The BEST Books of 2020! | 10 Incredible Reads!

welcome back everyone hi if you're new my name is tori and today we have arrived at the biggest most exciting video of the year this is the best books of 2020. filming the best books of the year is seriously one of my favorite videos to film every single year it is like the one i look forward to starting in july i'm just always so excited by the time this video rolls around and i sit down and just go through all of the books that i read through the year and pick out the best 10. so at the time of filming this video i've read 72 almost 73 books and i think i can squeeze in a couple more before the end of the year but because of that because that number is a little bit up from last year putting this list together at least the bottom half of the list was a lot more challenging than it was last year because there are at least five books that i could have easily put in somewhere in the bottom of this list even some of the books that i read this year that i thought were just great reads some of them amazing reads just ended up not making this list this year so if you're unfamiliar i always do a top 10 list i like the number 10 i just think it's a good just nice clean cut off number it makes things a little more interesting the competition a little more exciting and it just really forces me to sit down and think about each individual book that i read so this list is ranked i like rankings so we're going to start at number 10 the 10th best book of the year and then we're gonna work our way up to the number one spot which is in my opinion just complete perfection this is an incredible incredible list of books that i've pulled together this year despite 2020 being what it was the reading year was amazing the quality of books i read this year was just even better than last year if you can believe that i'm just i'm so excited to share these books with you guys you have to read all of these i put this on you guys every year that you have to read the best books on the list because these books are just that great so i keep looking over here because the stack of books is just staring me in the face one of the books on this list was one that i just finished a couple of weeks ago and it made its way pretty high up on the 2020 list so um yeah let's just let's get into it this is gonna be a lot of fun get your good reads open because you're gonna be wanting to mark down some of these that is pretty much it so let's get into it these are the best books that i read in 2020 [Music] okay guys let's get this party started coming in at number 10 is the passage by justin cronin and there are honestly so many books that i could have put in the 10th spot so many books that i love this year could have they could have been here but there is something about the passage that i just was not able to get out of my head this year i read this earlier in the year around like march or april i believe so a while ago and i just i seriously cannot stop thinking about this this is an epic uh very epic post-apocalyptic novel the foundation of this novel is we have the us government or the us military performing experiments on 12 different inmates and the effects of these experiments these viruses that they've been injecting into the inmates have been turning them into creatures that we think of as vampires that's pretty much one side of the story and then on the other we have this young girl named amy who was abandoned by her mother and it just really has no one in the world nowhere to go so she ends up at this convent and her story is just really sad i love amy so much and so we have amy we have these inmates getting these um injections and so when things just really start going horribly wrong these agents are sent to find amy and bring her into the facility where these experiments are happening and the kind of thought behind this is the fact that she's so young and that her immune response to these injections will be a lot different from the inmates but it turns out amy is special she does have kind of this uh special relationship i guess with the virus that she's injected with and so that is really the foundation of this story it spans a lot of years i've mentioned this before there's a pretty significant time jump that happens in the passage and we're really getting the full scope of this outbreak that that happens in the story and from there we're following a lot of different characters as they really just try to survive in this post-apocalyptic world pretty much and i fell in love with this story again this i've read the stand by stephen king a long long long time ago and it has been a long time since i have read something like a post-apocalyptic novel as epic as that in scope so the passage seriously has just been staying on my heart all year i really love this book i fell in love with justin cronin's writing style and i'm really looking forward to continuing on with the trilogy coming in at number nine is the city of brass and this is by essay chakraborty and this is the first book in the devabad trilogy and this is such a richly crafted just well-drawn world i fell in love with these characters i seriously enjoyed everything about this story it is a little slow in the middle but i loved everything about this story so this is a middle eastern inspired epic fantasy novel and in it we are following a couple of different main characters our first is noddy and she is this con woman living in cairo and she really doesn't have any knowledge of her past and where she comes from and naughty one day she accidentally ends up summoning this gin named dara and dara he has a little bit more insight into who nari is and he ends up taking her on this epic sweeping journey that leads her to devabad the city of brass and from there we get a lot of the court politics that are happening we get just epic magic and just great character relationships and i just i really really enjoyed this i mentioned earlier when i was reading this book that it just feels so warm and so comforting and just the scope of the world building of this book is what drew me into it so fiercely because it just oh it's just i don't know it just feels so good when you're reading it it just feels i love these characters i love nari i love the story and i'm so excited to continue on with the rest of the series so the city of brass is definitely one that is worth the hype it is worth the read and it was an incredible 2020 read for me number eight it should be no surprise guys that this one is on the list just i feel like you already know the city we became by n.k jemisin this was another one that was incredible i expected nothing less from nk jemisin honestly from her new fantasy series so this is the first in a planned trilogy and this is an urban fantasy novel and just how intricate the story