TOP 25 FAVORITE BOOKS READ IN 2020

 I had a year of great reading. I had set a lower goal than usual to give myself time to read some LONG books and I did do that. 

I read 122 books with an average length of 366 pages.

I read 44674 pages with an average of 122 pages a day. I think this is my most satisfying statistic since I always hope to read 100 pages a day. It looks like I nailed that one!

This year I decided to determine my top favorites by listing out all the books I noted as 5 star books on Goodreads. I got 46! It would seem either I am getting better at choosing books or books are getting better overall. Win-win, I would say.

I narrowed it down to 25 but added a few more at the bottom. For once I managed to get all of these reviewed on the blog and that is perhaps my best achievement. After all my wingeing last January, I figured out how to keep the blog going plus work on my writing. Of course, I was stuck at home for 9 months of the year so I should not brag.

In alphabetical order by title here are my favorites:

August Is A Wicked Month, Edna O'Brien

Barn 8, Deb Olin Unferth

Bellefleur, Joyce Carol Oates

Cantoras, Carolina De Robertis

The Glass Hotel, Emily St John Mandel

Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell

How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee

In the Country of Women, Susan Straight

The Keepers of the House, Shirley Anne Grau

Lilith's Brood Trilogy (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago), Octavia E Butler

A Long Petal of the Sea, Isabel Allende

Night Boat to Tangier, Kevin Barry

Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars, Joyce Carol Oates

The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich

Piranesi, Susannah Clarke

The Reckless Oath We Made, Bryn Greenwood

Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison

The Sweetest Fruits, Monique Truong

Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi

Unseen City, Amy Shearn

Unsheltered, Barbara Kingsolver

The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett

The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Women of Copper Country, Mary Doria Russell

Your House Will Pay, Steph Cha

Extras:

One of my goals for the year was to get caught up on all Neal Stephenson books I had not yet read. I still have one to go but I loved the ones I read 5 stars worth.

Quicksilver, The Confusion, System of the World, Anathem, and Reamde.

I cannot leave out The Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Sadly we lost him this year so I add this one in his honor.

I have enjoyed reading all the year end lists from the bloggers I follow. We are mighty readers!

A huge thank you to all who follow me here with extra thanks for all who comment. Due to my reading groups on Zoom and all of you, I never felt too lonely this year. 

Happy New Year! Happy Reading! Happy Blogging Days Ahead!

TOP TEN FICTION BESTSELLERS OF 1965

 Over the summer I completed reading the 1965 bestseller list for fiction. If you have followed my blog for a while you are familiar with what I call My Big Fat Reading Project. If you are new, go to the link to learn about why I read these best selling novels of long ago.

I have only reviewed three of the ten books here and I will provide the links to those reviews. Otherwise I will give you a brief synopsis of the other seven. The purpose of this post is to give my thoughts on how these books shed light on the events of 1965. It is my theory that in the 20th century the bestseller lists, which are based on sales, give evidence of the interests and concerns of fiction readers in any given year.

#1: The Source: Michener used the framework of an archeological dig at an ancient site in Israel to cover the vast history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Religious themes always sold well in the early years of the 20th century, but had not been as popular in the 1960s. I would think this one was of interest because of the growing tensions in Israel in the decade. 

Michener shows the connections between the religions and provides a history of their major conflicts. He made me think about religion, why humans need the idea of God, how religion had brought both order and chaos to our lives. An excellent read.

#2: Up The Down Stair Case: Bel Kaufman's book about her first year teaching in a public NYC high school is both hilarious and cautionary. The rules, the disorganization, the lack of supplies but most of all the challenges of making learning important to inner city teens, give what I was quite sure was an accurate picture of the scene. I wonder if LBJ's War on Poverty spiked an interest in this one.

#3: Herzog: This novel was also the #3 bestseller in 1964 and then won the National Book Award in 1965. It is his 6th novel but the first to make the top ten bestseller list. A middle aged intellectual is betrayed by his best friend who steals his wife. Bellow had cashed in on the midlife crisis plot before and since men still read fiction in the 60s, he did it again. 

