The New York Times Best Books of 2020 Reaction Video

well hello and welcome back to supposedly fun my name is greg we are coming up on the end of the year thankfully fingers crossed that 2021 is going to be better than 2020. we shall see how that develops but because we're heading into the end of the year we are starting to get into the time when best of lists start coming out the new york times did it's 100 notable books and then today well today when i'm recording this they have announced their top 10 books of the year five picks for fiction five picks for nonfiction so i wanted to run through them and that's what we're gonna do here today i will link the 100 notable list and the best of list down below i think there are a lot of really good choices on both and some interesting things that i added to my tbr for example the book of eels is something i added to my tbr from the 100 notable list it's monogamy by sue miller and a bunch of other ones and i i found those available on script so those are things that i discovered through the notable list which again i will link down below today we're going to talk about the actual top 10 list which is put out by the new york times book review i'm very excited about this i look forward to this list every single year don't always agree with some of their choices sometimes they have really good years uh this seems by and large to be a good year after i there are a fair amount of books i already own not too many that i've read and some that seem like a good discovery particularly on the non-fiction side but we're going to start with a book that does not really speak to me which will not be a surprise to you at all if you uh if i follow along because i have talked about it as part of the national book award for 2020 it was a finalist for that it's a children's bible by lydia millet now i'm just going to read what the new york times said about the book it's it's a tiny little blurb about it and then we'll talk about the book itself for each of these so in millet's latest novel a bevy of kids and their middle-aged parents convene for the summer at a country house in america's northeast while the grown-ups indulge pills vendors bed hopping the kids disaffected teenagers and their parentally neglected younger siblings look on with mounting disgust but what begins as a generational comedy soon takes a darker turn as climate collapse and societal breakdown encroach the ensuing chaos is underscored by scenes and symbols repurposed from the bible a man on a blow-up raft among the reeds animals rescued from a deluge into the back of a van a baby born in a manger with an unfailingly light touch millett delivers a rye fable about climate change imbuing foundational myths with new meaning and finally hope and this one just it's like the one book on the national book awards shortlist that did not immediately appeal to me i have heard good things about it i'm sure it's a great book it's nothing that i am going to rush out and read i think particularly some of the references to it seem i don't know like they i'm sure they could be done well but they seem a little obvious i think i believe the main main teenager who is leading the group of children is named eve and in a book that's very much about the bible hey so i don't know i'm sure it's a good book i'm just not going to rush out and pick it up maybe at some point someday but there are so many other things that i would rather prioritize that it's way down the list for me and because i'm really unfamiliar with the bible kind of at baseline it feels like there's there's also potential that a lot of it would just kind of go over my head and that maybe that's something i should work on in the future i don't know but it's not going to happen right now so this is like the one book in the top 10 that i it's probably the one that i would least like be least likely to read then there's deacon king kong by james mcbride now i did read this back in july i actually listened to it most i did a combination i was listening to it on audio but i referred back to the book a lot but we'll get to that so what they say is a mystery story a crime novel an urban farce a sociological portrait of late 1960s brooklyn mcbride's novel contains multitudes at its rollicking heart is deacon cuffy lampkin aka sport coat veteran resident of the causeway housing projects widower churchgoer odd jobber home brew tipler and now after inexplicably shooting an ear clean off a drug dealer a wanted man the elastic plot expands to encompass rival drug crews an italian smuggler buried treasure church sisters and sport coats long dead wife still nagging from beyond the grave mcbride the author of national book award winning the good lord byrd and the memoir the color of water among other books conducts his antic symphony with deep feeling never losing sight of the suffering and inequity within the merryman so you can see right there they enjoyed how stuffed and packed this book is and that is actually the thing that distanced me from it so it's interesting to have those two very different opinions of the same book because to me there was so much going on in this book that i felt like it hinted at a lot of things and then ended up not really saying anything coherent about most of them and that which is kind of unfair there is an overall point to this book an overall argument that james mcbride is making however i felt like it just got muddied with so many characters so many subplots so many things going on and the reason i had to keep referring to the book even though i was listening to the audio was that occasionally i would there were so many characters that i