Year-end Book Wrapup 2020

My goal this year was to read 70 books and to complete the Read Harder Challenge. Achieved! You can see all my Challenge books on last year’s wrapup post. 

This year, I read 80 published books and 4 unpublished books by friends, which I did not blog about for obvious reasons but will when they are published! (They are all great. My friends are hella talented.) I read 60 books by women, 23 by men, and one collaboration between a nonbinary writer and female graphic artist.  At least 25 of these were young adult novels, mostly queer. Definitely my comfort reading of the year.

Top five books of the year:

1.  The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

I didn’t read a ton of litfic this year, it turns out (I am 0 for 12 in the Tournament of Books shortlist) so this is actually the only litfic in my top five!  But it is really great. The story of a girl who is granted immortality but cursed not to be remembered by anyone she meets. There are some plot holes in how this is handled, and the modern-day stuff is stronger than the flashbacks, but still a book I really enjoyed.

2. Stay Gold

This is a romance in which the main character is a trans teenager. Both he and his love interest are well-drawn and their chemistry and banter are wonderful. But this book is not light and fluffy. It has extremely vivid transphobic content and could potentially be triggering. If you are sensitive to transphobia and homophobia (against the lesbian characters), I would go read what others have to say about this book before listening to a cisgender person. All that said, I put this at the top of my list because not only are the characters great, it viscerally conveys what it feels like to be a trans man in an authentic way. (The author is a trans man.) I ugly cried at the end of this and felt a greater level of empathy for my transgender friends. That, for me, made it worthwhile.

3. The Murderbot series

This was recommended all over the place this year; I think Ask Metafilter was where I first heard about it.  Murderbot is a sentient humanoid robot who goes rogue, definitely does not want to be human, and loves watching their favorite series, Sanctuary Moon. They somehow end up being in charge of protecting a lot of humans and, unfortunately for them, having some emotions from time to time. Murderbot is a unique and completely loveable character. I didn’t always follow the broader intrigue and corporate espionage stuff, but who cares. Murderbot is delightful.

4. Catfishing on CatNet

A full length novel by the author of Cat Pictures, Please.  If you like that short story (and you must, right?!?) you will love this book. Creative, funny, entertaining, and overall such a pleasure.

5. Amelia Westlake Was Never Here

I read a lot of great (and some bad) YA romance this year but this was one of my favorites. Loved the characters and their chemistry and this was pure, unadulterated, fluffy lesbian goodness. I chased this high all year and never quite reached it again.

Honorable mentions: Frankly In Love, All This Could Be Yours, Quiet Girl in a Noisy World, Real Queer America, More Happy Than Not, Hot Dog Girl


Bottom three books:

Once again, since I abandon most books if I really don’t like them, this is more a list of “meh” than anything I truly disliked! That’s the one downside of being a DNF-er: I don’t get to truly rip into terrible books anymore.

1. New York 2040

Stuck with this because of the Read Harder Challenge but ultimately did not add up to much and was a slog to get through. Not my jam.

2. Like a Love Story

Figured I should probably identify my least favorite YA of the year, and this is it. A great premise torpedoed by unconvincing relationships and unrealistic events, along with some problematic content.

3. London Calling  

Lesbian romance without a good plot or a convincing romance. I probably finished this out of inertia, or maybe misguided optimism that it would get better at some point. 

On to 2021!

Last year I almost made my 2020 goal to read 100 books (I’m glad I didn’t, nobody needed more pressure in 2020).  I think 80 is a good goal though and I’ll up my goal to 80 books in 2021.

Of course, I’m going to keep going with the Read Harder Challenge as I enjoy challenging myself!  I’ll be updating this post as I get through the challenge and use a label on my posts so you can follow along.

I have ideas for some categories, but recommendations are always welcome. I’m not sure how to handle the very first category, “Read a book you’ve been intimidated to read.” A lot of people are doing books like Ulysses or Infinite Jest or War and Peace, but I’ve read all of those. #humblebrag. I never finished Swanns Way but I wasn't intimidated by it; I was just bored.

