my favourite books of 2020!

hello everybody today i am going to be recommending you the the cream of the crop the best books that i have read in 2020 it's been a disastrous year on so many accounts but here i am to save the whole year by letting you know that my reading has been wonderful i don't know how well actually maybe i do we're all trapped but i read more this year that i have in the past like four years i'm so excited um as of the recording of this video i believe i've read 45 books this year which it just feels good it feels good because i feel like i i read it you know i i got a chomp into the reading world so today we're going to be going through my spreadsheet where i track what i read and i'm going to be recommending you the books that i really think you should read you should pick these up you should ask for these for christmas you should prioritize these in 2021 because i read some really golden books this year that uh i'm hyped on i'm hyped on i don't know why i made that sound it's like i've got a horse come here horse i don't actually know anything about horses last time i met a horse was like 2016 or something this video is sponsored by likewise an app that recommends you great books and movies and shows to watch and read so when they reached out to me i was like all right here we go another app i i downloaded it i tried it out and it's actually really fun because they give you daily based on you know your preferences books that you've told the app that you like and stuff they give you daily um recommendation cards and it's sort of you know like like tinder or something where you get to scroll and be like i don't care about that one i don't care about that ooh i'll save that one and they have different functions like an ask section where let's say you just finished a specific book and you're like guys i just finished lolita and i loved the flowery writing of lolita what is the next book i should read and the community can swoop in and like give you personalized recommendations if you've ever found yourself thinking what do i need to read next or i don't want to waste time like scrolling and like just googling what to read next i think this app might be for you please please use the link down in the description it's absolutely free which is the best part you don't have to pay or anything um you get to just download this cool app try it out and one of my i mean one of my favorite elements is that it's a very pretty app does anyone else care about that because i truly and deeply care about that i i i'm betraying my affinity for asceticism in that i just need apps to be pretty if i'm going to use them and this really is a very pleasant looking app the link is at the top of the description click it check it out follow your favorite creators on there and let's all be recommended some books and in the spirit of it let me start recommending you the books that i read this year here we go i should say elephant in the room i'm clearly in a new location that's because is this i guess this is gonna be my reveal i bought a house but actually i have a main video coming about it uh very soon or maybe it got already posted but i am in my new home and this is genuinely the only nice corner in the house right now it's a complete disaster there is stuff and boxes everywhere um but i actually the box that held these books broke and that's why they're out because i don't all of my box uh my books are still in boxes i don't want to unpack them until i have the shelves they're going on to because i can just imagine the horror stories of them like falling over being eaten by dogs also it's gonna it's mayhem so i'm not unpacking them until i have the bookshelves that i'm actually going to put them on but then this box that held literally my favorite books like these are my favorite books from here to here are my all my favorite books then here to here are all my george orwell books and then in the middle are just random books that are like some of my newer buys purchases um so that's why these books are out here but otherwise everything is packed away and slowly slowly unpacking into this new house but i'm so excited to be making content about it very very soon so tune in for that when it comes but let's get started oh my god okay so i oh gosh the first book i read this year became one of my instant favorites bastard by max the radhike is how i think you'd pronounce that i've got to move over a little so that we got room for the image so this is a graphic novel and i love graphic novels it is i mean one of my all-time dreams is to write and publish a graphic novel or seven someday um this is a story about a young boy and his mom who are kind of runaways from some sort of law like they are you know fugitives and um you're trying to figure out what's going on it is such a touching story it was so emotional it was super fun i loved the illustration style and i'm just a like a massive fan of this book i've never heard anyone talk about it which is one of these bummer situations where i'm like this is definitely not getting the love it deserves um okay what do we got next i'm just trying to recommend you like i said the cream of the crop the best books that i read this year oh oh man here we go on to another actually i have this one right here albatross by terry phallus so albatross is oh god i've tried to sell you guys on this book a few times now it's a hard sell so basically it is a book about a kid in high school who gets a new gym teacher and this gym teacher uh is reading the scientific journal someday and reads this crazy study that says if you measure a person like you know measure