would kind of lose track it's easier to flip through the books i'd be like who is this person okay that's who they are and then go back and i hate the complaint stagey when it applies to a book but this definitely feels like that it feels like there are a scene will start and there's just almost endless dialogue between two or three characters in which they kind of discuss the situation and then it moves on to the next one and to me that's the bad version of stagey and i really like james mcbride as a writer i love the good lord bird and i want to read the color of water the other book that they reference i love the good lord bird but to me this is a good book that gets muddied kind of like what i was saying so i i see why it's on the list but for me it it won't be in my top five for the year let's put it that way but it is a good book and i do hope more people will explore it and discover it and so it is good that it has a spot on a list like this i i don't fault the new york times for putting it here i see what they like about it that is deacon king kong by james mcbride next i'm sure you know that i'm thrilled about the inclusion of this one it's hamnet by maggie o'farrell a novel of the plague i have gone on and on and on about how much i really enjoyed this book and let's see what they say a bold feat of imagination and empathy this novel gives flesh and feeling to a historical mystery how the death of shakespeare's 11 year old son hamnet in 1596 may have shaped his play hamlet written a few years later o'farrell an irish-born novelist conjures with sensual vividness the world of the playwright's hometown the tang of new leather in his cantankerous father's glove shop the scent of apples in the storage shed where he first kisses agnes the father farmer's daughter and gifted healer who becomes his wife and at not least the devastation that befalls her when she cannot save her son from the plague the novel is a portrait of unspeakable grief wreathed in great beauty and i think they capture it perfectly right there that i think that is everything i loved about this book i think one of the best things about it is maggie o'farrell's really sumptuous writing gorgeous prose and description it's you can be spelled down by this book i actually really want to go back and listen to the audio at some point not right away but at some point because i bet this i found myself reading passages aloud to myself when i was alone and i just loved it so much i have heard that some people did not have the same reaction that i did possibly because soma it was so hyped at a certain point and when a book gets really hyped you develop certain expectations of it like because it is known that this book is about hamnet and the death of hamnet some people are a little surprised that it he doesn't die right away it did and that's not a spoiler you know he dies but i think so i think but for me it works because i think part of the suspense is in exactly what they say it's the devastation that befalls her when she cannot save her son from the plate so that it takes a while to get to that devastation but i think the fact that you're there is she tries and fails to save her son makes it more impactful but i can see where some people feel like it's a little misrepresented that this this book deals almost entirely with the aftermath of hamlet's death it does not it's it deals very much with his illness as well and with the fact that because famously the book does not name william shakespeare and that can feel like a gimmick to some people i personally love it and i think and i am one of these people who i i talked a lot about how uh maggie o'farrell really deliberately puts the story story on agnes and does not want william shakespeare to get the the plot or the focus or the spotlight and yet he is he is very much in the book he's just not named and you know it's him especially because the name shakespeare is used in relation to his father his mother his sister so it's very obvious who he is they just don't name him and he is a character in the book he's just not he's not present for a portion of it but i think it still does a really good job like the very fact that it is so intentional in not giving a name to william shakespeare does force you to focus on agnes and not focus too much on him that's kind of how i feel about it i see where some people feel a little bit differently but that's how i think about it and i really love that idea of like giving agnes her story back and trying to figure out who the lives of these people who were so entwined with william shakespeare but he was he was also in london separate from them writing plays and becoming famous and their world is so different from the world that he comes to know while he lives there i love this book i think it's beautiful it is one of my favorite books of the year so i absolutely think it deserved its spot in this list i'm glad that the new york times recognized it this was the winner of the women's prize this year it did not again famously one of the complaints about the booker this year was that uh hamnet did not make the long list and then the mirror and the light did not make the short list person again it is one of my favorite books of the year i'm very glad it was recognized and i think it's interesting because in the illustration they always do an illustration for the top 10 books of the year and the illustration uses the uk cover of the book not the u.s cover and i think i just found that a little bit interesting so fun little tidbit for you the next one is homeland elegies a novel by ayad akhtar now this is actually something that was on the 100 notable books