is how wildly imaginative it is is just it's perfect so this takes place in new york city and it takes place in a world where cities are pretty much these living beings and each city has its own avatar so in new york city there are five boroughs and so we have five different characters that we're following and each character is the literal embodiment of a different new york city borough and they all pretty much have to come together throughout the story and find their way to each other because there is this ancient evil that is brewing in the city and threatens to destroy new york and just pretty much everything so i think we just have such a great cast of characters in here especially the character that is supposed to be the embodiment of brooklyn she's just amazing so so i just i had so much fun with this np jemisin's writing style is just unmatched she has this perfect comedic timing in her writing just really quick-witted characters but at the same time nk jemisin knows how to navigate and just really confront really bold issues that we're facing in society gentrification racism just all of that is just so expertly um explored and handled in this book and i seriously love the city we became so so much coming in at number seven we have to be taught a fortunate by becky chambers and this is a novella and this just pretty much confirmed that i love becky chambers writing style i love her characters i have read the long way to a small angry planet which i highly recommend by her i still need to finish up that trilogy well actually series there's another one coming next year but i mean this just this just really this novella just made me love becky chambers writing even more so in this novella we have a crew of astronauts who leave earth to essentially go survey the ecology of different planets and see if they're suitable or habitable for human life pretty much but the cool thing is these characters they're able to change themselves in order to fit the environment of the planet while they're serving it because you know they could step on a planet and just by the fact that they're human they could completely change the nature of whatever planet they land on so just that aspect of the story i think is already incredible and so the story is told through one of the crewmates perspectives ariadne and she is essentially chronicling their journey but also telling it in the hopes that someone still might be listening on earth because while they're in the middle of their one of their missions in one of their planets they realize that earth has stopped responding to their communication and they have no idea what happened on earth what's going on and now they're out here pretty much flying blind and our story really goes from there but this is just such a beautifully written story about just humanity and our place in the world and exploration and just so many just amazing things and i cannot recommend this novella highly enough coming in at number six also shouldn't really be a surprise at this point i've mentioned this a couple of times and how much i've really enjoyed this book but that is house of earth and blood and this is by sarah j maas and this is the first book in the crescent city series i am so excited for book two i cannot wait for it to come out and i love this book so in this novel we're following our main character bryce quinlan who is half human half fae and she is pretty much a party girl but something tragic happens one day and this demon is set loose in the city and it kills bryce's close group of friends and the story from there takes a completely different shift and bryce takes it upon herself to start getting to the bottom of what actually happened that night and what happened to her friends because this creature is still loose in the city we also have our other main character hunt i love hunt so much we have him in the story and he is an angel and he's essentially sent to look after bryce and just keep an eye on her as she is digging deeper into this investigation and two of them start growing closer but as they start peeling back the layers of what happened just oh things just get really wild in this book i think sarah j maas just did a great job hitting just so many different emotional beats throughout this story so by the end of it i don't cry when i read books but i was actually like getting a little a little teary eye when i was getting towards the end of this book i think the tone of the story is just perfectly set it's it gets a lot darker and i think that just leaves a lot of room for the emotional beats in the story to really take effect bryce is a great character the grief and guilt that she harbors from that night just follows her throughout the story and even beyond that we have this really big world full of all these different creatures who belong to different um like houses pretty much we have fairies and demons and angels and fae and sprite and i mean like anything you could think of is probably in this book somewhere this was actually an amazing fantasy novel and i highly recommend this okay guys we are now in the top five things are getting a little intense so coming in at number five again no surprise i feel like none of these are gonna be surprises now but coming in at number five is the trader baruch cormorant and this is by seth dickinson and this is the first book in the trader brew cormorant series well trilogy this is an extremely slow burner political fantasy novel in this novel we're following our main character baruch cormorant who is pretty young when her island is invaded by the empire of masks and they come and they take over everything and beru she never really lets go of that hatred that she has for the empire of masks and she basically vows to do whatever she can to infiltrate their ranks to just pretend to be going along with everything she vows to do all of that in order to take them down from the inside so she just kind of keeps her head down she does well in school and by the time she's ready to graduate she's actually given a position in one of the kind of more politically tumultuous regions in this land and she's put in charge of that regions like finances and just the moves the strategic moves that beru makes throughout this book they are so good you can just it feels like honestly like she is playing chess and everybody else around her is playing checkers she's thinking three steps ahead she's doing things that just might make her a little unpopular but doing one move will get her four spaces ahead it's just oh it's so good it's so good i love brew as a character so much seriously fell in love with her just from the first couple of chapters in this story and again this is such a slow slow story but it just works so well and by the time you finish it you're just i don't know you it's just great it's great