#4: The Looking Glass War: The Cold War produced the spy fiction genre and Le Carre first hit the bestseller list in 1964 with The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. By his own admission, after that success , le Carre wanted to tell the real truth about the state of British intelligence in the early 1960s. The novel is grim. He shows a nation no longer the world power it was. Intelligence has become a political endeavor inside the offices of the military and intelligence branches. He became the antidote to Ian Fleming and James Bond.

#5: The Green Berets: These guys were the sexiest of military intelligence operatives during the Vietnam War so it is no surprise that this revealing but patriotic inside look at how they did the job would be a bestseller. I was appalled.

#6: Those Who Love: Irving Stone's biographical novel of Abigail and John Adams and their roles in founding American democracy must have had high appeal to readers still reeling from the assassination of JFK. For me, reading it in 2020, it was an indictment of how we have failed to keep those ideals. To his credit, John Adams as portrayed here had his doubts about that very thing at the time.

#7: The Man With the Golden Gun: This was the final James Bond novel. It takes place in Jamaica, though begins with Bond being brainwashed by the Russians after his capture in the prior book, then being given electric shock therapy by MI6 to make him fit for another mission. Again, the Cold War makes for bestsellers.

#8: Hotel: Arthur Hailey made his career with this first top ten bestseller. It is set in a famous New Orleans hotel which has seen better days and is now facing a hostile takeover by a hotel chain. Racism plays a large part in the story and that made it ripe for the times in 1965.

#9: The Ambassador: This was Morris West's third top ten bestseller. The second book on this list set in Vietnam, it is a fictionalized account of the months leading up to the CIA backed coup and assassination of South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem. The CIA giveth and the CIA taketh away when their implanted rulers stop playing by US rules. The novel does a fair job at showing the complexities of Vietnamese politics at the time and the toll this took on an American ambassador to the country. It captures that moment when LBJ began to plan his major escalation of the war.

#10: Don't Stop the Carnival is one of Herman Wouk's whimsical novels. A Broadway promoter decides to get away from the constant pressure of his job and the harsh New York winter by buying a hotel on a fictional Caribbean island that feels a lot like Jamaica. What was it about Jamaica in 1965?. It is a rip roaring read with some cringe inducing views of the natives who of course are Black and the many gay people who have taken refuge there from the homophobia of America. 

So there you have it. Have you read any of these books? I felt they gave me a pretty good picture of some of the major issues and concerns in America in 1965. I am now reading the novels that won awards in that year and will create a similar post when I finish those.

TOP 25 BOOKS READ IN 2019

Once again, it was hard to choose only 25 of all the wonderful books I read last year. I made a short runners up list. Not all of these were published in 2019 but all were read during the year.

Starred titles indicate books reviewed on the blog.

*Bowlaway, Elizabeth McCracken

*Chimes of a Lost Cathedral, Janet Fitch

*Daisy Jones & the Six, Taylor Jenkins Reid

*Disoriental, Negar Djavadi

*The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin

*Juliet the Maniac, Juliet Escoria

*Little Big Man, Thomas Berger

*The Lonely Hearts Hotel, Heather O’Neill

*Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, T Kira Madden

*The Loved Ones, Sonya Chung

*Lost Children Archive, Valeria Luiselli

*Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem

*The Neverending Story, Michael Ende

*The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead

*Once Upon A River, Diane Setterfeld

Palm Latitudes, Kate Braverman

*Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey

*Stone Upon Stone, Wieslaw Mysliwski

*Sula, Toni Morrison

*The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E Harrow

*The Testaments, Margaret Atwood

*The Time of Our Singing, Richard Powers

*Trust Exercise, Susan Choi

The Vexations, Caitlin Horrocks

*Washinton Black, Esi Edugyan

Runners Up

*The Blue, Nancy Bilyeau

*A Kind of Freedom, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

No Walls and the Recurring Dream, Ani di Franco

*The Prisoner of Heaven, Carlos Ruiz Zafon

*Sisters In Law, Linda R Hirshman

*Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens

*Wintering, A Novel of Sylvia Plath, Kate Moses

Happy Reading in 2020!