list and jumped out at me from that i'd kind of heard things about this book throughout the course of the year but never really stopped and thought about it or focused on it long enough to consider whether or not i wanted to read it and when i saw it in the 100 notable i did seek it out it is not available on scribd uh or at my library right now so it's something i'm gonna have to keep an eye out for perhaps i will look for a copy to purchase at some point but i'm trying to be in really i bought a lot of books you'll find out when i do my book haul for november about all the books so i need to cool it and uh be really intentional about that so this is something that's on my radar i would like to read but i'm gonna keep an eye out for it basically the new york times says it once personal and political akhtar's second novel can read like a collection of pitch perfect essays that give shape to a prismatic identity we begin with walt whitman with a soaring overture to america and a dream of national belonging which the narrator methodically dismantles in the virtuosic chapters that follow the lure and ruin of capital the wounds of 911 the bitter pill of cultural rejection akhtar pulls no punches critiquing the country's most dominant narratives he returns frequently to the subject of his father a pakistani immigrant and one-time doctor to donald trump seeking in his life the answer to a burning question what after all does it take to be an american i am very much not surprised that this book made the top five if i had done a prediction of what books would be in the top five fiction books for the new york times i would have put this one on there because i listen to the new york times book review podcast they release a new episode every friday and kind of talk about what's going on in the book review and in the wider book world and they have talked about this book several times recently and when they talk about it they are very rapturous about it and its merits and what's interesting is that they have also debated how much of the book is a novel and how much of it is ayat akhtar's life because it is almost like a fictionalized version of his life and it can almost this was the way to describe it it can seem like a series of essays about his life that have been fictionalized which again is interesting so this is something that i have not read but it is now on my radar thanks to the new york times and something that i will be seeking out and then we have the vanishing half by brit bennett now this is a book that i had started to listen to on audio i think back in july but i could be wrong about that and i did not get through the audio fast enough so i lost my hold on it and i was only halfway through the book i'm coming close i believe within the next week or two i will be getting the audiobook back because even though i have a physical copy of the book i feel like because i started it on audio i need to finish it on audio i don't know it's just this weird thing that i did so i i should be able to finish this book soon i was enjoying it but i feel like i was getting to a crucial part of the book so it's really it's difficult to talk about since i only got halfway through because i didn't get to the perspective shifts about halfway through and i was just getting to that point which feels critical to the book so let's see what the new york times says beneath the polished surface and enthralling plotlines have been its second novel after her much admired the mothers lies a provocative meditation on the possibilities and limits of self-definition alternating sections recount the separate fates of stella and desiree twin sisters from a black louisiana town during jim crow whose residents pride themselves on their light skin when stella decides to pass for white the sisters lives diverge only to intersect unexpectedly years later bennett has constructed her novel with great care populating it with characters including a trans man and an actress who invite us to consider how identity is both chosen and imposed and the degree to which passing may describe a phenomenon more common than we think now the point of the book where i had left off was when the trans man was introduced so i did not get very far into that portion of it and um like i said then the perspective seems to shift so i i i'm really looking forward to getting back to this book because all of those themes that it talks about in this review seem very poignant very topical very of the moment in hindsight this seems like a natural candidate for a pulitzer prize next year we'll see how that goes but i haven't really formulated my thoughts around that because they don't usually announce the pulitzer prizes until april i do think transcendent kingdom is probably still has a good shot along with some other things but that's a whole separate video that will come next year in 2021 so i am really looking forward to finishing this i did not read the mothers i've heard kind of mixed things about the mothers and some of the feedback i've gotten on this was not good but most of it was really good and i am looking forward to finishing it if it does take forever then if i can really get my act together and get back into a full-on reading mode in 2020 i might pick up the print version of this but i'm really looking forward to finishing it at this point i feel like i need to start over and get through it all over again which is probably what i'm going to do when the audiobook does become available that is the vanishing half by britt bennett now those are the fiction books let's move to nonfiction the first one really sounds interesting to me it's called hidden