My Favorite Books of 2020

hi everyone i'm rincey and this is rincey reads today i'm going to be talking about my favorite books that i've read in 2020. so a little bit of a preface before i start obviously 2020 was a very different year in every way shape and form one of those ways in terms of my reading personally is that i read way more books than i usually do in a year mostly because i didn't really leave my house a whole lot this year and so when it was you know getting to the end of the year like beginning of december and whatnot i already started to think a little bit about what's going to be on my end of the year list and there were just like so many potential books for me to pick from that it took me a while to uh really figure out what's going to be on my actual like favorites of the year so the way i organize my favorites every year is that like while i'm reading over the course of the year i have a shelf on goodreads that i've marked as favorite from whatever i've put on that shelf over the course of a year i will like take that write that down and then see out of those books that i've already called down to being a favorite which one would actually be like my most favorite of the year because usually or at least this year i had almost 30 books on that list and it basically comes down to like there's two tiers almost to my favorites shelf and so what i do with my videos is i basically take like the best of the best in my opinion so out of those almost 30 books i narrowed it down to 15 books this year a couple of other things that just personally i thought were kind of interesting one of them is the fact that like i didn't rate any book this year five stars and that is very much an anomaly for me like i'm someone who usually doesn't give a lot of five-star readings but usually there's one or two books every year that make it to five stars for me and this year didn't happen this is probably because of or actually not probably it is definitely because of just me i'm someone who gives five star ratings to books that like exceed my expectations move me in a way that i was just not expecting all of this stuff and i think just because of 2020 nothing did that for me this year which is sad but i think very also indicative of this year the other thing i realized while i was putting together this list is that i've actually done an individual book review on every single book i'm about to talk about so i will link all of those down in the description box below if you want to hear me talk about any of these books more in depth definitely go check out those videos because this video will be like over an hour if i spent as much time talking about them here as i did in those videos so again just check out those book reviews if you are interested in more of my thoughts here i'll just be giving you kind of like high level views of each book as well as kind of like why it made my favorites two more final sort of housekeeping things first the way this list is organized is literally just me going through them in order of when i read them over the course of the year so i'm starting off with books i read in january and ending off with books i've read this month in december there's no real ranking system or anything like that i have a really hard time ranking books the other thing is that while the majority of these books i think were published in 2020 or a number of them were uh this is just anything that i read over the course of the year these are not necessarily the best books that came out in 2020 just the my favorites that i've read all right with all of that out of the way let's start with the book so the first book i have is a long bright river by liz moore this is a book that came out in january of this year and i like read it immediately i was so excited for this book because liz moore wrote one of my all-time favorite books called the unseen world this is like kind of a mystery book but i would say it leans more into like the contemporary fiction literary fiction side of things it takes place in philadelphia and you are following this woman named mickey who is a police officer in philadelphia and she has a sister named casey who lives on the streets she has an addiction problem and so mickey actually like works the neighborhood or patrols the neighborhood that casey lives in or stays in or whatever that is and the two of them don't talk to each other anymore but like mickey kind of uses her role as a police officer in the neighborhood to kind of keep tabs on casey one day casey disappears and mickey has no idea where she went and at the time that casey disappears there's also a string of murders that are happening in this area and so mickey becomes really concerned about casey's well-being and she's concerned that she may have been a victim of the or like part of the string of murders that are happening mickey starts investigating these murders uh while also trying to find out what exactly happened to her sister so this is a book that is broken up into like a present-day storyline as well as a past storyline and so you get to see this mystery unfold in like a typical mystery fashion but then you also see like this history about their family as well as the history of these two siblings basically like what happened to them why they've lost touch things like that i would say that if you are like a straight-up mystery book reader and you go into this book wanting a mystery book you might be a little bit disappointed but i'm someone who loves books like this that have a mystery element to it but also have like really great character development that is the thing that liz moore is really really great at is like creating these really interesting compelling characters that you care so much about the thing about this book that made it very clear that this was going to be on my favorites list even when i read it back in january is like i was so compelled by the story that i like sat in my chair for a couple of hours like legitimately two to three hours and my fitbit thought i fell asleep because i did not move because i needed to know what was going to happen here so yeah i think that if you are someone who maybe wants to dip your toe into mysteries you might enjoy this book or if you're someone who again just enjoys contemporary fiction books that have a decent amount of character