On the other hand I was really intimidated by Just Mercy this year, because I find it difficult to read about injustice and systemic racism. (Great book, though.) So I think I have to find a book that deals with something enraging or tragic or confronting. (This must be the right approach as I’m intimidated just thinking about it.)

Here are the categories:

Total: 24/24

[X] Read a book you’ve been intimidated to read: We Were Eight Years in Power
[X] Read a nonfiction book about anti-racism: Hood Feminism
[X] Read a non-European novel in translation: Breasts and Eggs
[X] Read an LGBTQ+ history book: Cruising
[X] Read a genre novel by an Indigenous, First Nations, or Native American author: Firekeeper's Daughter
[X] Read a fanfic: for hire
[X] Read a fat-positive romance: Spoiler Alert
[X] Read a romance by a trans or nonbinary author: One Last Stop
[X] Read a middle grade mystery: The Case of the Left-Handed Lady
[X] Read an SFF anthology edited by a person of color: New Suns
[X] Read a food memoir by an author of color: Crying in H Mart
[X] Read a work of investigative nonfiction by an author of color: Black Dahlia, Red Rose
[X] Read a book with a cover you don’t like: Billion Dollar Loser
[X] Read a realistic YA book not set in the U.S., UK, or Canada: Here the Whole Time
[X] Read a memoir by a Latinx author: My Beloved World
[X] Read an own voices book about disability: Their Troublesome Crush
[X] Read an own voices YA book with a Black main character that isn’t about Black pain: Smash It!
[X] Read a book by/about a non-Western world leader: The Woman Who Would Be King
[X] Read a historical fiction with a POC or LGBTQ+ protagonist: The Vanishing Half
[X] Read a book of nature poems: Bright Wings
[X] Read a children’s book that centers a disabled character but not their disability: Planet Earth Is Blue
[X] Read a book set in the Midwest: Eligible
[X] Read a book that demystifies a common mental illness: Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me
[X] Read a book featuring a beloved pet where the pet doesn’t die: Get a Life, Chloe Brown

Robopocalypse (by Daniel H. Wilson)

The penultimate category of the Read Harder Challenge was “a book in any genre by a Native, First Nations, or Indigenous author.” And I will be honest that I didn’t want to read something overly literary (sorry Louise Erdrich) or depressing (sorry, so much indigenous literature). Sherman Alexie would have been perfect, except hard pass forever, I’m not sorry to that man.

Robopacalypse, by Cherokee writer Daniel H. Wilson, seemed perfect. Indeed, it’s a fast paced technothriller in a Crichton-style, which I have a soft spot for (though still grossed out that Crichton turned out to be a climate denier). In fact, Wilson even has written a sequel to The Androneda Strain! I have a soft spot for The Andromeda Strain, so I might even check it out. 

This was a fast, page-turning read, but I have some issues with the writing itself. I love reading oral histories, but if something is supposed to be spoken dialogue, I cannot handle the inclusion of phrases that no human would never actually say aloud. This book lulls you into a false sense of security with all these reasonable sentences (“We spread out in a circle and keep our distance,” okay, sure) and then suddenly you get “He runs one gnarled hand through his stiff black hair.” Who would describe something like that? Nobody. NOBODY. 

Speaking of editing, as you might have noticed above, everything is told in the present tense, even though some chapters are supposedly interviews or transcripts and they are all different POV characters. I suppose one could argue that the person compiling the whole chronology (one character) just loves the present tense. But when it’s supposed to be “a transcript” that kind of breaks the suspension of disbelief.  

And a side note: I appreciated the inclusion of Native characters, both Osage and Cherokee, and the exploration of the culture in a way that just made the characters richer. But, while there are female characters here and there, most of the POV characters (and the characters in general) are men. 

Still, overall this is a great, cinematic story somewhat let down by bad editing. I hear the sequel is better, and I may well give it a chance!

