My Favorite Books of 2020

oh hello today we are finally winding down list like whoa for 2020 books and that is because today we are talking about my best books of 2020. i have talked about all of these books and the sort of sub-genre listicles that have already come out but today we are going to ruthlessly call down the list of books that i loved the best of the best so these are to be my top 10 books of the year so just to give you i've got stats this year we're going to start doing some stats for this end of the year list to give you a sense of how special i think these books are there were 322 books i read that could have qualified to make this list because of how i kind of time my books that qualify for a given year's list i sort of take some of the books from december of the previous year and then go through november of the following so in that time there was 322 books that could have made this list of those 322 books i gave six books five stars and i gave 19 books four and a half stars so that means that of the 322 books i read only 1.86 of them got a five star which for me i define as an all-time favorite book not just a favorite book of the year but an all-time favorite book and then 5.9 of them got a four and a half star which i would define as a favorite book of the year so combined that is a little less than eight percent of books that i read i consider to be either an all-time favorite or a favorite book of the year so i'm you know somewhat selective and somewhat picky about what i'm putting on this list there's quite a big pool and not that many of these books make it so i do want to shout out all of the books that i also gave four and a half stars to but did not make this list because i gave 19 books four and a half stars and only four of them could make my top ten because obviously all the five stars made the top ten so the ones that i read that did not make this list but get got four and a half stars for me were even from the dark by presley cole undercover bromance by lissa k adams nothing is wrong and here's why by alexander petry spoiler alert by olivia dade when she purrs by ruby dixon the southern book club's guide displaying vampires by grady hendricks exhalation by ted chiang the man in the brown suit by agatha christie network effect by martha wells be treated by emily henry the new jim crow by michelle alexander and the burning god by rf quang so those were oh god even just reading through that i'm like god those are good books those are a lot of really great books that just didn't quite make the list but in a different year 100 could have but i just had a really really good year of reading the other stats that i want to mention is part of what i measure in a given year are in my overall stats we'll talk about this when we get to my stats wrap up but i always measure the number of books i'm reading that include main characters or themes or are written by authors who are not like me in some meaningful way this is just because part of what i value in my reading is you know basically being nosy about other people's lives and learning more about other people's experiences so i am working towards more and more just sort of like inclusion and different viewpoints in my reading so for this top 10 which i'm going to start measuring each year 40 of books in my top 10 are by men's 60 are by women i didn't have any non-binary people in that mix 60 of my top 10 are books by slash about people who are not white and that includes people who are black indigenous people and south asian people 30 of the books in my top 10 are from slash about people who are not american and the countries included are britain america and new zealand 50 of the books in my top 10 are by or about people from the lgbtqia plus community i also want to make sure that i'm reading kind of throughout generations and not just totally frontless so i also measure if people are alive so 10 of the books i read are from past generations from somebody who has passed and then what i call health diversity so people who are either differently able or have some sort of mental health concern and uh sixty percent of the books that i read in the top ten by or about people who are differently abled or have some sort of neural diversity so actually pretty happy with that and we'll see how that stacks up against next year's stats so with all that being said now we get to talk about all these books that i love so so much and i'm basically thinking about these books in kind of three tranches so we've got the bottom trench are the 4.5 star books which i still obviously love but they're they're kind of in the bottom then i had two five star books that to me were clearly not in the very tippity top though both of these i obviously loved i gave them five stars but they weren't quite like in the the top the top top tier and then the top four i just really i had so many thoughts about like how i should order these and i will tell you that sort of the guiding principle that i've given for this entire list is my own enjoyment so i'm not trying to say like i don't think anyway i may make some comments to the effect of objective insofar as one can be objective about such things quality but mostly what we are talking about here is how much i enjoyed one of these books and that to me is what is going to be the best is like which of these like topped my levels of enjoyment so we'll start at the bottom and like i said i talked about these in my individual genre lists so most of what i have to say like review wise or meaningfully about these books are in those videos so really this is just you me kind of explaining why they are at the position that they are at so number 10 i'm going to say is the great influenza by john and barry the reason i wanted to put it in the top 10 is that i just think with what the kind of current events that have gone on this year this to me was such an enjoyable piece of historical non-fiction and such a proving case all over again of why historical nonfiction is such a joy to read because it is relevant to our time