development this would be a really great one to pick up there's some really interesting things that are explored in here so long bright river by liz moore definitely another favorite of mine from her next up i have a check please by ngozi ukasu and this is a comic book that i read i think also in january pretty early on in the year and i adored this so if you have been watching my channel this year you know that one of my like projects slash new year's resolutions was to read more comic books and i'm specifically going to work my way through the av club best of the 2010's comics list and so the very first book on that list was check please and it's a book that i've heard so many people just talk about how much they adore and so i was very excited to check it out and it definitely like even with all of the hype exceeded my expectations you are following this character named eric biddle as he starts university he ends up joining the hockey team at his university but he has like a background in figure skating and so this is kind of like a slice of life comic where you are following i think it's his first year or maybe it's his first two years i can't remember exactly how far uh this first volume covers of his life in university and you get to see him basically like finding his place on this team becoming friends with all these people this was originally published as a webcomic so ever it's like to six pages probably is like a single little story about a couple of things that have happened in eric's life or some of the games that he's played or watching him like that practices things along those lines but it like adds up to a full story over the course of a year you get to see him you know have a crush and fall in love and all of these really great things it's like super heartwarming it's everything i personally really like in comic books like i like comics that are really like heartwarming slice of life sort of things if you are someone who enjoys sort of like contemporary young adult books you'll probably like check please a whole lot and i haven't picked up volume 2 yet but i'm so very excited to do so next up i have know my name by chanel miller this is a book that came out in 2019 and was another book that was like very much typed like i felt like i didn't see a single person say anything really bad about this book at all and so it definitely like piqued my interest and so i think this is a book that i picked up either at like the very end of 2019 are very early in 2020 because i was like i need to read this book for myself i actually listened to this on audiobook as well and chanel miller narrates it herself and the audiobook is brilliantly done like i remember i was listening to this like while i was at work trying to find moments in time where i continue could continue listening to it because i was just so compelled by the story so if you aren't aware chanel miller is the author of the emily doe statement that was published basically chanel miller was sexually assaulted at stanford university by barack turner when brock turner was given this very in my opinion low sentence and in many people's opinion low sentence chanel miller decided to write this sort of anonymous statement and had it published on i think it was buzzfeed and it ended up going viral and so chanel miller in this book basically talks about all of that experience like she talks about what happened that night and everything that kind of happened afterwards as she tried to get justice for what happened to her and so for the years that occurred after the trial and everything happened like chanel miller lived a relatively anonymous life and it wasn't until she decided to write her own story that she came out publicly and said that she was emily doe and so part of this book is about like her experience dealing with being sexually assaulted and all the trauma that goes along with that but also like her trying to figure out what she could do and what she needs to do and what was best for her and all of that stuff in trying to move on and heal and things along those lines and obviously she also talks about the experience of writing that statement and kind of the feedback and reception that it got yeah this book is just really really beautiful really really powerful chanel miller is an amazing writer and it should be obvious thinking back on it like that emily doe's statement went viral not just because of the honesty but because it's extremely well written and you definitely see that in this book as well so if you haven't checked out this book yet i highly highly recommend it i definitely think it's one of those books that lives up to the hype another book that lives up to the hype is such a fun age by kylie reed this is a book that i distinctly remember came out at the very end of december in 2019 and thinking to myself oh man this book sounds really good it's too bad it's going to get buried uh kind of in the end of the year but this ended up getting so much traction partially because like a lot of people read it early and we're giving it really really positive reviews and part of it because it was picked for a reese's book club and things along those lines and so i'm very happy that this book has gotten as much attention as it does i'm definitely one of those people who really really enjoyed it in the story you are following this woman named amira who is a black woman and she is a babysitter for this family the chamberlains alex chamberlain is the mom she is someone who basically is like a lifestyle influencer type of person and so she is like this very much upper class white woman um and the story kicks off with amir uh getting a phone call like while she's at her friend's birthday party at this club from alex begging amira to come in to take their daughter out of the house because there's been an incident at the house and the police are there and alex doesn't want like their daughter exposed to what exactly is going on and so amir tells them like i'm at a party like i'm not dressed appropriately all of this stuff but they insist to have them come and so amira does and she takes the daughter to like a nearby upscale grocery store that's like a couple blocks away from the house and so she's there with her friend and they're watching the kid and they're kind of like dancing in the aisle and all this stuff when