The Lacemaker And The Princess (by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley)

Category is: "a middle grade book that doesn’t take place in the U.S. or the UK" and thus I read this middle-grade historical novel about a young lacemaker named Isabelle who encounters Marie Antoinette one day, and becomes a companion to her daughter. This is based on a real story about a commoner who did become a companion to Marie-Therese at Versailles.

This novel shows the French revolution from both sides: on the one hand, Isabelle lives in the palace, where the royal family is kind to her; on the other she lives in relative poverty, and Isabelle's brother George has revolutionary ideas and works for the Marquis de Lafayette (who I definitely did not envision as Daveed Diggs, similarly to how I definitely did not envision Marie Antoinette as Kirsten Dunst).

This was a solid middle-grade offering, which made me want to go back and reread Antonia Fraser's biography of Antoinette and also visit Versailles. It's 2020, so I can do the former, but not the latter. Someday!

The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found (by Mary Beard)

I read this for the category "a book about a natural disaster." I picked this up after our visit to Pompeii a few years ago, but hadn't read it before. 

It is this weird mix of very interesting and very disappointing. Beard is one of the foremost experts on Pompeii, and it's chock-full of fascinating tidbits about the life of the city. I'm glad to have read it on paper too; the illustrations and colored plates really bring everything to life.

But the title ("fires of Vesuvius") implied a focus on the actual disaster that the book didn't pay off. Other than a prologue about some of the bodies found by archeologists, there was very little about the disaster itself, which was a bummer. I would have second thoughts about counting this at all given the lack of focus on the disaster for the "about a disaster" category, except that 1) it took me a long time to read; and 2) it's a particularly awful month in a particularly awful year, so I'm cutting myself some slack.

I also was looking forward to reading about the meaning of the phalluses and the experiences of the brothels but she kind of didn't cover that in much detail. I was like "yay the penis chapter is coming up" (er, no pun intended) but she was kind of snide about tourists not spending that much time in the brothel? Her authorial voice didn't quite win me over. 

Anyway it was okay, the topic was interesting, but I'd rather read another book about Pompeii, to be perfectly honest.

Murderbot and Meal

Here are two completely unrelated books that I read this week. (Well, one thing they have in common is that they are both short.)

Artificial Condition: The Murderbot Diaries (by Martha Wells) 

The second book in the delightful Murderbot series! I was actually halfway through the third one and then my library checkout expired, so it will take a bit for it to come back around. But I love Murderbot and am excited to keep reading the series. If you know, then you know. 

Meal (by Blue Delliquanti and Soleil Ho)

Allow me to take a moment to point out how annoying it is when Bookriot creates a category for the RHC and then recommends books that don't fit.  The category is "A food book about a cuisine you’ve never tried before" and they suggest Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat? How does that make any sense? I hold myself to a higher standard.

It turns out I've tried a lot of cuisines so was stuck for a bit, until the Goodreads group recommended Meal, a graphic novel about entomophagy, aka eating insects. I once sat across from my husband as he ate crickets in a Oaxacan restaurant, and I had delicious chicken mole instead, because no. I enjoyed learning more about the tradition of entomophagy, even if I have a very typical White westerner reaction to the whole thing. The book was a quick read and the romance was cute.

I find it impossible to believe any restaurant would have a crowd outside excited to eat whole tarantulas, though.

Gmorning, Gnight!: Little Pep Talks for Me & You (by Lin-Manuel Miranda)

This was for the "audiobook of poetry" category of the RHC, which means it was narrated by Lin-Manuel Miranda.  It seems to be a compilation of bookended tweets, which start off with a "gmorning" and ends with a "gnight" and expresses love, affirmation, and optimism. Here's an example:

Gnight.
This moment will pass.
This fatigue will pass.
Tonight will pass.
But look at you, with the gift of imagination.
You can teleport to where you're happiest just by closing your eyes and breathing.
Then come right back to now, check in with the present.
You magic thing, you.

