The Best Books of 2020 (according to The Guardian)

hello hello how are you doing i hope you're having a good weekend and uh reading good things over it so uh there another best books of the year list came out uh this time in the guardian and i know it seems like i go through a lot of these but i just really enjoy looking through a whole variety of best books of the year lists and find it really valuable to see where there's crossover between the lists um sometimes there'll be a new book that i've never heard of before and you know sometimes a book will be repeatedly mentioned uh like the the book cast by isabel wilkerson in the last two videos i made about best books of the year of 2020 lists um that book was cited on both of those lists and i just read that uh finished reading that this weekend it was so good such an interesting insight into racism in american history and gave me a really new perspective on it how you know the it the continuation of it is you know a product of the caste system um and so yeah i i found that so fascinating and um so i find it really valuable at this time of year to catch up on some of the best books of the years um and these lists help me find that so um so this is the first uk list that i'm looking at um published in the guardian and it's more a sort of general overview of sort of fiction of the year i mean there's different sections of different kinds of books and i'm only looking at the fiction section here because you know that's sort of my passion and uh so i thought i'd go through it fairly quickly i've got a lot of the books stacked up here to talk about and uh yeah i have a better hit rate um on on this list than the other lists that i've been looking at so uh justin jordan um one of the editors and uh journalists um for the guardian came up with this list and she cites 39 books of fiction that have been published over the past year and i have read 20 of them well 20 end bits of two of the other books and i'll mention why that is um when i'm going through them uh but yeah but because it's kind of more of an overview of some of the best books of the year i think she picks a lot more prize winners and things like that so ones that i've sort of naturally been reading since i read a lot of books for book prizes and stuff and uh yeah and because it's a uk list it's just more yeah fiction that's been published here that i'm more familiar with and you know some books get published in the states and don't get here for quite a while or if at all uh so yes i'm going to go through the list uh starting with hamnet by maggie o'farrell which of course won the women's prize for fiction this year and you know which i really enjoyed the experience of uh reading about this uh period in the 1600s when a plague was um in london and had beset uh the family of agnes and her husband shakespeare and and the the death of their their son due to that plague and and so yeah she mentions in justin jordan mentions in the beginning of this article how it's almost eerie how you know there are several books that are published this year that happen to do with plagues and you know widespread illnesses and you know this is one of them and it's so incredible that there's a section in this where she charts had the a plague traveling across the globe and the different people that you know it's sort of um who contract it as it's it's makes its way to this family and and you know even though i didn't enjoy this as much as some other people did you know people who really really loved it i found such more appreciation for it when i was talking about it with anna james when we were discussing the women's prize list and she made such interesting insights into it that i hadn't really thought of before and that gave me yeah a different point of view on it and which is you know why i love following books prizes so much because it gives us a chance to have these more in-depth discussions about books which we may you know not think about quite as complexly if we're just sort of reading them on our own and so to get other people's perspective and all of that good stuff then there is the pull of the stars by emma donahue another book which sort of deals with plague like conditions um this time in the early 1900s in dublin in the maternity ward of a hospital and i've not read this yet but i'm really looking forward to it i hope to read it before the end of the year because it's had so much praise and i think it's appeared in some other book prize lists as well and and i i've read books by her before and i really love her writing the silence by don delillo um i did read this this novel it's quite a short novel and i dundelillo's a writer that i really enjoyed early on like in my sort of college years i i've read a lot of his work and really enjoyed it but just haven't read much of his fiction lately and this didn't inspire me to read too much more um it's sort of about uh apocalyptic type conditions when an airplane crashes and people are sort of stuck inside and they don't have communication with the outside world and media seems to be shutting down and it's told in this sort of strange style and and uh and i i i sort of enjoyed it and appreciate it and i read the entire thing aloud to my partner which made it a sort of fun experience in itself um while actually we were driving across europe this past summer's you know sort of amidst a plague and so it um made for very atmospheric reading but uh but yeah it it hasn't really stuck with me and is more sort of like an interesting thought experiment rather than you know a sort of work of fiction that i could lose myself in the characters and the story weather by jenny awful another book that was listed for the wounds prize for fiction was my personal favorite to win the prize and yeah just the way this sort of looks at climate change and uh a lot of our modern preoccupations uh but in this very funny and engaging way a sort of like biting humor it's not really situational humor but just more sort of her wry observations and this impressionistic uh look you get at this librarian's life summer water by sarah moss another novel i've been really meaning to get to um it's not