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Bookwormish, 4th quarter of 2020
Jan. 9th, 2021 02:43 pmMy 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.
( lots more books! )
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.
( lots more books! )
And there we have it! "Year in review" about books in 2020 as a whole coming soon.