valley road by robert kolker the subtitle is inside the mind of an american family don and mimi galvin had the first of their 12 children in 19 1945. intelligence and good looks ran in the family but so it turns out did mental illness by the mid-1970s six of the 10 galvan suns had developed schizophrenia for a family this is a quote for a family schizophrenia is primarily a felt experience as if the foundation of the family is permanently tilted kolker writes his is a feat of narrative journalism but also at study and empathy he unspools the stories of the galvan siblings with enormous compassion while tracing the scientific advances in treating the illness i mean that sounds fascinating to me at the cover of it also is kind of striking it says oprah's book club 2020. somehow i missed that one i don't know how it got by me but yeah that sounds like something that is really interesting i did look online and i i believe that one was available on scribd don't quote me on that i i'll put a note down here saying if it was or wasn't but that is something i have absolutely am going to seek out and i think it sounds fascinating the next book on the non-fiction side is a promised land by barack obama which again spoiler for my november book haul i got a copy of obviously because i'm holding it and i'm really excited to read this i loved michelle obama's becoming i had anticipated that i would because i love michelle obama but i was surprised by just how much i loved becoming and from everything i've heard about a promised land it sounds like basically the same thing i feel like i'm biased to like it in the first place but even people who are biased to like this seem surprised by how good it is so the new york times says presidential memoirs are meant to inform to burnish reputations and to a certain extent to shape the course of history and obama's is no exception what sets it apart from his predecessor's books is the remarkable degree of introspection he invites the reader inside his head as he ponders life or death issues of national security examining every detail of his decision-making he describes what it's like to endure the bruising legislative process and lays out his thinking on health care reform and the economic crisis an easy elegant writer he stan studs his narrative with affectionate family anecdotes and thumbnail sketches of world leaders and colleagues a promised land is the first of two volumes it ends in 2011 and it is contemplative and measured as the former president himself i'm really looking forward to this book i i would love to part of me is struggling with this because i wanted to buy a copy of the book because i wanted to support one of my local indies uh i wanted to support publishing and um i but i feel like i kind of want to read the listen to this on audio because he will read it and what i've heard i read michelle obama's book in print and what i've heard from people who listened to the audiobook was that that is clearly the way to do it so i'm worried that i'm missing out by doing it this way so we'll see what happens and which one i get to then next in the non-fiction site is shakespeare in a divided america by james shapiro it is interesting that there are two books that have a shakespeare uh attachment in in there so the subtitle of this one is what his plays tell us about our past and future this one also sounds really interesting in his latest book the author of contested will who wrote shakespeare and 1599 a year in the life of william shakespeare has outdone himself he takes two huge cultural hyper objects shakespeare and america and dissects the effects of their collision each chapter centers on a year with a different thematic focus the first chapter 1833 miscegenation revolves around john quincy adams and his obsessive hatred of destimona the last chapter 2017 left right where shapiro truly soars analyzes the notorious central park production of julius caesar by this point it is clear that the real subject of the book is not shakespeare plays but us the u.s if you're unfamiliar i remember this story i did not look it up but i remember i didn't see it but i remember that production of julius caesar for shakespeare in the park that was obviously the first shakespeare in the park after the presidential election of 2016 when donald trump became the president so they staged julius caesar and they did a modern version of it and the actor who portrayed julius caesar was dressed up to look like donald trump and several of the other characters were dressed to look like people in trump's orbit so of course it became this giant controversial issue where uh conservatives were taking issue with the fact that this production had been staged with donald trump where the character of julius caesar is assassinated so essentially every time this show was performed donald trump was assassinated and uh more liberal people really thought that the production added a much more urgent contemporary feel to it and i think the way the book sounds fascinating to me i have not checked to see if this one is available on scribd or online or at my library or anywhere but this is something that i will definitely be interested in seeking out and exploring at some point the next book is something that i i just recently heard of i think maybe last week it's called uncanny valley a memoir by anna weiner weiner's stylish memoir is an uncommonly literary chronicle of tech world disillusionment soured on her job as an underpaid assistant at a literary agency in new york weiner then in her mid-20s heads west heeding the siren call of the bay of bay area startups aglow with optimism vitality and cash a series