Bookwormish, 4th quarter of 2020
Jan. 9th, 2021 02:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starfishstarMy favorites of the books I read in the fourth quarter of 2020.
VERY TOP BOOKS
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone – A powerhouse of a slim little novella – and just as good as everyone had been saying it was! I love a book that gives the sense that great swaths of complex worldbuilding exist just beyond the frame of what we see.
Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah – Oof. These stories tackle hard, dark topics, and in a bleaker way than I can usually stand to put myself through. (Police brutality, life post-apocalypse, brutality in the post-apocalypse...) And yet they're so well-written and so clearly and powerfully informed by urgent present-day concerns that they pulled me all the way through the book. I was impressed by the author's range, too. Some short story writers seem to write more or less the same thing over and over. Other short story writers also have a clear set of themes they're working within, and yet manage to make each individual story urgent and distinct. Carmen Maria Machado comes to mind – as does, now, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) – What an intriguing book, indelibly imprinted with the unique voice of its protagonist. It would have been a strong book just as a character study, but then it had a twist, too, that really got me.
When Stars are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed – A heartbreaking, beautifully crafted memoir about growing up in a refugee camp. It sounds like the authors set out to put a human, individual face to the overwhelming statistics of the refugee crisis, and they really, really succeeded.
How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers by Toni Bernhard – Recommended for anyone with chronic illness, or who has a loved one with a chronic illness, or anyone, really. Offers a lot of thoughtful perspective on how to live with the challenges, instead of living a life that's an exhausting fight against them.
MORE TOP BOOKS
What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence edited by Michele Filgate – An excellent collection of essays, from many different perspectives. (It's not just people who have difficult relationships with their mothers; it's all kinds of stories.)
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik – The book everyone is going insane over! I'm not losing my mind over the wait for the sequel, the way so many people seem to be doing, but I definitely really enjoyed it. It's hard not to roll my eyes a wee bit at how strongly the tropes of Novik's Harry/Draco shipping roots seep into every one of her novels (I mean, come on, Sarkan in Uprooted is 95% composed of Snape, yes?) but she does an interesting thing here with it, having the book narrated by the "dark wizard" character...who's actually trying REALLY, REALLY hard not to use dark magic, even though the universe is pushing her so hard in that direction. Also, there is no question, Naomi Novik is an amazing writer. The book is, yes, super infodump-y, and yet she manages to keep it engaging by locating it so firmly in the unique voice of her protagonist. That's a feat! I'm starting to think there's nothing Novik can't turn her hand to and do well.
Almost American Girl by Robin Ha – A lovely and compassionate graphic memoir about a Korean girl whose mother uproots her and starts their lives over in the U.S. More and more I've observed how excellent the graphic novel format is for the telling of a memoir. The visual aspect of graphic novels gives an immediacy and a personal connection that really, really serves the genre of memoir.
EVEN MORE GOOD BOOKS
How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon – A novel that takes an unusually wide view of the aftermath of the shooting of a Black teen by a white "vigilante" type, taking in the effects on the whole community, from his family to his friends to the people who didn't even know him, but are affected because everyone in the neighborhood is bound together. Somehow the stories that stuck with me most were some of the characters who were only indirectly connected to the event – like the young woman whose crush on a visiting TV personality, who arrives in town to lead protests against the shooting, serves as a catalyst to start her wondering what more she might want out of her life. I'm not managing to describe this book in a way that does it justice – it's really well done. There's also a sequel, and I've just checked it out from the library.
Of Mice and Magic and Ratpunzel by Ursula Vernon – Ursula Vernon's series about a feisty hamster princess who rides in to save the day in various fairy tale-inspired (but rodent-populated) adventures continues to be an absolute, ridiculous delight!
Becoming by Michelle Obama – I finally read it, because the audiobook came available at my library, and it was worth the wait to hear Obama herself read her book. What a smart and thoughtful person she is. I hope she continues being a leader and a force in society for a long, long time.