I'm considering buying the audiobook (this was a library loan) because he's so positive and uplifting, and his messages are so great, I think Mina could use this in her rotation as well. LMM is a treasure. (And, I will never neglect to mention, called me "sweetheart" once outside the Richard Rodgers theater.)

Final August Books

I finished up two books at the end of August in my quest to catch up on my reading goal; they were my 44th and 45th books of the year.

Midnight Sun (by Stephenie Meyer)

I bought this (yes, with money) so I could livetweet it with Jen, except she gave up on it but I couldn't stop so I livetweeted anyway. It was honestly so fun. Meyer retconned some of the more egregious moments, and there was a whole section with Edward talking about the importance of consent, lol okay Stephenie. But being in his emo brain made the book so much more enjoyable. My ironic love of Twilight continues. It's definitely ironic, okay.  Ironic love.

Real Queer America (by Samantha Allen)

Now here is a book I can wholeheartedly recommend, the memoir of a transgender journalist exploring rural America and kind of hating on coastal LGBTQ liberal elites, of which I am one, in the process. Her take gave me a new appreciation of the strength of queer communities when those communities are smaller and more endangered. It also made me want to take a roadtrip across America (sniffle) immediately. I appreciated her acknowledgement of intersectionality, the breadth of folks she interviewed, and the new perspective on rural America. And the writing, which is wonderful! A great read. 

Austenland and Midnight in Austenland (by Shanon Hale)

As soon as I found out this book existed, I immediately had to read it, then watch the movie, then read the sequel. This is the kind of escapism that 2020 is crying out for.  Plus, Midnight in Austenland turns out to be a romance about a single parent (she is divorced) so it qualifies for Read Harder also! Score!

Both books are about an immersive Jane Austen-esque vacation house in England called Austenland; both books feature American women who go there for different reasons - Jane in the first book because she is Austen-obsessed and no man can live up to Mr. Darcy; Charlotte in the second book because she feels trapped in her life post-divorce.

I loved both of these romances (and incidentally also the movie) and all the delightful Jane Austen shoutouts along the way. Pure delightfulness to read, and based on the ending of the second book I would love to read a third one. Shannon Hale, are you listening?

New York 2140 (by Kim Stanley Robinson)

This was okay. I read it for the "book about climate change" category and it took me a long time to get through it. By the end I wasn't really enjoying any of the characters, and I wanted more of a clear plot.  It's about New York in the year 2140 (as you may have guessed) when half the island is underwater due to climate change. The worldbuilding is good. The narrative jumps back and forth among multiple characters and none of them have a particularly compelling emotional throughline.

I generally love speculative fiction, but something about this made it a slog for me. 

Two RHC Books

Two quick reads that both qualified for the RHC this year: a debut novel by a queer author, and a sci-fi novella. Except I see I've already checked off sci-fi novella.  I'm bad at keeping track this year!

At any rate, I read two books and here are my thoughts:

London Calling (by Clare Lydon)

I enjoyed Before You Say I Do,  so I decided to check out Lydon's debut. This is about Jess, a woman living in Australia who gets cheated on and then moves back to London, and then has some lesbian adventures. This had the same problem for me as Before You Say I Do, minus the strength of having a strong plot. Namely, the two main characters fall for each other seemingly because they're both very attractive, and then that's kind of it. It definitely feels like infactuation rather than love, so the emotional stakes are missing. And then there's also no real plot to speak of. Add in a slur for transgender people and some editing mistakes, and it isn't something I'd recommend. It is a light read, and not terrible, but very forgettable.

All Systems Red (by Martha Wells)

Hearing great things about this series and as a sci-fi fan, I had this in mind for the RHC from day one and then I kept checking it out from the library and then forgetting to actually read it. As soon as I started it this time around I realized why: it opens with scenery description.  You know me and scenery description. But I pressed on and found a delightful story about Murderbot, a sentient, humanoid security robot whose "governor module" breaks and thus finds itself with free will.  I will definitely continue with this series because it is, indeed, really good.