one of the security guards at the grocery store stops them and accuses amira of kidnapping this girl because the girl is white a mirror is black racism etc and so she's basically forced to call the chamberlains and the dad comes and explains the situation but like alex ends up being like really really infuriated with what happens and there was also like a guy there who recorded the whole thing and he wants to like post it online and have it go viral so that way there's some sort of like consequences for the actions of the security guard amir doesn't want any of that and doesn't want the attention but that's basically like how the story begins this book is sounds very serious based on that premise but it's actually like a really fun satire really funny has like this really great biting commentary about the way that different people exist in this world the way that different people deal with uh race and racial tension and things along those lines kind of like performative activism stuff like that people who think they are quote unquote woke and aren't necessarily um or still like have their biases and stuff like that and aren't willing to reckon with that i think that this is a very smart commentary on sort of the way race and race relations and racial tensions play out in the united states especially right now and yeah i love that it's done in such a like funny satirical way because i think a lot of times when you're dealing with comments on race and relationships and stuff like that it can get very very serious obviously but this one takes it to a kind of over the top level that i really enjoyed so yeah again it's like one of those books that's been getting a lot of hype this year and i think that it is one that deserves the hype so yeah i loved it all right next up i have parkland this is a nonfiction book that i wasn't originally planning on reading but then i ended up picking it up because i was participating in the book two prize and it was a book that i was slightly hesitant about picking up because i didn't know if i was going to be able to handle it so dave cullen the author of this book wrote the book columbine that talked about the school shooting that happened at columbine and dave cullen basically unfortunately because of that became like the expert on school shootings and so i never read columbine because i remember columbine and that everything about that just like makes me so so sad and even in parkland he talks about how like there's a very different vibe columbine at compared to parkland but i ended up picking up parkland and one of the reasons why it's a fantastic fantastic book is because obviously it's dealing with this really horrific topic of school shootings and specifically a school shooting that took place in parkland florida but it goes beyond that and talks about the amazing work that these kids have done since then if you aren't aware basically there was a school shooting that happened in parkland florida and you know for the past few decades there have been a number of school shootings and so these kids basically just became like really really fed up with this becoming a common occurrence and so they end up becoming activists they start petitioning their local government as well as moving on to like the federal government representatives to create sustainable change in terms of the gun laws and gun control laws that we have here in the united states to try to make a difference this book is full of so much hope and love and i think is was a really good book to read specifically this year because it looks at basically the tireless efforts that these kids have made and it kind of is really inspiring to read about and like personally it like made me want to become more active in a variety of different ways but it just shows like working together you can make change happen and obviously like gun control laws haven't really changed here in the united states since then but you can see sort of like a push that you never really saw before over the past few years so yeah i just wanted to be really beautiful really inspiring full of love next up i have the sundown motel by simone st james this is a kind of borderline horror book part historical fiction mostly a ghost story this is a book with the dual timelines the first one takes place in the 1980s and you are following this girl named viv who has ended up in this small town in upstate new york and she ends up working at this motel basically she's like looking for a place to stay in this town and she ends up working at the motel as a way to like pay for the fact that she'll get like room and board there but it turns out that not everything is quite on the up and up at this motel and one day she disappears the other timeline that you're following is basically modern day and you are following this girl named carly whose mother has recently passed away right before her mother passed away she found out that she has this aunt named viv who moved away from home and disappeared and carly had like never heard of her before and so she ends up heading to upstate new york to figure out what exactly happens and she ends up back in the small town that her aunt lived in and working at the exact same hotel and uh things are sold not quite on the open up so i will like leave the synopsis at that but i really really enjoyed this book i don't read a whole lot of horror uh because i'm a big baby and this book definitely freaked me out at times so i feel like this is a really good book to pick up if you are someone who doesn't read a whole lot of horror but want something like kind of spooky to read i found the story to be like pretty compelling because i didn't know what was going to happen to nviv since you're following both timelines you're kind of like following the process along knowing that at some point something's gonna happen to viv but you don't know what it is at all but the best thing about this book is basically like the social commentary that it does about the way that women live their lives especially if they are single women who are choosing to be alone and exist in the world and the way that they have to basically behave in a certain way in order to stay safe i found this all to be like really really well done i've read another simone st james book before and this one just proves like how much stronger she had