Normal People by Sally Rooney – A strange and interesting book about two very different young adults (well, starting as teenagers, and then covering several years from there) who keep orbiting each other through the rocky start into young adulthood and a variety of self-destructive behaviors. This has now been made into a show, and apparently they've done a good job with it. I'm somewhat curious to watch the show, because I didn't fall for the book hard like some people have done, but I would say I'm intrigued.
Shirley and Jamila Save Their Summer by Gillian Goerz – A delightful middle-grade graphic novel that's a modern-day-update-for-kids of the Holmes & Watson duo, but just as much a meditation on what it takes to be a friend. Really lovely.
The Master Key by Masako Togawa (translated from Japanese by Simon Grove) – This reminded me a bit of Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio, because it's similarly a study of a disparate group of people who grudgingly share space in the same apartment building, and the tensions that come to a head when an unexpected event shakes things up.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Class Act by Jerry Craft – A charming follow-up to New Kid; I particularly like how the author uses some fantasy elements in his otherwise realistic graphic novel style – sort of like TV shows that will include little fantasy sequences to illustrate the POV character's thoughts and imaginings. I did think the plot here was handled a bit too neatly/pat-ly, but the book has a whole lot of heart.
The Coincidence Makers by Yoav Blum (translated from Hebrew by Ira Moskowitz) – Given that this book is about time, and cause and effect, and the nature of love, and other such heady themes, I expected it to go a lot deeper than it did. But in its final section it did pull together a lot of earlier threads in a way that made it a reasonably fun read.
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell – Ha, and then this one was kind of the opposite thing; somehow from the title I'd been expecting something very different, and it ended up being a way deeper, thornier sociopolitical-ecophilosophical exploration than I was quite prepared for! Odell has a lot of interesting reflections, though, from the perspective of an artist who uses technology in her work, but also is interested in how we can disconnect from technology and reconnect with the physical places where we exist.
And there we have it! "Year in review" about books in 2020 as a whole coming soon.
VERY TOP BOOKS
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone – A powerhouse of a slim little novella – and just as good as everyone had been saying it was! I love a book that gives the sense that great swaths of complex worldbuilding exist just beyond the frame of what we see.
Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah – Oof. These stories tackle hard, dark topics, and in a bleaker way than I can usually stand to put myself through. (Police brutality, life post-apocalypse, brutality in the post-apocalypse...) And yet they're so well-written and so clearly and powerfully informed by urgent present-day concerns that they pulled me all the way through the book. I was impressed by the author's range, too. Some short story writers seem to write more or less the same thing over and over. Other short story writers also have a clear set of themes they're working within, and yet manage to make each individual story urgent and distinct. Carmen Maria Machado comes to mind – as does, now, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) – What an intriguing book, indelibly imprinted with the unique voice of its protagonist. It would have been a strong book just as a character study, but then it had a twist, too, that really got me.
When Stars are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed – A heartbreaking, beautifully crafted memoir about growing up in a refugee camp. It sounds like the authors set out to put a human, individual face to the overwhelming statistics of the refugee crisis, and they really, really succeeded.
How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers by Toni Bernhard – Recommended for anyone with chronic illness, or who has a loved one with a chronic illness, or anyone, really. Offers a lot of thoughtful perspective on how to live with the challenges, instead of living a life that's an exhausting fight against them.
MORE TOP BOOKS
What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence edited by Michele Filgate – An excellent collection of essays, from many different perspectives. (It's not just people who have difficult relationships with their mothers; it's all kinds of stories.)