history doesn't always repeat but it rhymes i forget who said that but that idea is so true i love history and i really believe in learning about history as a way of reflecting upon and processing what we have going on in our world today you will see this again on this list that idea i had to i felt like just with how relevant this book was for 2020 it had to make my top 10 list number nine i decided that the eighth detective by alex pavasi had to make this list because just the sheer delight i got from this book of it surprising me in some way which frankly is hard to do as we've just discussed i read a lot of books and i think if you're somebody who does get through a lot of books you become more and more aware i think people who have been reading for a long time also feel this of like it is hard for books to be truly unique in some way or i don't know i i think i've talked a little bit about this with mystery and thriller i know a lot of readers really value like being totally shocked in a mystery thriller and it's just very hard to do that at some point if you've read a lot of them and so that's not the number one thing i value but i love books that have sort of a meta textual quality to them which is what this book's project really is that is something in books i love and then the ability for the author in this this is a debut i also really impressed with what a strong debut this is for the author to take those meta textual qualities and say hey reader of mystery who's read a lot of them let me give you a very clear indication that i know that you know where this is going and let me either live up to that expectation or sort of live up to it and then subvert it or totally subvert it like the ability for this book to sort of call it shots was just a delight to me like i enjoy i just enjoy that in a book i think that that is really fun that's not a reading experience everybody's gonna get into but for me that was just really a delight i just found myself being like oh look at i see what you're doing here and this is so fun so this just gave me a big smile this was definitely my favorite mystery of the year and so yeah i felt like just the the sheer meta textual delight this gave me put it at number nine and then number eight i felt like had to be the light brigade by cameron hurley because this was definitely my favorite pick from my operation sci-fi project i had going this year where i was reading all of the nominees for the 2019 goodreads sci-fi awards uh just as a way to sort of get a better gauge on what's happening in today's science fiction and this was 100 my favorite book that i found as a result of that i also wouldn't have picked this book up without having done this challenge so i also am very fond of this in the sense of this is sort of a if i wasn't doing youtube would i ever have even picked this book up and i think not so that just makes me happy and also i don't normally get into a time travel aspect and this book had that which made me happy and uh yeah it just had a couple of things in it that are things i love in books i didn't know that this book would have them and i'm so glad that youtube made me read this and then number seven the queen of the 4.5 i decided just had to be alpha knight by nalini singh because i just love this series so gd much i love this series it brings such joy to my life i read it for the first time like the bulk of the series that was out at that time right when i graduated from grad school and i was looking for a job so like everybody who's had to job search and has been unemployed knows like that is such a weird time and like not fun and this series originally kept me sane during that and ever since then it's just a consistent source of enjoyment joy and just a series that i love what it's doing thematically i love the political machinations of it i love the individual sort of plots and love stories that happen in these books and it's just such a great example of basically like sci-fi romance and i have a very high hit rate of recommending this to people so anyway i just felt like if we're going by enjoyment i think this was the 4.5 star that i enjoyed the most this year and it also i remember just now got me out of a reading slump so that also justifies its high it's it's rain over the 4.5 okay and then we get to the five stars so we've got the two that i knew weren't gonna make the very tippy top of the list but i still obviously love these books i decided that number six was going to be a princess in theory by alyssa cole which is a contemporary romance and i now have this book in sort of my toolbox for trying to get people into reading romance i think it's a good kind of starter place because alyssa cole is just such a smart writer i've never read a bad book from her she has interesting smart characters her plots make sense this has a really kind of high premise that gets delivered on and i just think it's a crowd-pleasing wonderful book that made me just re-fall in love with her this year i feel like this was a book that re just excited me about alyssa cole and everything that she does for the bookish community that's number six number five i decided had to be jane doe by victoria helen stone this was my number one book for a good chunk of the year for the four books we're gonna talk about sort of unseated it but i just this is a unique book i've not read a lot of books like it and that's why i felt like it had to kind of go over a princess in theory in this sort of middle trench because it i just haven't read a lot of books like it it's a weird book and it's a book not everybody's gonna like but it totally worked for me and it just made me i don't know i was reading this when i was in a lot of pain too now that i'm casting my mind back this is back when uh my cur now diagnosed autoimmune disease was like running rampant and this was just like a nice i remember reading this in the bathtub on a night where i was not feeling well and that's just like really kind of taking me to a good place so i also just appreciate it doing what books do