gotten as a writer since that one was published and i think that she just again just creates this really creepy atmosphere that like legitimately i was reading this in the night time and then being really really freaked out not because of like the ghost elements but because of like the real life and elements in here and the way that she like builds tension as she's building up to basically the climax of the story and things like that i just found it to be really well done and then even like after you find out what happened to viv seeing how it's all gonna play out with carly like all of that i couldn't wait to see how it was all going to go down this book is full of surprises i again just like really really enjoyed it so definitely recommend this one if you want something with a slightly creepier feel to it next i have shelter by jung yoon this is probably in my like top five books that i read so far this year like if i had to narrow this list down even more like this is by far one of the best reading experiences i had in this book you are following kyung cho he is married to this white woman named gillian and they have a son together this book takes place in 2008 and so they live in this like pretty well-off neighborhood but they are basically house poor like they don't have enough money the market has crashed and the story begins with a real estate agent coming over to the house to basically assess their home like if they were to sell it how much they would get and all of this stuff they're hoping that like by selling the house they'll be able to recoup some of the expenses and be able to pay off some of the debt that they've accrued and things along those lines and while the real estate agent is there she like looks out the back window and sees that there is a woman far off in the field walking through completely naked and kyung realizes that it is his mother he like runs out there with a robe and she's like covered in like scratches and bruises and has clearly had something really traumatic happen and so he eventually finds out that his parents have been robbed but kyung and his parents have like a really tense relationship and they don't really talk to each other kyong's parents are extremely wealthy and live in an extremely wealthy neighborhood but after this incident happens kyong's parents end up moving in with him and things happen i'll leave it at that so the thing about this book is that it like builds tension in such an amazing way like from the very beginning you know that things aren't quite right like there's already this tension that's built into kyong's family because they have these money problems then you find out that there is this tension between him and his parents that you don't know about uh but little details get revealed over the course of this book before everything happens at the end and there's also you can tell like kind of this unspoken tension between the parents kyong's parents and he's hiding things as well he's hiding things from his parents because his parents don't know that they're having money issues all of this stuff so it starts off with sort of like maybe like a six in terms of tension and then as each chapter goes on and each detail is revealed to you it sort of builds and builds and builds until this like really big final reveal that is just like masterfully done this is definitely more on the literary fiction side of things it's definitely a suspenseful book though and i feel like was so compelling there isn't like a significant amount of plot because the majority of what happens is just like by following these people while they exist in the same house and kyung trying to figure out how to resolve his his own family's problems while trying to hide it from his parents and trying to deal with his parents for the first time as like a grown man and stuff like that but also him trying to figure out what exactly happened in this robbery because he can tell that his parents aren't being completely truthful with him either yeah it's it's masterfully done and masterfully plotted it's a book that everyone was reading and enjoying when it came out a few years ago and i'm so glad i finally picked it up myself next i have everyone knows you go home by natalia sylvester this is a book that i had randomly seen like someone mention it somewhere and then i went to austin earlier this year you know before everything coped it happened and was at a local bookstore and i picked this one up and like it was one of those very beautiful serendipitous moments where you pick up just like the right book at the right time natalie sylvester i think is also like a local austin author and stuff like that but this book is like just so charming and compelling and just like beautifully beautifully done so in the story you are mainly following this couple isabella and martin and the story i think begins on their wedding day and what happens is on their wedding day martin's father omar appears as a ghost in their car and so every year on their wedding anniversary martin's father omar appears and talks to isabelle the problem is that omar left their family a number of years ago and martin basically like never talked to him again and has no interest in talking to him as a ghost however omar keeps appearing because he wants to talk to his family and so he basically appears to isabelle every single year because she's the only one who's willing to talk to him the family themselves lives in texas and one of the things that also happens is that one of omar's cousins comes from mexico into texas he crosses the border as an undocumented person and so part of it is the tension that his cousin brings because his cousin actually knew omar and like really highly regarded omar because he like went back to mexico and so he spent a lot of time with mark martin's father and so there's a little bit of tension there but there's also just like this tension of like what to do with his cousin um how to handle that situation he's still a teenager and so he needs to get enrolled in school and kind of just like dealing with that whole process and then it also kind of flashes back in time and you see the story of martin's parents coming into the united states as well and sort of these struggles and issues that go along with that yeah this is just a beautiful moving family story that really