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik – The book everyone is going insane over! I'm not losing my mind over the wait for the sequel, the way so many people seem to be doing, but I definitely really enjoyed it. It's hard not to roll my eyes a wee bit at how strongly the tropes of Novik's Harry/Draco shipping roots seep into every one of her novels (I mean, come on, Sarkan in Uprooted is 95% composed of Snape, yes?) but she does an interesting thing here with it, having the book narrated by the "dark wizard" character...who's actually trying REALLY, REALLY hard not to use dark magic, even though the universe is pushing her so hard in that direction. Also, there is no question, Naomi Novik is an amazing writer. The book is, yes, super infodump-y, and yet she manages to keep it engaging by locating it so firmly in the unique voice of her protagonist. That's a feat! I'm starting to think there's nothing Novik can't turn her hand to and do well.
Almost American Girl by Robin Ha – A lovely and compassionate graphic memoir about a Korean girl whose mother uproots her and starts their lives over in the U.S. More and more I've observed how excellent the graphic novel format is for the telling of a memoir. The visual aspect of graphic novels gives an immediacy and a personal connection that really, really serves the genre of memoir.
EVEN MORE GOOD BOOKS
How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon – A novel that takes an unusually wide view of the aftermath of the shooting of a Black teen by a white "vigilante" type, taking in the effects on the whole community, from his family to his friends to the people who didn't even know him, but are affected because everyone in the neighborhood is bound together. Somehow the stories that stuck with me most were some of the characters who were only indirectly connected to the event – like the young woman whose crush on a visiting TV personality, who arrives in town to lead protests against the shooting, serves as a catalyst to start her wondering what more she might want out of her life. I'm not managing to describe this book in a way that does it justice – it's really well done. There's also a sequel, and I've just checked it out from the library.
Of Mice and Magic and Ratpunzel by Ursula Vernon – Ursula Vernon's series about a feisty hamster princess who rides in to save the day in various fairy tale-inspired (but rodent-populated) adventures continues to be an absolute, ridiculous delight!
Becoming by Michelle Obama – I finally read it, because the audiobook came available at my library, and it was worth the wait to hear Obama herself read her book. What a smart and thoughtful person she is. I hope she continues being a leader and a force in society for a long, long time.
Normal People by Sally Rooney – A strange and interesting book about two very different young adults (well, starting as teenagers, and then covering several years from there) who keep orbiting each other through the rocky start into young adulthood and a variety of self-destructive behaviors. This has now been made into a show, and apparently they've done a good job with it. I'm somewhat curious to watch the show, because I didn't fall for the book hard like some people have done, but I would say I'm intrigued.
Shirley and Jamila Save Their Summer by Gillian Goerz – A delightful middle-grade graphic novel that's a modern-day-update-for-kids of the Holmes & Watson duo, but just as much a meditation on what it takes to be a friend. Really lovely.
The Master Key by Masako Togawa (translated from Japanese by Simon Grove) – This reminded me a bit of Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio, because it's similarly a study of a disparate group of people who grudgingly share space in the same apartment building, and the tensions that come to a head when an unexpected event shakes things up.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Class Act by Jerry Craft – A charming follow-up to New Kid; I particularly like how the author uses some fantasy elements in his otherwise realistic graphic novel style – sort of like TV shows that will include little fantasy sequences to illustrate the POV character's thoughts and imaginings. I did think the plot here was handled a bit too neatly/pat-ly, but the book has a whole lot of heart.
The Coincidence Makers by Yoav Blum (translated from Hebrew by Ira Moskowitz) – Given that this book is about time, and cause and effect, and the nature of love, and other such heady themes, I expected it to go a lot deeper than it did. But in its final section it did pull together a lot of earlier threads in a way that made it a reasonably fun read.
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell – Ha, and then this one was kind of the opposite thing; somehow from the title I'd been expecting something very different, and it ended up being a way deeper, thornier sociopolitical-ecophilosophical exploration than I was quite prepared for! Odell has a lot of interesting reflections, though, from the perspective of an artist who uses technology in her work, but also is interested in how we can disconnect from technology and reconnect with the physical places where we exist.
And there we have it! "Year in review" about books in 2020 as a whole coming soon.