all that long either i don't know why i haven't read it yet but i almost wonder if we're like past the season of reading it since i think it takes place during the summer of a camping trip a sort of rainy camping trip in scotland of a group of people that are drawn together and that end but and but i know like it shouldn't matter what season you're reading a book in but yeah i almost feel like it's it's past that but what a beautiful cover isn't it the sunken land begins to rise again by m john harrison i've not read this novel which is about a sort of post-industrial england and two lost souls that are wandering through it uh sounds very eerie and intriguing then there is the sublime summer by ali smith uh novel i loved so much obviously it's the completion of her quartet of novels and i do think you have to have read the other novels to really appreciate this since so many of the characters come back in this although obviously you can read it on its own um it has a lot of commentary about uh brexit and uh and it's it was you know still being written this year so it's about the pandemic as well as a lot of other issues and the refugee crisis but also a lot of reflections on art and nature written in such a beautifully engaging way um that's also very humorous and so insightful and wonderful and um but also you have really fascinating looking at characters who aren't necessarily sympathetic um some of them uh they're quite like hard edged so i think she does such a great job at showing a diversity in spectrum of types of people another conclusion to a massive writing project the mirror and the light by hilary mantel which i just devoured the entire trilogy this year and was such a wonderful and absorbing experience i mean so much has been said about this the great conclusion to her thomas cromwell trilogy that i don't feel like there's really much to add except that it's if you want a book and a series to get lost in you know that takes a bit of effort as well you know it's not easy to to get into these books i don't think you know that um they are challenging uh but so rewarding this mournable body by tsutsi dangaramga another conclusion to a trilogy um this time one that was much longer in the making and i i you know i read this a couple of years ago i just didn't really get along with it um but i have i was sort of glad it was uh listed for the booker prize this year because there's been so much more discussion about it you know much more than i think when it was published and it has made me think more complexly about the the story i mean it hasn't convinced me to want to go back and reread it or but you know i would like to go back and reread the first book nervous conditions because i did love that novel the shadowkin by mazza menjiste another booker prize shortlisted novel like i said she talks about a lot of of prize listed books in this and a lot has been said already about this novel about mussolini's invasion in ethiopia and and yeah and i did take me a while to get into it but does have a lot of fascinating characters and moving scenes um so it was another book that i think is well worth the effort jack by marilyn robinson another another conclusion to uh quartet of books and i i i don't know i've been i'm really torn about whether i want to just jump in and read this or go back and read the first three books i i have read two of the books in the series um before and i know people have said like i don't need to go back and reread them to read jack and appreciate it but i've still not read home and i feel like i should read that maybe before reading this so and i just have such high expectations for this and i'm quite sure i'm gonna love it so i almost just want to have the whole experience of reading all four books at once but i don't know maybe it maybe that would feel like too much of it you know i did get sort of wary of hilary mantel because there was just so much of it i mean it's over 2000 pages of that whole trilogy so uh and then no this isn't quite as long but i don't know this is me doing a lot of handwrining which is probably unnecessary but it's the silly things that you know us readers can get all in a tangle about the vanishing half by brit bennett a novel that's been much praised and has been has sold so well and lots of people have been loving this story about twin sisters who are light-skinned african-american women that go on to lead very different lives where one chooses to pass is white and the other one returns to her black community and uh lives there with her daughter um and who are really fascinating daughter and yeah there's so much to say about this novel it's uh so artfully written and brings up many interesting issues utopia avenue by david mitchell about a band in the the 60s and following their different lives and the formation of this band and how it breaks apart and and i enjoyed this uh but and thought it was you know it has lots of interesting things in it but i didn't love it as much i was i was hoping it would i definitely didn't think it was sort of worth all of the you know the giant amount of page numbers that it took to to get through it uh but you know it's an enjoyable experience and if you're really into music from that period you'll probably really appreciate this novel mr wilder and me by jonathan coe at novel i've been really curious to read i i've liked reading jonathan co's writing in the past and this is all about the director billy wilder and i think that's such a fascinating subject matter and so i am really keen to read this rotten by curtis sittenfeld and i got this on audiobook uh this this sort of alternate uh history of hillary clinton's life hillary rodham clinton's life and imagines her life if she hadn't married bill clinton and i i started listening to it but i felt like i don't know enough about hillary's life uh to know where she's diverging you know from what actually happened in her past so i feel like i i must need to read a biography of the actual hillary clinton first before reading this you know fictionalized account of her life if if you've read this um i'd love to know your thoughts about it of whether that's necessary or not