from here to here and the size of their chin and the length of their bones and all this sort of stuff if you measure a person you can actually figure out what sport they would be good at and like certain people are just born naturally good at some sports that's the concept behind the journal but um the the guy the scientist who's done this study and this idea has never really measured anyone who would be good at sports like it's like yeah you'd be okay at basketball you'd be okay at like soccer but no one who's like gotten above 95 on the thing that would be like a true master of the sport and so randomly this gym teacher measures our main character and it says according to the paper he would be amazing at golf a sport he has never tried a sport he doesn't care who cares about golf i mean i know there's some people but who cares about golf and so um they're like let's go try this out so they go to a local golf course and it turns out he is just has this like natural god-given talent at golf and the book spirals it's about him becoming like a pga tour player and like becoming one of the best golfers in the world but he's kind of hated by the golfing community because he hates golf he doesn't care about golf but he's good at it so he keeps playing it and he keeps winning all of the tournaments um it is so fascinating wacky fun but deep emotional makes you think about what do you spend your life doing the things that you're successful at or the things you truly love um okay this is a weird one i'm going to shout out i'll do a small shout out for the hunger games suzanne collins so this was a reread that i did this year and i just was absolutely blown away by it obviously i read this back when it came out whatever when i was in high school and i really enjoyed it then loved i probably like reread it a couple of times really enjoyed the whole series i mean i'm not a mockingjay fan i'll i'll i'll i'll be the first to admit but or you know the 100th to admit but the hunger games the whole series and everything i really enjoyed um and then i hadn't read it for a really long time and me and my best friend raeleen over on our podcast did you know i have a book podcast please check it out because it's my favorite thing that i do uh we decided to do a reread of it i don't even remember why but we did a reread of it and we were just so blown away she is a much better reader than i am and she reread the whole trilogy which i meant to do and i just ended up only reading this first book but i was blown away it's so good have you reread the hunger games lately you should uh alright what's next oh station 11. okay we're in a pandemic reading about pandemics during a pandemic for me is helpful it isn't glamorizing it or romanticizing it it's helping me understand it i'm reading a book like station 11 which it like part it's got a lot of different timelines and different characters and some of it is before the pandemic and like right when it happens and some of it is like right after the pandemic hits and and everything's falling apart but most of the book is kind of this after pandemic future reading about that calmed me made me think like no humans can survive something like this it made me think about what is survival what are the coping strategies we have what are the possible futures in a moment when it felt like i had no idea what was going on this giant pandemic is happening i mean it's still happening i mean we i feel like we're in a horrible movie waiting for the vaccine what countries are gonna have to pay for it feeling so lucky i live in canada where i'm not gonna have to pay for my vaccine all of these things that's why i read that's why i read in general is to try and understand my life and the world and our options and our choices and here i had this opportunity to read this book station 11 which everyone had talked about when it came out like everyone was so crazy about it and i bought it right whenever like the hype was high and i just didn't end up picking it up and i'm so glad i didn't i'm glad i read it during the pandemic and if you haven't read it yet or if you haven't reread it in a long time boy do i recommend this beautiful beautiful book it's about hope it's about compassion oh i loved it here's a cute one apple corn cove by katie o'neal this is a really sweet sweet book about a young girl i think it's a middle grade book graphic novel about a young girl whose mother has passed away and so her and her father have moved away from the small seaside town where they used to live clearly because the father was just kind of like i can't live in this town anymore it brings back too many memories so that's kind of where the book has started there they're away and they found out that there's been a giant storm at their old hometown and they've decided to go back and help out especially help out their aunt um her mom's sister and help out like rebuild the town a little bit and support this hometown that they love but they've had to leave because of their grief um so it's a book about you know return it's a book about uh grief and about mourning and about like rebuilding um but it's also a beautiful book about climate change because like i said it's a seaside town where a lot of the town's economics are built upon fishing and we have this kind of magical fantasy uh species kind of mermaid e uh that is in the ocean and is trying to communicate with the people in this town about how the fishing is really affecting their community in the ocean it was such a beautiful story the illustrations are so so so gorgeous and wow i mean i it blew me away i read it really quickly and i read it