Two Books

I realized I was (gasp) behind on my reading goal this year since I'm once again reading a long book for the Read Harder Challenge, so I immediately checked out some romance and young adult from the library and started zooming my way through them. It didn't even occur to me until after the fact that Five Feet Apart is about kids with cystic fibrosis and therefore qualifies for a book where a main character has a disability. Anyway, here are some quick thoughts,

Before You Say I Do by Clare Lyons I is a lesbian romance about a "professional bridesmaid" who falls in love with the bride. So basically The Wedding Planner, but gay. One problem is that "professional bridesmaid with fake backstory" makes no sense as a premise. (Like, just be a personal wedding assistant without the lying and stuff?) The other problem is that I bought the characters' physical chemistry way more than their intellectual chemistry. But weddings and hot lesbians? It was super easy to let that go and enjoy the story! I bought Lyons' first novel, which qualifies for the RHC as the debut novel by a queer author and am reading that right now.

Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippencott was turned into a movie and compared a lot with The Fault in Our Stars, a book that I absolutely love.  Plus, it won the Goodreads Choice award for young adult last year. I didn't quite buy the romance here either because I really hated Will at first, and didn't  understand why Stella decided she liked him. Once it got past that, their romance was sweet and Stella's emotional arc was satisfying. And it helped me understand CF a bit better, which I will now go learn some more about.

(I should note that her deciding that Will, who is, let's be clear, kind of a dickhead, was worth giving up her entire life for was enraging in the extreme, but in keeping with the stupidity of teenagers

Parker Looks Up (by Jessica Curry)

I don't normally blog about (or count) children's picture books, but in this case it's a category of the Read Harder Challenge! This is the book about a little girl, Parker Curry, who saw and was mesmerized by Michelle Obama's portrait in the National Portrait Gallery.

They did a good job turning this into a picture book, I thought! The illustrations are lovely and it's a sweet message of empowerment. Cute book!

Story of Your Life (by Ted Chiang)

This novella by Ted Chiang was turned into the movie Arrival.(which I never saw). A fast read that packs a huge emotional punch. I've never read any Chiang before that I can remember and I really enjoyed the harder sci-fi aspects (the linguistics details) coupled with the personal story here, of a linguist who has to decipher an alien language and also recounting the story of her daughter's life.

Would love to read more Ted Chiang based on this!

P.S. The new Blogger now inserts insane spaces between paragraphs. Why. Help. What?

If I Die Tonight (by Alison Gaylin)

Decided I needed a quick read after The Mirror and the Light and went for this domestic murder mystery. A fun page-turner, some unexpected twists, and a satisfying solution.

The book has multiple narrators and I felt this worked quite well. Pearl Maze, the police officer, was a particularly good one, but I liked them all.

I'm not necessarily running out to read all her other books, but I definitely enjoyed this one.

The Mirror and the Light (by Hilary Mantel)

The third book in the Wolf Hall trilogy! I think Bring Up the Bodies is still my favorite, but this is an amazing story, elegantly told. It begins with Anne Boleyn's beheading and ends with Cromwell's, and you really feel for him by the end despite everything. Oh that capricious Henry VIII!

This qualifies for three categories in the Read Harder Challenge, but for now I think I'm going to use it as "A doorstopper (over 500 pages) published after 1950, written by a woman."

Quiet Girl in a Noisy World: An Introvert's Story (by Debbie Tung)

As an introvert, this graphic memoir really spoke to me. I screenshotted a bunch of pages and sent them to Ian and then said "just read it, it explains me so well!" I've embraced my introvert tendencies more as an adult and sometimes feel guilty about them, but this memoir and it's message of "you're perfect just the way you are" was a comfort.

The illustration style is also incredibly charming. You can see some of her work (and Debbie herself) on her Instagram account. A great find (and not too annoying to read on my phone's Kindle either) thanks to the Read Harder Challenge.

