My Favourite Books of 2020

I know, I know. It's way too far into 2021 to be doing more 2020 roundup posts, especially as I've already done one this month and did a similarly late post last year as well. Still, if I don't do this post now I won't get to do it at all, and for some reason I feel irresistibly compelled to share with you my favourite books of 2020.

Like I said in my previous 2020 summary post, that so-called "year of hindsight" was... an experience, to say the least. Some good things came out of it though, and in my case one of those things was getting to read more than I have in a while. Lockdown in France got quite strict at points, so being shut in a lot of the time provided me with ample reading opportunity. Besides just generally reading more, I also reignited my love for libraries and even developed a newfound appreciation for ebooks - but those are topics for another post.

In this post, I want to tell you a little bit about my favourite books that I read in 2020. To be clear, these are books that I read in 2020, but they may have been published in any year. I'm not sure I even read any books published in 2020, because I am financially deficient and can't afford to buy hardbacks. 

So without further ado, here are my favourite books of 2020 (in the order I read them):

Will and Testament by Vigdis Hjorth

I bought the ebook version of this novel during an April sale on the Verso Books website, along with about five others (don't judge me). While most of the other books I bought still sit, unread, in my phone's Overdrive app, I tore through Will and Testament before we even reached the end of the month.

I wasn't aware of this at the time of buying it, but apparently this book has caused something of a controversy in the author's home country of Norway, as supposedly Hjorth drew inspiration from her own family when writing. This doesn't seem so scandalous until you realise the plot of the book revolves around a family fractured by trauma and abuse.

Regardless of the debate surrounding it, Will and Testament is a brilliant novel and a painfully clear portrait of the struggles survivors of abuse face.

Severance by Ling Ma

I have already written about this novel a few times, so I should keep this quite short. I chose to check this novel out from my local library because it dealt specifically with the fallout of a global pandemic, which as you can imagine felt quite relevant to my recently-quarantined self. I got what I wanted out of the book: a story which mirrored the feelings of isolation and forced normalcy which I was experiencing during lockdown. I also got much more than that: a reflection on day-to-day life under capitalism and the things which still matter to us even when everything else has fallen apart.

Photo stolen from Instagram, but it was from my own account (@marynotavailable if you were wondering) so it's okay.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Like a lot of people who are non-Black, especially those of us who are white, the Black Lives Matter protests that happened globally during 2020 prompted me to do some reflecting and try to educate myself about the struggles of Black people in America and worldwide. One of the ways I tried to do this was by reading books by Black authors, the most impactful of which turned out to be this semi-autobiography by the American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. 

First of all, Coates writes beautifully. His work is able to remain a pleasure to read without losing any of its poignancy. In Between the World and Me, he writes to his young son about his life growing up as a Black person in America and how that connects to both his personal story and that of other Black people throughout US history. There are some passages which I still stop and think about now almost a year after reading the book, like when Coates talks about travelling to other countries and how his son will grow up with a different conception of life abroad than he was raised with, because they impacted me so deeply. It's heart-breaking, hopeful, and beautiful.

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

Unlike most of the other books I've mentioned, Moon Tiger had been on my to-read list for some time before I finally got round to reading it this year. Another sort of life story, this novel focuses on Claudia Hampton, a historian and former journalist who is now on her death bed. The story moves between the past and the present, alternating between perspectives and intertwining Claudia's history with that of the world. 

While I sometimes like to add little paper tabs to book pages where I find lines or paragraphs I especially like, Moon Tiger was one of those books where almost every single page had a tab by the time I came to the end. Some of the passages felt like they put words to feelings I'd never been able to describe before; others brought to light things I'd never even thought of. In both cases, this book repeatedly took my breath away.

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

This novel has a lot in common with Will and Testament: it's an allegedly semi-autobiographical novel about the trauma of surviving abuse from a father figure as a child. Unlike Hjorth's novel though, Allison's isn't about coming to terms with that abuse years later, as an adult. Instead, Bastard Out of Carolina takes us through the protagonist's life from her birth to teen years, meaning that we as readers are made witness to her trauma at the same time she experiences it.

I don't know what compelled me to read two books with such similar, upsetting themes in relatively quick succession, but here we are. I don't regret the unconscious decision anyway, as I think the two books' comparability also gave me the opportunity to contrast them, seeing each of them in a new light.

Out of all the other books I've read this year, I'm not sure I know any other novel which broke my heart quite like this one.

My Favourite Book of All Time // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 30

Today is the thirtieth and final day of the 30-day book challenge, in which I have been writing about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, with each book chosen according to the daily prompt. Today's prompt is: "your favourite book of all time".