beautifully details an experience of coming here to the united states and talks about the immigrant experience kind of the struggles and the dangers of crossing the border but also just trying to like find your family find your home find your place in the world and also it just is a really beautiful portrait of marriage i feel like it's really hard to find books that explore marriage in a way that's not either in a romantic novel sense or in a sort of horror or like thriller novel sense where it's like a very broken marriage or like a very like idealistic marriage like it's very hard to find books that talk about marriage in a way that feels like slightly more realistic and normal and i feel like this book does it really well like it follows this couple over the course of a few years until you get to see them uh go from newlyweds to like a married couple and kind of like the bumpy road along the way so yeah i really really enjoyed this book a whole lot um i feel like it's super super under the radar and i definitely recommend it next up i have black girl unlimited by echo brown this is a book that completely blew me away it is described as like part memoir part young adult kind of magical realism my high-pitched voice there is because like i'm not really sure how exactly to categorize it so this book feels very much like contemporary fiction to be honest uh you are following a character who is named echo brown she is a teenage girl who lives on the east side of cleveland where it's a very like poor neighborhood and things along those lines and she ends up going to the west side of cleveland to a very rich private school and so you follow her i think it's over the course of like a single year and you just see what her life is like you see what her life is like living in this very poor neighborhood the struggles that her and her family has and then kind of like comparing that to the experience of being surrounded by all of these extremely wealthy people who have no idea like what life is like for echo the way that i kind of like described this book it's that like it's a contemporary young adult book but it also kind of exists as if the idea of black girl magic was like actual magic i will say that this book is also like very very traumatic it deals with very uh difficult topics including like sexual assault and rape so like forewarning for that because like even for me it was extremely extremely affecting to read some of those scenes it's a really beautiful book about hope and kind of community and the strength of black women working together and things along those lines but yeah it also does deal with some really really dark and difficult topics so again another one of those books that i think deserves a lot more attention so definitely recommend this a whole lot even if you're not someone who typically reads a lot of young adult fiction um i think that this one kind of steps up the game a little bit next up i have a girl woman other by bernadine evaristo this is a book that i feel like i don't really need to talk too much about because it has been praised from here to the heavens and definitely well deserved this is another book that i read because of the booktube prize although i already had it basically on my radar because again so many people were praising it so highly but i was a little bit hesitant to be honest because generally speaking books that win and or are nominated for the booker prize are books that i typically don't get along with very much this book is definitely the exception to the rule in that way and in many other ways i'm also someone who doesn't really get along well with books that have multiple perspectives typically but i feel like bernie dean evaristo does such an amazing job of creating these super interesting compelling complicated characters that like no matter whose perspective i was reading from i was into the story 100 this book is broken up into a couple of different parts i think it's three or four parts i can't remember right now off the top of my head um and in each part you have a section from a girl a section from a woman and a section from other so to speak all of the characters in the story are like connected to each other in a variety of different ways whether they are related or family or in a relationship with them things along those lines and so it's just like a really beautiful snapshot of what it's like for various black women i think they're all black i just don't quote me on that living in london or at least partially in london some of it takes place in like the united states and stuff like that but it's about it's a really great sort of encapsulation i think of a specific type of person uh living in london or specific type of people living in london right now that i think isn't explored very often yeah another one of those books that definitely lives up to the hype okay continuing on with books that live up to the hype i have the vanishing half by brett bennett this book has been on everyone's favorite books of the year list i feel like and again with good reason in my opinion it is just this really amazing story about these two twin sisters they live outside of new orleans they end up moving to new orleans when they are around 16 years old they basically end up on two different paths in life they are light-skinned enough that one of them decides that she is going to pass as white and the other one ends up marrying a black man and you basically just like follow them down these trajectories and you also get to see sort of like their daughters and how like things unfold in the future they grew up in a town where being as light-skinned as possible was highly praised and you see the sort of effects of that when the sister who ends up marrying a black man ends up with a really dark-skinned daughter and the way that she's treated in the town this book is yeah it's amazing like there's nothing else i feel like i really need to say about it i feel like burt bennett does a great job of again creating these really complex compelling characters it's another book that takes place or follows different perspectives and different characters and it was again one of those books that was the exception to my rule of making me actually care about all of the different characters and perspectives in this book in my opinion i feel like there were