oh my god we're i can't believe we're getting down to the wire we're at number four coming in at number four is a book that i just finished a couple of weeks ago and i mentioned a few videos ago that i was gonna hold off on filming my best books of 2020 because i was reading this number four book in december and i thought it might be able to squeeze its way somewhere on the best books of 2020 list because i was really looking forward to it and i just had a feeling i would really enjoy it i had no idea it would be able to shoot up to the number four spot the way it did baruch cormor was in the number four spot and i had to apologize to it so this is just how amazing this next book is if you've been following me on instagram you already know that i am obsessed with just everything that happens in this book that is jade city by fonda lee good lord in heaven this is an amazing amazing book i have a full review of this coming out um this coming sunday and i just cannot wait to dive a little bit deeper into this book with you guys but i love this book so much i love these characters so much like where do we start i don't even know what to say what is this book about this takes place on this uh this island nation known as kakan and on khan jade pretty much controls everything as the synopsis mentions jade is the lifeblood of the city however there are only a certain group of people on kakan that can control that can wear and can control a jade and those people are known as green bones and so in this novel green bone warriors are part of different clans there are there are a few different clans in kakan but our main two that were that we really get to know in this first book are no peak clan and then we also have the mountain clan even though we're following characters primarily from the no peak clan we still have this like front row seats of the effect that the mountain clan and their moves are having on no peek in no peek we have the call family we have lan and hilo and shea who are all siblings and they just oh i love them so much and both clans have actually recently gone through a transition of power that kind of make them vulnerable to each other in different ways that's just kind of the setup of the story we haven't even gotten into like the thick of things yet there's this drug known as shine that is being produced people who are not green bones they can take shine and they have the ability to wear jade and that's just never happened before and so because this drug is now in jan lun the city on kakan because of that the clan leaders have different ideas about how this drug shine should be handled and just the ways that they go about trying to do that just bring out some really ugly fighting on both sides misunderstandings start happening things just get really ugly and it's just so incredible this is this is i don't know i don't just read it just please read it that's all i can say about this right now i will be going deeper into this in my full review but as of right now i feel like i'm still kind of like on this jade city high and thoughts are not coming out properly so this was incredible number four book of 2020. it doesn't get any actually three get better than this but it doesn't get any better than this so go read jade city all right guys we have made it to the top three books of 2020. this is it that we're getting down to the wire here coming in at number three no surprise sally if you're watching this you called it parable of the sower by octavia e butler where do we start where do we start with this with this perfection of a novel i really i don't know so in this novel the world has just really gone through a huge climate and economic crisis and so the country has really been split off into these different communities and so in this we're following our main character lauren who lives in this community with her father and her siblings her father is a preacher and he is pretty much the one that tries to hold the community together and is preaching these just values and morals and and basically how to live life in these difficult times pretty much but lauren she is so she's such an amazing character she just really has so many questions about religion and god and faith and so this novel is actually told to us in the style of lauren's journal entries as she's questioning as she's questioning the world and just what's happening and things around her and just trying to be a young girl in this ever-changing world pretty much and so as she begins to question these teachings these religious teachings more specifically lauren begins to sort of create her own religion known as earth seed and so as the community starts changing and things around lauren begin collapsing family members go through some difficult times um things just start to break down and from there lauren becomes kind of the beacon of change and what that looks like and people begin to follow her it's so funny because i feel like i always find it even more difficult to talk about books that i absolutely love without just rambling on and on about it but i love this book so deeply i love octavia butler she's one of my favorite authors and this is just i don't this is amazing lauren is an amazing character just one of the best characters i've ever read about and just her view of the world she's so perceptive i'm forgetting the main thing of the story she's really perceptive she's like she has this really strong empathetic ability so lauren can feel like what other people are feeling what they're going through and so that really that helps her just kind of perceive things a lot deeper than everybody else and give her this greater understanding of the world i cannot believe i just like completely blanked on the fact that she has an actual gift that's a huge part of the story the fact that i mentioned that she's perceptive just like reminded me of that and she kind of grapples with all of those emotions through her journal entries so she's just such a fascinating such an incredible character and just probably one of my favorite characters of all time so this is a must read every octavia butler book i feel like at this point that i've read is a must read so you definitely have to go check out parable of the sower this is just this is top notch i know you know what this next book is number two you haven't seen it yet so i'm pretty sure you know what it is that book is the invisible life of addie larue by v.e schwab this book is amazing this was just an emotional thought-provoking journey unlike anything that i have read in 2020 by the time i finished this book it felt like i hate this line in literature so much it felt like i let out a breath i didn't even know i was holding but it no it really does feel like when you turn that final page and you close the cover it really does feel like some kind of