inside story by martin amis a sort of described as an auto fiction a a fictional account that uses a lot of his own biography and i'm just not interested in this i don't enjoy martin amos's writing um i don't enjoy listening to interviews with him because it just riles me up because he's so like stuck in his ways in old-fashioned and and this is contemporary literature in this really snobbish way and so yeah i'm not interested in this may mayflies by andrew o'hagan a novel about young scots in the 80s and following their different lives and experiences i've i've not really heard much about this but i would be really curious to read it i think i've read one other book by him in the past and but he's never been a writer that i feel like oh i must read his next book such a fun age by kylie reed this is such a pleasurable and fascinating read that deals you know with a lot of contemporary subjects and looks at white allyship in this uh really compelling way and uh yeah and i just enjoyed this novel so much it does have a sort of plot twist which i think is a bit implausible as it sort of relies on coincidence too much but yeah such a good book exciting times by nisha dolan one of the most hyped debut novels of this year and a novel i enjoyed reading so much and it's such a fascinating look at the life of a young irish woman living in hong kong and gets involved in this complicated romantic triangle uh with a man and a woman and something i really appreciated about it was the way it looks at our lives uh are mediated through online relationships and and and and it's very funny um how she looks at the way those relationships develop and the the sort of self-consciousness around how we relate to other people online and that's a really great aspect of it as well as many other great aspects of it and there's so much in it about language and yeah it's very funny funny read sugi bane by douglas stewart the much loved and popular winner of the booker prize this year although still slightly contentious not everyone is happy that it won the booker prize this year i was personally very very happy that it won since i loved the story so much and yeah and now there have been some criticisms made about it that it doesn't do anything too inventive with its structure and that its story isn't all that inventive but i disagree i think that the vehicle that he chose you know the way he structured the novel to tell this story about a young boy and his mother growing up in scotland in the 80s and the mother's struggle with alcoholism the structure he chose for that was entirely suited for the story and what he wanted to to say in the story i think um and also there's a criticism made that it's now such a popular novel that the the judges just sort of went with the popular choice but i don't really agree because when this was long listed for the booker prize i don't think a huge amount of people were reading it i mean it was published earlier this year in american i don't think it made too big a splash at the time and and you know when it first came out here i think in august not too many people were talking about it but then because it was on the booker prize people started discussing it more and reading it more and so you know it i think it is an example of how the prizes really helped the the popularity and um public appreciation of this this novel and yeah of course not everybody loves it but you know that's what makes reading interesting that we can have these discussions about books the young team by graham armstrong a novel about a young teenage gain english game and it's meant to be a sort of updated version of trainspotting for a new generation or that's sort of how it's described in in shorthand i've not heard that much about this novel but i'd be curious to read it rainbow milk by paul mendes i loved reading this debut novel so much which is a coming-of-age tale about a young man who is thrown out of his jehovah's witness family in the north of england and moves to london to try to make a life for himself here um and he becomes a male prostitute and how he's sort of grappling with his sexual and racial identity uh and but does so in such a moving way it's such a such a striking character like none i've read before and uh and i just appreciated this novel so much burnt sugar by avni doshi another booker prize shortlisted novel and one of the most tense mother-daughter relationships you'll ever read about a daughter who's caring for her mother um that is sort of might be suffering from early dementia and and and how it's difficult to care for her mother when her mother didn't care for her so much when she was growing up or didn't you know nurture her in the way that she should have been and how there is such a bitterness between uh them and uh how that plays out is so done in such a fascinating way you know it's the novel i was hoping would win the booker prize so i'm not mad at all that shiggy bane won since i also loved that novel so much but uh but yeah i hope people continue to to read and discuss this novel as well and i can't wait to read uh more by annie doshi since this is her debut novel real life by brandon taylor another book on the book of prize shortlist that i started reading and just gave up on because i just wasn't enjoying it i was finding it a real slog and really depressing uh to to read and you know it's not that i don't appreciate uh depressing reads because a lot of the fiction i do read is quite depressing uh but just the way it approached the characters and its subject matter just really didn't chime with me the liars dictionary by ellie williams a sort of dual narrative about two uh quite solitary introverted individuals at opposite ends of a century who work at a publisher's on that that publishes a dictionary and how they're researchers in it and follows their different experiences and this is such a funny and can i don't like to use the word quirky but it is quite like a quirky story her her her perspective the way she this author sort of looks at the world and organizes it and thinks about it in terms of language is so unique and fascinating that uh yeah i i find it really engaging and wonderful