even perspectives in here that we didn't get that i would have loved to have guns specifically like some of the male characters in here were super compelling as well and yeah it's a really great story again about like sisters and family and growing up and stuff like that but it also talks about things like race and colorism and kind of the more like nuanced complications around that as well which just was really really really well done um it got picked up to be i think a mini series on hbo or something like that and if it's done well it'll be like definitely one of the best stories because i think that this is just a really really fantastic book next up i have members only and this is one of those books that i think gets the award of the book that i really really loved but i think will not get the attention that it deserves in this book you are following this man named raj who is a professor in california the story begins at a country club that raj and his wife are a part of where he likes to play tennis and so it's one of those places where you only get to join by invitation only and so they have this event every year where people at their club nominate other people that they know to join the country club and it's specifically like a tennis focus thing too so usually at least one person in the couple plays tennis while raj is there he like realizes that basically everyone that is getting nominated to join this club is a white person and so he's having sort of this inner monologue of how he wants to be sort of like the change in the organization and to try to create more diversity and things like that within the club and while he's kind of having this in our monologue a couple walks in that is black and they've been nominated to again join this club and raj is really excited but over the course of like this interview process raj says something that is very racially inappropriate and so he's kind of dealing with the backlash of that within this club i think a day or so after that event occurs something happens during one of his lectures where a student basically takes pictures of some of this or takes a video of some of the lecture and cuts it up and makes it seem like raj is very like anti-american basically a handful of students at the university are now protesting for raj to lose his job and so this is a book that takes place over the course of seven days and you just see sort of how raj's life is falling apart on both sides of things yeah this is another one of those books that i think handles race in a really great and nuanced way specifically like the way that race and racial tensions are handled here in the united states right now and raj kind of walks this middle line by being not a white person and not a black person and so has his own like biases and uncomfortable things that he says but also he has to deal with the racism of his white colleagues and things along those lines and kind of the more like nuanced discussions that need to take place but rarely do ever take place in regards to race but it's also kind of about sort of like upper class culture in california and like that sort of upper class liberalism and things like that that i just found to be like really really well done again it only takes place over the course of seven days so it's not like this super detailed discussion on the way race and racial tensions are dealt with but it's another book that is like kind of a satire and so it kind of really pointedly talks about all of these different topics in a way that i don't ever really see explored in books a whole lot so yeah it's a book that i was like slightly hesitant about because i was like this could either go really really well or really really wrong and luckily it went really really well next up i have transcended kingdom by yeah jessie this is a literary fiction book it is ya jessie's second book and she wrote the book homegoing that came out a number of years ago that is like one of my all-time favorite books like to this day i still recommend that book to people this is a book that i think was highly anticipated by a lot of people including myself because we all really enjoyed homegoing but this book is very very different from homegoing in this book you are following this character named gifty who is getting her phd at stanford university and she is doing this analysis on mice and sort of the effects of addiction and depression on mice and anxiety and things along those lines and she's basically doing this because her brother when he was in high school ended up getting addicted to painkillers and he ended up overdosing and dying from it and after her brother dies her mother falls into a deep depression and so she's basically using this experiment to kind of explore the tragedies that have happened in her own life this story also follows gifty's exploration in terms of like faith and her faith beliefs she grew up in a christian household that was like extremely religious and so as she grew up she is trying to figure out what exactly she believes now and the thing that i love the most about this book is its exploration of faith and especially because gifty is a scientist she comes at it with this question of like whether faith and science have to be exclusive things because in the modern world and especially if you are in a very heavy faith community or very heavy science-based community it can often feel like they are extremely exclusive from each other and i feel like this book does a really great job of exploring that question and showing how it doesn't necessarily need to be one or the other and again that's one of those things that like i very rarely see explored or at least explored in such a beautiful and nuanced way like it doesn't treat faith as a joke and it doesn't treat being like heavy into science as a mistake or anything like that like it treats both sides of that coin as as a good option basically but it also explores that they are also like again two sides of the same coin they're both exploring the same ideas and trying to answer the same questions and just going about it in two different ways but yeah this is a book that is very slow moving in terms of plot it's a very quiet book it's a very thoughtful book it definitely is like very heavy on the literary fiction end of things but i found that it's exploration and the questions