in the summer when i was trying to spend more time outside because it was the pandemic like hardcore early pandemic didn't know what we were doing worse but like i've stayed home my friends i have stayed the heck home and um i was just like going out every day sitting on a blanket under an umbrella in my front yard soaking in the sun trying to breathe and i read this in like one sitting and i just loved it i soaked it up ah gosh here's a good one how to do nothing resisting the attention economy by jenny odell this book this i had an interesting relationship with this book because when i finished it i didn't think it was one of my favorite books of the year but as the year continued i realized i was still thinking about it and i've thought about it that book so much maybe more than any other book i've read this year it has really stuck with me and so many of the ideas and the thoughts and the concepts that jenny odell is presenting and putting forward um have really stuck with me it's a book i definitely want to re-read i listen to the audiobook of this and i really recommend it it's a it's like four and a half hours so it's quite short um and actually i'll link to my libro fm a thing i think it's an affiliate link down i'm pretty sure yeah no i'm pretty sure it's an affiliate link i'll link that down below because i love libro have are you using lipro fm because you should be every time that you buy a book it supports money goes to independent bookstores and you get to pick your local independent bookstore to like support through audiobook purchasing it's just brilliant but that's how i listened to a lot of my audiobooks this year and i loved this audiobook i really like i did really enjoy it when i finished it i knew i'd really enjoyed it but i just i didn't expect for it to be such a slow but solid burn it's about i mean the title gives it away but it's about this jenny o'dell this uh woman who realizes she's not she doesn't want to engage with the attention economy so i mean if it's this concept that what companies want from us now more than our money and more than our um more than anything else is our attention so facebook wants you to stay on facebook and have your attention and instagram doesn't want you to leave instagram and youtube doesn't want you to leave youtube because the more you're on there the more money they make from ads the more money they make from selling you random stuff etc so um this attention thing where they're just trying to steal all of your attention uh it's about resisting that why we should resist it how we can resist it um and the value in trying to resist it i loved it it was so good um okay this next i mean the bell jar by sylvia plath you may have heard of it it's right here i mean i guess a lot of these books are right here because there are some like new favorites got added to my favorite section um where is it the bell jar is it not here you know why i might not be here it doesn't matter it was a packing decision i made but the belgium sylvia plath wow wow it blew me away i do want to asterix that there were some racist depictions in the book which you know are not okay um but that's our history our history is racist and i don't uh i don't know wow this is gonna i don't want to open up a whole can of worms here do with that information what you will if you don't feel comfortable reading it don't but if you're willing to read our classics and understand our history with a critical eye and be aware and know when things are wrong and incorrect and you can be like okay that was inappropriate and i hated that um but i guess it was 1950 and things like segregation were literally still happening but regardless regardless this was a beautiful book it's a book about a young woman esther i mean i'm sure you know because it's the belcher but it's a young woman esther who gets an internship in new york city and she goes to the big city and you know it's a game changer it's a game changer like how it is for any kid who's ever gone to a big city when you don't grow up in a big city but she doesn't marvel she's very dead pen and um you can see she's like has lost a spark in life um she's very confused about what's going on it very much feels to me like a female catcher in the rye where this young girl is trying to discover who she is and what she wants to be but she is riddled with depression and it's a book about mental health and the mental health depiction in this book unparalleled it's so beautiful um and so i mean it must have been in the when it came out did it come into the 50s or the 60s don't nobody quote me but when it came out i must i just imagine that it must have been so powerful to readers to read a mental health depiction that in in 2020 still rings so true um it was such a beautiful book and yeah i really recommend it just knowing our history um okay what do we got next perhaps the book i recommend to you the most 10 arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now by jiren lanier this book blew my mind i plan on reading it like every year until i die it was so powerfully strong and efficient short it's so short it's so quick the audiobook again is like four hours long um it is like the title says ten reasons ten arguments it's right here uh so i can actually pull up oh what a beautiful bookmark to a fault my friend bailey gave me this a long time ago that's not focusing but that's fine it's a joker card okay argument number one you're losing your free will argument number uh four social media is undermining truth argument number six social media is destroying your capacity for empathy argument 7 social media is making you unhappy