Truckee Books

I finished three books while on vacation:

Horrorstör (by Grady Hendricks) 

RHC category: A horror book published by an indie press. This is an enjoyable and darkly humorous horror novel. It's horror meets IKEA, and is a breezy (and creepily fun) read. I wasn't anticipating enjoying this category, because other than Shirley Jackson and the best of Stephen King, I'm not into horror. But this was fun.

All This Could Be Yours (by Jami Attenberg)

RHC: None; this is in the Tournament of Books. My first Attenberg! (She's a friend of a friend, so I've always felt vaguely guilty about not reading anything of hers.) This was just a pleasure to read. The Corrections meets Big Little Lies; super well-written literary entertainment.  It's a #2 seed in the Tournament, going up against the play-in winner. I think it has a good chance.

A Lady's Guide to Etiquette and Murder (by Dianne Freeman) 

RHC category: A mystery where the victim(s) is not a woman. This was recommended by Book Riot and sounded like the start of a fun series. And indeed it is super fun!  I enjoy Victorian England and the main character is delightfully self-actualized for a Victorian Countess. Needless to say, I'm already halfway through the next book in this series.

The Borden Murders: Lizzie Borden and the Trial of the Century (by Sarah Miller)

Category is: a YA nonfiction book. This didn't feel specifically young adult to me, it simply struck me (no pun intended) as a very readable account of the Borden murders and the evidence both for and against Lizzie's guilt. I keep going back and forth but my current theory is that she and the maid were in on it together somehow. Otherwise how could it even have been done?

Anyway, made me want to go back to the Borden house. (I was there 13 years ago and took this picture.) Definitely a fascinating crime, and a gripping read.

Yellow Face (by David Henry Hwang)

One of the Read Harder Challenges this year was to read a play by an author of color, so I chose Yellow Face by David Henry Hwang.

It's a comic, metatextual play about, among other things, the casting of Jonathan Pryce as an Asian man in a production of Miss Saigon, and it mixes real-life incidents and characters with fictional ones. I would love to see this performed, but reading it was hugely enjoyable as well.

Hwang also wrote M. Butterfly, which sticks in my head because of the movie version. I watched it when I was in high school so god knows how I oversimplified it, but I would love to experience more of Hwang's work.

Cleveland Reads

Time for another roundup of things I read on a trip, this time during a long weekend in Cleveland.

Sleeping Murder (by Agatha Christie)

This was for the "last book in a series" category of the Read Harder Challenge.  I vastly prefer Poirot to Miss Marple, so I haven't read many of these, but I enjoyed the young couple at the center of the mystery, who were amateur detectives in this case. Also, the ending fooled me, and I love being fooled! (Note, this is Agatha Christie, so there is some casual racism. Sadface emoji.)

Ash (by Malinda Lo)

This was for the "retelling of a fairytale by an author of color" category of the RHC.  It's a retelling of Cinderella where the main character falls in love, not with the handsome prince, but with the beautiful huntress - and the "fairy godmother" is kind of a semi-malevolent fairy spirit. It was published over a decade ago, and it was interesting to read the interview with Lo where she said she regrets not adding more Chinese influences, but at the time she thought a lesbian Cinderella would already be impossible to publish. Anyway, it's fabulous, and the ending is so moving. Highly recommend.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel (by Ocean Vuong)

This is a Tournament of Books 2020 entry, and I know a lot of big fans of this novel. (I believe this is a roman a clef, or at least in reading about Vuong's life, it seems like it.) It's stunningly written, but I was trying to figure out why I didn't love love it, and then I saw Roxane Gay's comment that it needed more plot, and I totally agree. I can understand why it's so beloved, for sure.

Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today’s Top Comedy Writers (by Mike Sacks)

This was for no category of anything and actually was maybe my favorite of these books, to my surprise! It's interviews and snippets of advice from comedy writers, but it's impressive in both its breadth and its depth. The interviews are well-researched and candid, and it covers ground from Ethel and Albert to Cheers to The Onion. I thought the interview with George Saunders was particularly brilliant, and I didn't even know Saunders wrote humor! Really fabulous.