that it asks and the questions that gifty specifically asks and is trying to answer to be really really relevant and just really beautifully done i really enjoyed this a lot so i am my final two books both of which are books that i read and reviewed in december first up i have butter honey pig bread this is a again another very small press small sort of attention getting booked but it's really really beautifully done it follows these three women basically a mother and her twin daughters and you just explore the life that they are living together both in lagos and it also takes place in london and canada this is a book that when i was reading reminded me a lot of the vanishing calf because again it's following these twin sisters who end up kind of on these like two different paths in life they end up not talking to each other for a number of years but it's a little bit different from the vanishing half because like both sisters still kind of know what's going on in each other's lives and they still like care you can tell they still care about each other a whole lot and you see sort of like how their separation affects both of them they are a family that has dealt with a lot of pain and sorrow and you see the effects of that as well one of those books that doesn't really have like a strong through-line plot that i can give you but it has this really amazing exploration of like finding your home finding your family finding love learning how to love yourself and it does it in this like really interesting way it's another book that again broke my rule of not enjoying books with multiple perspectives because i found all three of these perspectives to be really really fantastic there was one that i enjoyed more than the rest but i never felt overly burdened by the other two perspectives and yeah i think that if you enjoyed the vanishing half and enjoyed sort of that idea of like these twins who take separate paths in life then i think that butter honey pig bread would be up your alley as well and finally i have we keep the dead close by becky cooper this is a book that i like just finished last week and immediately put a put up a book review of it earlier this week because i knew it was going to be on my favorites this is a nonfiction book and it is kind of a true crime story becky cooper attended harvard university and while she was there she heard this sort of like rumor urban legend about this graduate student who was like murdered by a professor at harvard at the beginning becky cooper is a little bit unsure of how true the story is but then she ends up mentioning to someone else who says that oh no that's actually a thing that happened over like the decade after she graduates from harvard she becomes really interested in trying to figure out what the true story is and so the relative true story is that there was this graduate student named jane bryn who was part of the anthropology department specifically studying archaeology and she was murdered in her apartment and one of the sort of weird things about her murder is that she was covered in this red powder that was known to be used in a lot of like burial traditions by various cultures one of those potters where everyone was like well the person who's involved has to be a part of the archaeology department to kind of know this and it kind of seems like this person knew the thing about the red powder and put it on her after murdering her the murder took place in 1969 and it went unsolved until until 2018 when becky cooper was in the process of writing this book and so what she does is she explores all of the different rumors and suspects and things along those lines in regards to this story and the reason why i loved it so much is because it's not just like a true crime book but it's also an exploration about misogyny and sexism and the way that we tell stories about people who have died and the way that we talk about true crime as well which is really what i look forward to like there's a level of meta-ness to this book because becky cooper is very aware of like how she's viewing the story and how she's viewing the story and the way that it's shaping her own thoughts and ideas about what exactly happened to jane britton and it also looks at things like the way harvard university structures itself tries to protect itself whether or not they had a hand in covering up what happened and even if they didn't sort of like the way that they do sort of cover things up to a certain extent and kind of the like sexism and misogyny built into their tenure system and the way it treats its professors and stuff like that all of that is explored as well it's really really well researched really really like great reporting is done in regards to this story you can tell like becky cooper cared a lot about it not just because she wrote about it because of how much effort she put into trying to figure out um the truth behind all of it and it's also kind of like an exploration of like what is truth and how much truth is anyone going to actually get on a crime that happened you know 30 40 years ago so yeah i think that if you're someone who wants to pick up a true crime book or wants to pick up some non-fiction this would be a really really great one to pick up because even though it's on the longer side i found the entire story to be super super compelling all right that's it those are my favorite books of 2020. my throat hurts i need to get some water feel free to leave a comment down below letting me know if you've read any of these books this year and whether or not they made your favorites list or if not feel free to let me know what your favorite book was of 2020 maybe leave a couple because i know picking this one can be hard so yeah thanks so much to everyone for watching for watching my reviews things like that like i mentioned earlier all the links to my book reviews will be listed down below so yeah that's all i have for now and thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: rincey reads

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Keywords: rinceyreads, rincey, books, book, reading, booktube, booktuber, favorite books, 2020 books, 2020 best books, favorite books of the year, best books of the year, 2020 favorite books

Id: X2f-PC-SKH0

Length: 40min 38sec (2438 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020