argument 8 social media doesn't want you to have economic dignity it's making politics impossible um etc like these kind of lofty ideas but then he really gives these wonderful examples of why that's happening why you should stop using social media so much etc etc and don't worry i see the massive hypocrisy of me recommending a book of like this on youtube uh as a person who makes her living from social media that is something that i am grappling with in this melon of mine trying to figure out how i feel about all of this but jared lanier was in the documentary that everyone's been talking about this year the social dilemma he was he was uh one of the like the talking heads that they had in there um if that makes you feel like he has more authority but also he is like one of the original people from silicon valley he kind of pioneered virtual reality uh i think he coined the term virtual reality or something like a super influential guy has been here for so much of this like technological revolution and he's kind of uh i don't know it's a very interesting person who's like do not trust social media do not waste your life here on social media ah it blew me it blew me away quick shout out to sheets by brenna thumler which i freaking love but i read for the first time this year uh last year but i reread it this year so i just had to shout it out again uh what else oh and of green gables i mean my it's my brenna thumbler moment anne of green gables my god wow it is so beautiful it makes me want to cry it uh came at this moment in my life when i was going through a very very very dark time this summer and i escaped into the story of anne i watched the netflix show and with an e i read this graphic novel it was just this beautiful escape and it is so gorgeous it is so gorgeous please read it ah up next kim ji young born 1982 by cho namjoo this book was so fascinating a look into a woman's life in in south korea um and she is like the most ordinary normal run-of-the-mill woman out which is what makes her so interesting because she's very representative of a life so many people in south korea are living um born in 1982 so you can kind of picture like raised in the 90s getting a job in the early 2000s it was fascinating look into another culture it had what i've never seen before it was a fiction book it's a novel but it had a lot of footnotes to kind of back up the things that were happening to our characters so you know like our character would go through a moment of sexual harassment in the workplace and then it would have a little citation and it was like women in north korea have this happened to them this many times a year this study found and it was like i've never seen a fiction book be backed up with non-fiction facts it was so fascinating okay i think the last book i'm going to recommend is the vanishing half by britt bennett this book was so fascinating it was so gorgeously told it's the story of two uh they're not twins no they're just sisters these two sisters who are um light skinned but they are black but they live in this community of light-skinned people and it they are passing they could pass as white americans because this is all set in america and it's the story of how they grow up to live very different lives one of them has um decided to marry a white man pretend that she's white has a child who is white and nobody like of her new life knows that she's black the other one marries a black man and has a black daughter and lives um as a black woman and it's about how these women have very different lives how they're perceived and how they perceive themselves that was the part that really got me like what they think of themselves but it's not only about these two women it's also about um their mother but it's also about their daughters and their daughters have such fascinating experience because they have they're experiencing racism in america at two very different times in american history and so like um in for the mothers they're actually dealing with segregation and then the daughters are living in a much more i forget how forward the book but it does definitely it's in the 90s i think it was a very moving story and it was it just made me think so much more complexly about race it made me think in a more nuanced way about how we imagine race how we imagine race for ourselves as a person who is mixed race it made me think about a lot of things so i really enjoyed this book and i absolutely am looking forward to picking up the mothers by britt bennett because i think that that's going to be a real gem so those are my ultimate recommendations for this year i hope that you will check them out i will have them written down below if you do want to check them out and thank you again to likewise for sponsoring this video like i mentioned the link is down in the description check them out the perfect thing for finding new books new book recommendations and also movies and tv if you're also into movies and tv which i think all readers really are my big wrap up of the year where i talk about like all of my book awards is still coming this year and i'm very interested to see if any new books that i read between now and the filming of that video will make it into my top 20 or my top 20 my top 20 20 books uh but thank you so much for watching this video i hope that you guys are all doing well and i will see you guys in my next one bye

Channel: Ariel Bissett

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Rating: 4.9486799 out of 5

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Length: 23min 44sec (1424 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 15 2020