 

BOOKS READ IN DECEMBER

Here in the Los Angeles area it is not as cold and shivery as the image above looks nor was it in December, but it seems appropriate for some of the areas where family and friends live. It has been in the mid-70s and sunny lately and I can't remember the last time we had any precipitation.

I had fun with my reading last month, allowing myself plenty of reading time and an almost complete freedom of choice. In the books I traveled in time, across the country and around the world. I enjoyed every book!

Stats: 11 books read. 8 fiction. 7 written by women. 5 written by authors new to me. 3 historical fiction. 3 speculative fiction. 1 mystery. 1 non-fiction. 1 biography. 3 for My Big Fat Reading Project.

Favorites: Manhattan Beach, The Bedlam Stacks, The Rise and Fall of DODO, and The Revolution of Marina M.

I sincerely hope you ended your reading year as happily. With so many wonderful books in the world I am sure 2018 will be a fabulous reading year for all who read books.

TOP BOOKS READ IN 2017

The image above, "borrowed" from Google images and huge thanks to its creator, spoke to me because it is called The Sleepless Reader. I have become someone who can nap any time of the afternoon but cannot always sleep at night. This year I finally faced it and just got up and read on the futon bed in my office until my eyes began to droop.

I had one of the worst years of my life, physically and emotionally, but it was reading that saved me, brought me back to some semblance of wisdom and best of all, informed and educated me. I tried, I really tried, to keep up with the news but that left me feeling powerless and often manipulated. Reading about the past, the present, and the future in books was how I found some kind of ground I could stand on. 

I read 119 books. Three less than last year but almost 2000 more pages because 11 of the books I read were well over 500 pages.

Stats:

Books read: 119. Pages read: 41080. Average pages per day: 113. Average books per week: 2.3.

Fiction: 103

Nonfiction: 16

Written by women: 68

Mystery/thriller: 13

Historical fiction: 19

Fantasy: 5

Speculative/sci-fi: 9

Translated: 5

Biography/memoir: 9

Essays: 3

My Big Fat Reading Project: 43

 

 

My top 25 are my favorite books and as usual I had trouble narrowing the list down to 25, but isn't that just the nature of things? I think I gave less than 3 stars to only a handful of what I read this year. The books were published over a wide range of years, not just in 2017. All of the books on the list have been or will soon be reviewed here on the blog.

 

The List (in the order I read them): 

 

The Nix, Nathan Hill

Version Control, Dexter Palmer

All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders

The Time of the Doves, Merce Rodoreda

The Gods of Tango, Carolina De Robertis

Do Not Say We Have Nothing, Madeleine Thien

To the Bright Edge of the World, Eowyn Ivey

A Book of American Martyrs, Joyce Carol Oates

White Tears, Hari Kunzru

Grace, Natashia Deon

Little Nothing, Marisa Silver

The Shadow Land, Elizabeth Kostova

The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry

The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes

Pachinko, Min Jin Lee

Sister Golden Hair, Darcey Steinke

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Arundhati Roy

The Plague Diaries, Ronlyn Domingue

The Fifth Season, N K Jemison

Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn West

Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan

Occasion For Loving, Nadine Gordimer

The Bedlam Stacks, Natasha Pulley

The Rise and Fall of DODO, Neal Stephenson

The Revolution of Marina M, Janet Fitch

 

If I follow your blog, I have read your lists for the year's most loved books. If I don't follow you or you don't have a blog, feel free to let me know of great reads I may have missed in the comments. Thanks to everyone who visits here!  

 

Happy New Year! Let's read our way to a better year.

