploration and explanation of what asexuality is but it's also highly intersectional and it talks about what asexuality looks like amongst many different walks of life and along these sort of axes of gender and race and disability and and other things which i think is very important there's no one true ace experience for example it also kind of delves into how the assumption of sexual desire is baked in to society and culture and even in some ways government and the legal system which is highly relevant to everyone and not something that i think a lot of us have ever thought about unless you're asexual and have to go through a world that just assumes you're going to be you know with someone anyway this book was one of the most personal things i have probably ever read and it's kind of difficult to talk about it because it's pretty intensely private for me let's talk about some more science fiction network effect by martha wells you knew that more murderbot was going to be on this list right um funnily enough this is one of my favorite books that i actually can't remember that much about i read it in such a huge gulp and then thought i need to read it all over again that was so fun and i haven't reread it which i'm just kicking myself for but i loved it i love every murderbot adventure i mean who doesn't love our favorite grumpy security unit bot i mean just yeah um so yes network effect is the further adventures of murderbot attempting to help its humans that just can't stay out of trouble pretty much with the return of art as well one of many people's favorite characters um so it was a wonderful one of those books that just defines this very happy moment in the year for me and i will have to reread it so that i can actually remember more of the plot points another book that made me so incredibly happy this year was a precursor by cj cherry precursor is the fourth book in the foreigner series it's actually the first book in the second trilogy i'm not gonna say anything about the plot um but the reason why this one was an absolute blast my favorite book in the series so far is that bren the main character who is kind of a translator interpreter diplomat between a human society and an alien society he in the first trilogy doesn't actually have that much authority or agency but by this fourth book he is fully grown into his role and he gets stuff done there's so much competency and action and things happening in this book it was fantastic i don't think that many other books in the series will be able to live up to this one unfortunately but this one is like it's worth reading the first trilogy to get to this one it it made me so happy to read it moving from that very upbeat emotional moment to a much murkier emotional landscape the dazzle of day by molly gloss i have to say actually that if i had to pick only one book to summarize my favorites of this year it might be this one not 100 sure on that but there is something about this story that hit me at just the right time and have kind of carried that feeling with me throughout the year so this one i have done a full review of one of my first reviews of 2020 probably one of the best videos of last year for me um so i will refer you to that if you want to know a lot more of my thoughts on this particular one but basically it's about a quaker community on a generation ship headed out from the ruins of earth to what they hope is their new home on this distant planet and after many generations they're approaching their destination and it's kind of a mosaic novel in that it's each chapter is kind of its own story following one of the characters from sort of this essential family in the story and each of those those individual stories interlocks with the rest of them i loved the way that this was told the way that it was structured was so beautiful and it just sort of makes me ache inside to think about some of it because for me this story is very much about how death and life are intertwined and inseparable most of the characters are going through uh grieving processes after various deaths in the story and but while at the same time contemplating their own lives and what they're going to do next in the lives of the next generations and i read this only a couple of days after my grandfather died it was probably the most perfect moment to read it because it was incredibly cathartic i might make this book sound like a real downer but the emotional ringer it put me through was actually the like release i needed at the time the other horror novel that i utterly loved this year was mexican gothic by sylvia moreno garcia this is another one that i did a separate review on that i will link for you so more thoughts in that video um so this is set in 1950s mexico and it follows a socialite as she goes to visit her cousin and find out what's been happening to her in her cousin's husband's family home it's very creepy i love the way that the story unfurled i had so much fun trying to guess what was happening and sort of getting it right it was very satisfying by the end so yeah once again more thoughts in my review of this but um this stands out as um probably the first time that i've read a horror novel and realized that i was enjoying it for some of the actual horror and gothic elements of it which is very interesting next is take a hint danny brown by talia hibbert yes a romance novel this is my favorite romance novel of 2020 but it's also a stand-in for all the other romances that i read which were very helpful in getting me through a tough year this one was very close to perfect for me i i loved it because it was funny there was such a good banter i really enjoyed the chemistry and the relationship between the two love interests and it just it hit so many notes that i enjoyed i really love the diversity and representation in hibbert's novels and this one was no exception to that trend i also really enjoy the type of male love interest that she writes so yes this was such a happy happy read the final three books in my top of 15 are fantasy and nobody's surprised by this but another lois mcmaster boujold story made it we got two new penrich and desdemona novellas in 2020 and my favorite one was the physicians of vilnoc maybe this is a bit surprising considering the plot of this concerns a pretty localized plague um but now that i'm at the end of of 2020 reading this was a little bit of wish fulfillment because penric and and desdemona are extremely competent and i kind of wish that somebody like them was in charge of the real world anyway this was really really good it was kind of like this return to the solidness and i guess the competency i really enjoyed with the characters and the plot of penric's mission one of the middle books in this series it's very difficult to talk about this without spoiling things because it's a long-running novella series but anyway um i thoroughly loved it i feel like a lot of henrik's goodness is on display here and yeah it just really fit with the year that i was having and what i really really wanted to actually happen in the real world pet by akweki mezzy this one was a surprise to me i read two of the messi's books in this past year and the first one i read was freshwater which was really good but also incredibly dark it just contained a lot of very dark and uncomfortable subject matter there are a lot of content warnings for that book and when i went into pet i expected it to be very much the same and i wasn't sure how i would get along with that especially as like a young adult fantasy novel the fact that it comes with a trigger warning for abuse of a child very much concerned me and then i read it and it was so freaking good guys this book just packed such a weird emotional punch at the end i think because the message that i took away from this was very relevant this past year this book is about a community in a future that has basically overcome the social issues the the monsters that we're actually dealing with in the real