of unglamorous jobs in various customer support positions follow but weiner's unobtrusive perch turns out to be a boon providing an unparalleled vantage point from which to scrutinize her field the result is a scrupulously observed and quietly damning expose of the yawning gap between an industry's public idealism and its internal inequities and i think in particular the fact a woman working in tech sounds like a a great vantage point for exactly that the public idealism and internal inequities it sounds interesting i it's it's kind of interesting if you do follow the new york times book review you can occasionally see some through lines uh they a couple of years ago they selected small fry by lisa um lisa jobs brennan is her name i think she's the daughter of steve jobs the one that he famously refused to acknowledge until there was a paternity test that proved that she was hurt his daughter and even then they had a very rocky relationship so she wrote a memoir about her relationship with him and although it was not really about tech it is very much in that world because you know steve jobs so it does seem like the uh people at the new york times book review are very interested in this uh idea of the tech world and the human element within it and perspectives of people in it because that was a memoir as well so uh it sounds interesting i don't think i would run out to pick that one up but it does sound very interesting to me and i believe this is the final one on the list yes it is it's war how conflict shape shaped us by margaret macmillan this is a short book but a rich one with a profound theme macmillan argues that war fighting and killing is so intimately bound up with what it means to be human that viewing it is an aber as an aberration misses the point war has led to many of civilization's great disasters but also to many of civilization's greatest achievements it's all around us influencing everything we see and do it's in our bones macmillan writes with impressive ease practically every page of her book is interesting and despite the grimness of its argument even entertaining now it sounds interesting but i'm not going to run out and read it i admit perspectives on war don't particularly interest me i political goings-on i you know i i think they're interesting because as i've said a lot recently politics is your life so it matters but in war in particular is not something especially the mindset behind war is not something i interrogate a lot so i think this is probably the one that i would be the second to children's bible uh in terms of ones that i would least likely pick up however it does sound interesting and i can see why that is something that it's particularly at this moment in time that they would find important and worthy of a spot on a top 10 list in terms of things that didn't make it obviously the mirror and the light but hillary mantel did not make it i don't feel like that is all that surprising i personally would have liked to see transcendent kingdom by yayasi make the list that is one of my favorite books of the year and it is a newly released title i would have really liked to see to see shaggy bane which just won the booker prize on the list as well i think um hamnet shoggy bean and transcendent kingdom are my favorite books of the year so far in fiction that are books that were released in 2020 specifically if we're talking about things that i read there is one that could probably would probably top them but those would be my three favorite fiction books from that were published in 2020 so i would have liked to see all three of them but i am glad that hamnet made it if not the others i would love to hear what you think should make the list i do think it's a little surprising that i i'm less familiar with non-fiction that was published this year but i'm a little surprised that cass by eliza isabel wilkerson didn't make the list something like the dead of rising didn't make the list but i it seems like a solid non-fiction list as well in general i would love to hear what you think of the 10 books that the new york times chose as the 10 best of the year let me know your thoughts down below do you agree disagree about any of these what do you think should have made it again my three favorite fiction books that were published this year so far at least are um hamnet chuggy bane and transcending kingdom so if you have other thoughts that you things that you would have liked to see you know to do leave them in the comments section down below love to hear your thoughts and just a heads up for the week i have pre-recorded one video which i never do i never successfully pre-recorded a video but i managed to do it and i will have one uh pre-recorded for probably thursday on thanksgiving and i think i'm going to try to pre-record a friday reads video but i don't know yet that that is to be determined i do have one other video that i want to get out this week so uh in a perfect world you'll hear from me three times this week it's thanksgiving in america so uh we'll we'll see what happens stay tuned i definitely have at least one other video that will come maybe three maybe four we'll see anyway as always i really appreciate your time thank you for that and i hope you have safe plans for thanksgiving and are continuing to stay safe with your family it's scary out there and if you live in an area that is cold like where i am i hope you're staying warm i will be back until next time happy reading you

Channel: Supposedly Fun

Views: 13,581

Keywords: Books, BookTube, Reading

Id: HLHo9RlbDiQ

Length: 28min 18sec (1698 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 24 2020