BOOKS READ IN NOVEMBER

I had one of my lowest number of books finished in November ever. For the past few years Thanksgiving has become an event filled with many happy days spent eating, drinking and carrying on with family. This went on for a full week and I don't regret a minute spent! All the books I finished were great except for one. Also, in these interesting times, I am proud to say they were all written by women!!

Stats:6 books read. 6 fiction. 6 by written by women. 4 for My Big Fat Reading Project. 1 fantasy.

Favorite: Sing, Unburied, Sing.

Least favorite: The Benefactor.

How was your reading in November? Better than mine I hope!

BOOKS READ IN SEPTEMBER

What with one thing after another (fires, personal upsets, heat waves) I did not make my reading goals in September. I did read 8 novels and only one was less than successful for me. It is probably a well known fact to many readers, but I discovered that when times are tough, mystery/crime novels are the perfect panacea! Fantasy worked for me this month as well.

Stats: 8 books read. 8 fiction. 5 written by women. 2 for My Big Fat Reading Project. 1 historical fiction. 3 mystery/crime. 2 fantasy. 1 translated.

Favorites: The Plague Diaries, A Superior Death, The Fifth Season

Least favorite: Beartown

How did your reading go in September? What were your favorites?

MORTE D'URBAN

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Morte D'Urban, J F Powers, Doubleday, 1962, 336 pp

I had not heard of this author before. I read the novel because it won the National Book Award in 1963. This award was created in 1950 and I have read all the winning books from then up through 1963. Many were great; some challenged my idea of what I consider a great novel. Morte D'Urban, the third novel concerning priests from my 1963 list, was a stand out.

Father Urban is quite a character. I am a bit hazy on how he became a priest. It was well explained in the novel but I just don't remember it that clearly. In any case, it was a rash decision that left him conflicted for the rest of his life, but he did his best to perform the role despite the lowly status of the religious order to which he belonged.

His intelligence, his grasp of worldly matters and his genuine love of people are what got him through. One of his duties is fund raising which entails plenty of humorous moments. The author, who wrote only Catholic fiction, seems to have been unusually clear eyed regarding the challenges of living a dedicated religious life in our materialist culture.

Now that I think about it, this conflict between the world and the priest is almost always a theme in any religious fiction I have read so apparently it is a known issue.

Morte D'Urban has a sorrowful ending and I could see it coming as I read. A sign of good fiction for me is that I become deeply invested in the protagonist's plight. That happened for me in this smartly perceptive novel about the life of a priest in mid 20th century America. 

It was the best of the three novels about priests in 1963, The Shoes of the Fisherman and Grandmother and the Priests being the other two.

I have now finished the Award Winners section of my 1963 list and am moving into the part of that list curated by me.

Here are the prize winners I read:

 

1.    PULITZER: The Reivers, Faulkner

2.    NEWBERY: A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle

3.     CALDECOTT: The Snowy Day, Ezra Jack Keats

4.    NBA: Morte D’Urban, J F Powers

5.    HUGO: The Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick-

6.    EDGAR: Death and the Joyful Woman, Ellis Peters

(Morte D'Urban is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

 

BOOKS READ IN JULY

I was a bit like a dragonfly in July. I darted from book to book, consuming each one and almost all of them were excellent. All but two of them were short and my total read was the highest so far this year: 13!

Stats: 13 books read. 12 fiction. 10 written by women. 3 mysteries. 3 speculative fiction. 3 historical fiction. 1 crime fiction. 1 for middle-grade readers. 1 nonfiction.

Favorites: The Essex Serpent, Pachinko, Sister Golden Hair, She Rides Shotgun

Least favorite: And Then There Were None

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My August reading plan includes several long books so who knows when I will hit 13 read in a month again. I am also reading the first volume of Robert A Caro's biography of Lyndon B Johnson, at the rate of 10 pages a day. Who knows when I will finish that because it is super long. But nothing else has taken me away from the worries about the current administration like this book has. No President the United States has had was perfect and some were quite bad. We survived them all. So far.

How was your reading in July? Which were your favorites?

Happy reading in August!!