weight that just lifts off your shoulders and you just feel a little disoriented you don't know where you are what's going on because you have just been through something incredible so this book takes place in primarily a couple of different time periods the first is late 17th century early 18th century france where addie was you know where she grew up and then we also get the story in our more present day of 2014. in 18th century france addie is from this really small village and she just feels so suffocated by the life that people are leading in this village and she doesn't want that for herself and she just wants to just explore life live life and not be confined by time and so when addie is about to get married that's when everything just kind of snaps for her she flees into the woods and it's there that she conjures this darkness known as luke and he grants her this desire that she has to not be constrained by time and but the catch is yes she will live through the century the catches she'll live through the centuries but nobody will be able to remember who she is nobody will be able to say her name remember her name she won't be able to speak her name write it down there will be no trace of her left in the world as long as she continues to live in it oh my gosh just even talking about this book is just like pulling at my heart i love addie so much i love these characters luke i love the dynamic that the two of them have throughout the story and that keeps cropping up over the centuries and just seeing addie's journey throughout life pretty much and kind of the turn of the story comes because addie has lived all of these years and no one has been able to remember her but one day in new york city she walks into this book shop and the bookseller there is able to say her name and his name is henry and they have their own story that they go through and it's just it's perfect but more than anything i really fell in love with v schwab's writing style in this i don't really have anything else to compare it to except when i read vicious all those years ago so to see the leap in her writing from vicious to this is just honestly it was night and day and i fell in love with the writing in this so much i think v schwab just did an incredible job of establishing that connection between addie and the reader where you just feel so invested in her story and it feels like you are going through it with her you feel every heartbreak that happens every moment of tension that happens is just it's honestly it's put on your heart well it was put on my heart i i know people who don't like this book but um this is this is incredible i don't even know what else to say about this book this is absolutely incredible addy larue number two book of 2020 no surprise there okay guys i'm looking at i'm looking at the number one book right now a lot of you have already guessed what it is i i love this book this is one of my new favorite books of all time this is one of my new favorite fantasy series of all time nothing about this book needs to be changed there doesn't need to be a word deleted words added everything about all 527 pages is just top notch storytelling that book is the poppy war by r of kwang let's just let's let's sit with that for a moment the number one book of 2020 is the poppy war by r of kwang oh i get chills just saying it nothing i say about this book will do it justice absolutely nothing just i'm gonna throw it out there right now i'm gonna try but it won't work in this book we are following a war orphan named wren wren comes from this really small village and really nobody expects anything of her and if she just keeps living the life that she's living she's going to be married off her husband won't care about her and just the expectations for her life are just in the dirt they are completely low really wren's only chance of changing the course of her life is to enroll in one of the big uh academies in this empire but in order to be accepted at one of the academies you have to study for this exam that not many people pass it's very exclusive very elite and people like rand don't even have the resources to do well on this exam to even like make it to the threshold of one of those um one of these academies but just even from the beginning the determination that rin shows in getting out of her situation and leaving her village behind is just unlike anything i've ever seen in a character before it is so unreal so she studies hard for this exam and she gets accepted at one of the most prestigious military academies in this empire and while she's at the academy she's learning along with the rest of her peers however as ren is learning all of this and just trying to keep her spot at this academy war is brewing and it becomes pretty obvious that her class at this military academy is going to graduate into this war so in the first half of the book we're following ren of this academy and we find out that she has this affinity for the art of shamanism and so under one of the teachers there she begins to kind of develop that connection that she has with shamanism specifically the phoenix god and we learn how just vengeful this god can be but in the second half of the book it's like the reader we graduate into the war with rin she's in the thick of things and rf quang does not shy away from the horrors of this war of just oh my god just i don't even know what to say about this book characters are dealing with opium addiction and it's just so dark it is so dark but it is so so good i've never read a character like ren before i've never read a character so determined and intelligent and quick-witted and fierce and just this is amazing i'm a little late to the poppy war train but i am here now i'm on it i'm probably driving it at this point this is seriously one of the best books i've ever read point blank period so that is it for me you guys those are the best books of 2020 the most incredible books that i read in the year so let me know down in the comments if you have read any of these books if you plan to but also i want to hear what your best books of the year were gush about them in the comments let me know how the reading year went for you let me know some of your plans for the new year some of your reading goals thank you all so much for watching this video i really appreciate it i hope you have an amazing holiday season and a happy new year and i'll see you in the next video take care [Music] you

Channel: Tori Morrow

Views: 59,926

Keywords: the best books of 2020, favorite books of 2020, amazing 2020 reads, the poppy war r.f. kuang, the invisible life of Addie larue, the passage Justin cronin, 2020 reads, 2020 books, the best books of the year, booktube best books

Id: 7ogMQCA1Mkk

Length: 26min 58sec (1618 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 23 2020