world and that were on display in 2020 so it's a like post-2020 crisis world and yet the point of the story is basically that there are always monsters and you have to talk about these things you have to know the signs and to see what is there to stop it from happening again and i really wanted to hear that i guess i got to the end of this book and just cried because i thought it was beautiful and it was so well done and lastly piranesi by susanna clarke this book has perfect execution it also turned out to be a kind of story that i love one in which you uncover like this secret or hidden or partially erased history through notebooks and journals and letters and and remnants of research and such and it's also incredibly atmospheric with some of the most incredible unique visuals i've ever encountered in a book it is or at least it opens with this solitary man living inside this gigantic house filled with water and tides and immense statues and he thinks that this world like in the entire world there's only ever been 15 people and then he encounters the 16th i will i will leave it at that i think it helps if you aren't spoiled and i wasn't spoiled for it thank goodness um but even then just how clark wrote this perfection i loved it now for the honorable mentions there are nine of these and for miscellaneous minor reasons they just didn't quite make the cut for favorite books but are still very important for me and i look back on and thought that was sort of a defining moment of my reading so first up are two comics one is giant days of volume 14. this is written by john allison and the artwork is by max sarin this is the conclusion to the giant days series which is a contemporary comic about three young women at university and their adventures there in i loved every step along the way in this series and i thought that this volume concluded it quite nicely even though i was sad to see the end and then completely the opposite one of the best beginnings of a comic series i think i've ever read this is invisible kingdom volume 1 written by g willow wilson artwork by christian ward this one was just amazing i mean the artwork is stunning in it i love the colors and i think what made this just almost perfect in my opinion is that wilson is actually very good at writing comics and not being too text heavy and knows when to leverage ward's artwork to convey so much about the world building and and the feel of this science fictional place it's beautiful i loved reading it the book of questions by pablo noruda this is the only poetry that had to make it to some sort of list i read three of neruda's collections in 2020 and i enjoyed all of them but the book of questions is the one that resonated the most with me for some reason it made me laugh out loud it also made me more emotional and contemplative and it's literally like a bunch of questions kind of in couplet form i loved it it was so good unconquerable sun by kate elliott is the beginning of an epic science fiction series i think kind of modeled after the life of alexander the great but gender flipped i did a separate review of this if you want to know more of my thoughts on it and i loved the world building of this just so much care and attention to the details was put into this and it was just so cool um the reason it didn't make my favorites list you know the thing that kind of cut it from that list is that while i enjoy the world building and a lot of the characters and relationships the plot has evaporated from my mind a little bit which is surprising but a thing that happens sometimes nevertheless i'm eagerly anticipating the rest of this trilogy the stoneweta by octavia cade this is another science fiction novel that i've done a review on and it's one of the most hard-hitting science fiction books i've read that was extremely relevant to the modern day it is about climate scientists smuggling data in a world that wants to repress anything about climate change and i thought the way that kade pulled off the format and the structure and the writing of this was fantastic she basically took a short story and then expanded it into a novel and kept the format which i think worked very well in this in the short story and is really difficult to pull off in a longer form story just really really good another one that kind of packed an emotional punch possibly because it's relevant to the modern day and kind of scary because of that but also just like managed to really draw me into the very large cast of characters the beatrix gates by rachel pollock this is an outspoken author's collection it contains both fiction and non-fiction and i remember it mostly for the reflective essay in it where pawlik talks about her history and her life as a trans woman sort of in her personal life but also that experience in the sff world in her career as well all of the pieces in this i think kind of relate back to the trans experience and the the queer experience as well um and it was really really well written and i loved knowing more about pollock's life and um her kind of reflections on her own art a summer beyond your reach by xia ja this is the collection of english translations of her work shah jah is a chinese sff writer and this one was incredibly solid sometimes you just find a collection where almost every single story is really good this is one of those it stood out for me as one that i would highly recommend i guess to a western audience that wants to get into chinese sff but might struggle with some of the um voices or topics that don't always work for a western audience basically what i'm trying to say is that these stories are expertly written extremely well translated and the plots the characters the topics and the themes just felt very relatable to me and i am a very white american girl at the same time they made me more interested in chinese culture and history so i just think it did a wonderful job at appealing to a broad audience my last two honorable mentions are both young adult fantasy novels so they're incredibly different from each other one is elots away by darcy little badger i've done a review of this which i'll refer you to but it's incredibly gushy and does more to express my enthusiasm than my real like complete thoughts on the book but anyway um this is very much informed by lipan apache culture and storytelling and i loved that i really appreciated its theme of responsibility for one's abilities one's powers and using your abilities wisely listening to your elders that sort of thing it was a really really fun book and the experience of reading it was one of my absolute joys in this past year and then there is a wizard's guide to defensive baking by t kingfisher which is a pen name for ursula vernon it's one that took me on an emotional journey it reminded me so much of how ursula vernon's humor can be very evocative of terry pratchett's for me which is something i need more of in my life so this book made me laugh it had some just really funny almost absurd things that worked anyway and then it made me cry like a baby at the end it's what i needed to read in the moment something to make me happy but also to appreciate what people are capable of doing for others that they will do for others the sacrifices they'll make i loved it and that is it those are all of my favorite and almost favorite books of 2020. hopefully you've enjoyed this list do let me know if you have also read any of these if you have enjoyed them leave me a comment down below and my biggest hope now is that no matter what 2021 brings there are just as many good books as this past year i think that is a relatively reasonable expectation so thank you guys so much for watching i'll be back later and until then bye [Music] you

Channel: Kalanadi

Views: 3,008

Rating: 4.967742 out of 5

Keywords: Booktube, BooktubeSFF, Favorite Books, Favorite Books of 2020, Best SFF of 2020

Id: ZmRYN9ldogs

Length: 28min 41sec (1721 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 05 2021