to read the line life of adults by elena ferrante about a teenage girl in naples who's struggling to connect with her parents and her coming of age story and i've not read any ferrante before but i know i need to make that change in 2021 i definitely need to read eleanor ferrante hurricane season by fernanda melchor a novel about a witch in a small village and about misogyny and murder and it's such a thrilling like fast-paced really high octane story that i just was completely gripped by and i loved this novel i was hoping it would win the booker international prize this year but sadly not the discomfort of evening by marieke lucas regenevald the actual winner of this year's booker international prize and another that i didn't enjoy so much it's another novel that i found such a slog to read and really depressing and really off-putting um in in some ways it does give a fascinating perspective about a girl on a dutch farm uh who's grieving from the loss of her brother and her entire family is grieving um from his lofts and is about the process of that and it is interesting but uh that yeah wasn't for me till by daniel kellman about a folkloric jester uh during the 30 years war in europe and uh and the the way this looks at history and really fascinating characters from history i found so engaging and enjoyable and i really want to read more of daniel kellman's fiction little eyes by samantha schweblin a novel about uh these cute small gadgets which infiltrate people's homes or well people welcome them into their homes and that are installed with a camera that someone across the world is viewing them from and so it is a sort of interesting look at voyeurism uh but i didn't enjoy this novel as much as i was hoping i i would um i i do really enjoy samantha schweblin's uh approach to to looking at the world and yeah the the way she writes fiction i think is is really interesting but uh this novel didn't completely hit home with me when we ceased to understand the world by benjamin labitat about exceptional minds in the 20th century and looking at the dark heart of maths and sciences i've not really heard of this book before but yeah it sounds really fascinating the dominant animal by katherine scanlan a debut collection of short stories uh which i've been meaning to get to i've heard really great things about this so i'm glad this list is prompting me to to go back and read this it's quite a short collection so i don't think it'll take me too long to get through modern times by kathy sweeney this is uh the second book um in addition to real life that i've read a bit of and this is a collection of short stories but i didn't stop reading it because i wasn't enjoying it i just sort of got distracted and haven't gone back to it i've read about half of the short stories uh which are um so this by an irish writer and they're sort of kind of fairy tale-ish but very adult type fairy tales as you can probably tell by the suggestive cover um but i really enjoyed them they're very funny and yeah give a sort of different insight reality and other stories by john lanchester i've been wanting to to read this though i haven't read anything by john lanchester before but it's meant to be a collection of ghost stories but it's also about technology and i am very intrigued by it the voice in my ear by francis leveston uh this is a novel that sort of halfway between a collection of short stories in a novel it's about uh ten different characters who are all named claire um but uh yeah who have different lives from each other and and uh yeah that sounds really intriguing good citizens need not fear by maria reva this is another book that i've not really heard of um before but is sort of interconnected short stories about a crumbling apartment block in post-soviet ukraine the bass rock by evie wilde a novel which is about three different women in different periods of time all but all in the same location and the way it looks at these different women's lives is so fascinating and compelling and i love evie wilde's writing and finally pir nasi by susanna clark a novel that's appeared on some other best books of the year list and one i've been wanting to get to so much you know it's this other another novel that's kind of like a treat novel that i'm saving up to read over the month of december i'm definitely hope to read it before the end of the year and i've heard such great things about this about a man who lives in a large house that's full of strange objects and how there's a sinister story behind this setup that he may or may not want to admit exists so those are all of the books quite a few i just raced through but i'd be really interested to know how many of these you've read which if you'd really highly recommend any of the ones that i personally haven't read or if you want to have discussions about any of the ones that i have read i'd love to discuss them in more depth because you know we don't have to just do it in a prize context we can just do it anyway but i'll put a link below to the full article if you want to read more of justine jordan's thoughts about these books as well um or if there are any other best books of the year list that you've come across and have really enjoyed and want to put that link in the comments below that would be great as well because you know i just can't get enough of these lists so thank you for watching happy reading i'll speak to you again soon bye

Channel: Eric Karl Anderson

Views: 14,112

Rating: 4.9141326 out of 5

Keywords: booktube, best books of 2020, best fiction of 2020, top fiction of 2020, best books of the year, Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell, The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue, The Silence by Don DeLillo, Weather by Jenny Offill, Summerwater by Sarah Moss, The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, Summer by Ali Smith, The Mirror & the Light, This Mournable Body, The Shadow King, Jack by Marilynne Robinson, The Vanishing Half, Utopia Avenue, Mr Wilder and Me, Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld

Id: BmIZ8riVXXk

Length: 25min 6sec (1506 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 29 2020