for me which is sort of take my mind off of things sometimes oh and now we get to the top four guys this was so hard i had such a hard time deciding on the ordering here so all of these books are fantastic please read every last one of these books i love them so much and i'm just going to talk about basically this is an ordering of different of the four emotions that these books evoke for me and how much enjoyment i feel like those emotions evoke so number four is astonishment ring shout by pete jelly clark is a astonishing novella that does more with its 185 pages then many most novels can do with like 500. thematically this is awesome it has an amazing plot it has great characters world building is really cool the magic system is really cool and it's just such pointed commentary for 2020 like it's a book it's just i am blown away by the masterful craftsmanship of peter jelly clark and i cannot wait to read more from this author so astonishment is my number four emotion my number three emotion is just pure giddy joy and that is take a hint danny brown from talia hibbert because this book just made me laugh it made me smile it made me happy and that's hard i mean if a book can do that that like what a great book so i just love i love everything this is as a romance like this is a perfect contemporary romance to me and for what i like in this genre and this particular book just gave me pure just happiness and in the year of our lord 2020 anything that could just make us happy i feel like that should just be celebrated this book and this whole series really 100 did that for me so good and also by the way one i would put in my toolbox of potential books to hook a non-romance reader into trying romance if they're open to contemporary oh my gosh guys then we get to the top two and when i tell you that i have gone back and forth on this just so many times i have one and then i have the other then i have one then i have the other and finally when i decided my criteria was going to be purely enjoyment that is how i landed on this ordering but if i film this on a different day maybe it would come out differently so i'm gonna say that number two is black reconstruction in america by w.e.b du bois this the emotion for this is just righteous anger and just intellectual enrichment this fed my mind and spirit in a way that good non-fiction does and this is one of the best pieces of non-fiction i have ever read i think if i were going to objectively try to say what the best book of this bunch is probably it would be this it's so hard to compare apples to oranges though in terms of across genre but like probably i mean this is such a classic that i feel like i would have to say this is objectively probably the best book i think this book made me angry this book made me cry this book challenged me morally emotionally intellectually just like all around what a phenomenal book that i really exhort people to give a try i listen to this as audio and i've been rereading with the audio and underlining uh in a second read so i can recommend that and yeah this book man so so good if we're just gonna say the book i enjoyed the most this year i am gonna have to go ahead and stick with black sun by rebecca rohnhorse because this is a perfect high fantasy book for me i love everything about this book i have i can't even really come up with what i think the objective criticisms of this book might be because i just don't see them ever the oh i remember i did hear somebody say that they wish it was longer or like more detailed and descriptive but like it's 450 pages and i do feel like it's the first in a trilogy so we're gonna find out more as things go i guess that's the only criticism i've really heard that makes any i don't know i have no criticisms of this book this is perfect for me i think that it is a fast-moving fantasy book that manages multiple points of view really really well it has a super rad magic system that is interesting i'm also it has like an element of like the gods walking among us that is something i've realized this year that i very much enjoy in a fantasy i do tend to like you know the gods walking on the mortal plane so that's sort of a taste defining thing i've realized about myself this year and this has that it has a suzu like a hint of a love story that could go someplace but that's not like the main thing but it was there to like add some interest there's a really fun sort of road trippy element to this like with a sea voyage i am so into just the ideas and the thematic content of this which is something i always care about in my speculative fiction sort of like what the underlying metaphor is just i just i love this book i just enjoy this is the book i enjoyed reading the most this year so for that reason i feel like it has to stay at number one also the cover design is beautiful on a superficial level so there you go my best book of 2020 is black sun by rebecca rhone horse cannot wait for more books in the series and with that that's all my best and worst of the year lists and we've come to the end of my 2020. listicling yay i do have some more kind of ending the year and starting the new year content coming for you guys so i hope you will enjoy that but definitely let me know what you thought of any of the books that you have read from this list in the comments down below or maybe what your best book of 2020 was or you think might be if you're still trying to figure that out and yeah i think that will do it for me so if you enjoyed this video please like subscribe follow me on the social needs if you are so inclined i have all that information listed in the description box below and i think that that will do it i hope you're having an absolutely lovely day today and i will just talk to you soon bye you

Channel: bookslikewhoa

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Keywords: best books of 2020, favorite books of 2020, 2020 books, best books, best books 2020, best books to read

Id: KDK5rYZoljU

Length: 18min 7sec (1087 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 03 2021