We did it. We've made it to the final "day" of the 30-day book challenge, which thankfully was not unambiguously called the "one-month book challenge"; if it had been, that might have prevented me from shamelessly dragging out these 30 days over the course of several months, only posting if and when I felt like it. But that is indeed what I did, and while you can say what you like about my lack of commitment to the exact goal of the challenge (to write a post every day consecutively), I'm still very happy with the result that I did eventually complete the challenge in some form, and I now have 30 more posts here on this blog than I did previously.

So, in this final post, to celebrate the fact that I got here in large part due to interpreting the general challenge in a way that was most convenient for me, I am also going to cheat on today's prompt.

I don't really have one specific favourite book. What's more, most of the books I would consider naming or would place in my Top 10 Favourite Books, I have already mentioned in other posts throughout this challenge. So in the interest of not repeating myself or forcing myself to pick one book when I really don't want to, I'm going to use this post to talk about my favourite book that I've read recently: Severance by Ling Ma.

Severance is one of three novels I checked out of my local library the day before the coronavirus pandemic sent my city, Paris, into total lockdown. That sequence of events was almost eerily appropriate, as Severance is also a novel about a fictional pandemic.

As usual, here is your Goodreads summary of the plot:

Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. So she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies halt operations. The subways squeak to a halt. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.

Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

So I should admit, perhaps my checking out Severance merely a day before lockdown wasn't so eerie, as I chose to borrow Severance specifically for its subject matter. Some people want escapism during times of crisis; I wanted a roadmap. I hoped that if I saw similar events to what was currently happening play out on the page, it might give me some idea of what to expect. 

As I had sort of perversely hoped, Severance's story seemed almost prophetic. The novel's story focuses on the impact of a global pandemic and its aftermath on one person, and while not every aspect of the book's events mirror coronavirus (for example, while Severance's Shen Fever also originates in China, it doesn't lead to widespread anti-Asian racism in the way that COVID-19 has), it is nonetheless incredibly resonant. 

The book jumps back and forth in time, between Candace's life pre- and post-apocalypse. While the latter veers into dystopian territory that, thankfully, is not quite so reflective of real life yet, the pre-apocalyptic chapters were very, very relatable. In Candace's world, the impending pandemic lays bare the hollowness of everyday life, the inertia of which forces it to continue all the way up to the brink of global catastrophe. We see its repetitiveness and its loneliness, and how the pandemic both solidifies and threatens society's commitment to this quotidian lifestyle. 

I don't want to spoil too much of the novel, as usual, because I would strongly recommend reading this book yourself, especially given its relevance to the current global situation. However, I would like to share a quote from Severance which I have actually previously shared on my Instagram. This section of the book is from just before a storm hits New York City, after which the Shen Fever pandemic will fully take over the country. I find it rather haunting, not just for the way it mirrors how many of us felt before COVID-19 properly hit, but because of what it says about our daily lives even beyond the pandemic:

I was like everyone else. We all hoped the storm would knock things over, fuck things up enough but not too much. We hoped the damage was bad enough to cancel work the next morning but not so bad that we couldn't go to brunch instead. 

Brunch? he echoed skeptically. 

Okay, maybe not brunch, I conceded. If not brunch, then something else. 

A day off meant we could do things we'd always meant to do. Like go to the Botanical Garden, the Frick Collection, or something. Read some fiction. Leisure, the problem with the modern condition was the dearth of leisure. And finally, it took a force of nature to interrupt our routines. We just wanted to hit the reset button. We just wanted to feel flush with time to do things of no quantifiable value, our hopeful side pursuits like writing or drawing or something, something other than what we did for money. Like learn to be a better photographer. And even if we didn't get around to it on that day, our free day, maybe it was enough just to feel the possibility that we could if we wanted to, which is another way of saying that we wanted to feel young, though many of us were that if nothing else.

I don't know if you get that though, I said.

***

On that note, we have finally reached the end of the so-called 30-day book challenge. I hope that it has been of some entertainment or interest to those of you who have read any or all of the 30 posts. Whether you have read 1 or 30, I appreciate your reading what I've written and letting me know what you thought of it. I hope that some of you will continue to read future posts on this blog, too. If you think you will, I would love to know if you have any preference for what I write about next - perhaps you have a specific topic you'd like to me to give my thoughts on, or some recommendations you'd like to hear. Either way, fingers crossed it won't be too long until I'm back here with another post. Until then, thanks for reading!