Best Reads of 2020

Already time for the yearly roundup of some of my best reads this year. I always wait until the very last possible moment to post my list; you never know what you'll come across around Christmas! I like to give every book I've read this year a chance to appear on my favourites list, no matter if I read it in the first week of January or the last few days of December. 

I also create a statistical summary each year, mostly for my own geekish pleasure. As I've said before, I don't think of reading as a competition -- I keep track of numbers and various stats for my own interest, not to prove anything or compare myself to anyone. 

Here are my reading stats for 2020:

Total Reading: 131

Authors

Female: 123
Male: 7
Both/Neither: 1

Genre 

Fiction: 93
Non Fiction: 37

Poetry: 1

In Translation: 25

Italian - 1

Catalan - 1

Spanish - 3

Dutch - 1

Korean - 2

Japanese - 2

Russian - 2

Polish - 1

German - 2

French - 2

Quebecois - 1

Swedish - 2

Norwegian - 1

Danish - 1

Finnish - 3

My Own Books: 49
Library Books: 79

Review Copies: 3

Rereads: 15
E-reads: 40

Author who I read the most from: Elizabeth Peters (13) 

I started revisiting the Amelia Peabody series in audiobook form when the lockdown started & just kept going!

2020'sWeird Random Stat: Books with a colour in the title: 13

I seem to have read an average number of books this year despite having reader's block for a while after lockdown started. But that lead to the most unusual change this year -- the leap from 3 ereads last year to 40 this year! Many of those were audiobooks I downloaded from my library -- I finally found that I clicked with audiobooks this year. 

Like always, I read a big majority of women authors, and quite a few more library books than my own this year. Must get to my own shelves again soon. And I read fewer translations this year, but from a wider variety of languages, so I'm happy with that. 

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And now for the Best of 2020!

These are titles that were memorable, unusual, or caught me with their great storytelling or rich characters. Just books that hit the right note with me when I picked them up! 

1. Vita Nostra / Marina & Sergey Dyachenko; trans.  from Russian by Julia Meitov Hersey

This Ukrainian/Russian speculative novel was weird & unsettling, starting off with a YA feel but developing nicely. I like strange, and I liked this. 

2. The Last Collection / Jeanne Mackin

Fashion, wartime, an artist caught in the middle; nuance, love, historical rivalries - what's not to like? The strong writing and main character caught me in this one. Really enjoyed it. 

3. The Custom of the Country / Edith Wharton

I read a fair bit of Wharton this year, but this tale of Undine Spragg and her insatiable appetite for social climbing was tops for me. Can't look away from this one!

4. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead / Olga Tokarczuk; trans. from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

I was eagerly awaiting this one, and enjoyed it a lot. Very different from the first Tokarczuk that I read, but the unexpected mystery, fabulously crotchety main character and the writing itself were all wonderful.

5. Desire for Chocolate / Care Santos; trans. from Catalan by Julie Wark

This is a great example of a time when persevering past the first part of a book paid off. I didn't really like the opening, but when it moved past the present day characters into the past, I began to love it. The second and third stories that make up this narrative were wonderful. 

6. Three Apples Fell From the Sky / Narine Abgaryan; trans. from Russian by Lisa C. Hayden

This book set in the mountains of Armenia charmed me. The characters were wonderful, the setting was unusual, and the storytelling was just that -- it felt like a folk story with so much richness to it. And it ended with hope and delight, just what I needed this year. 

7. Piranesi / Susanna Clarke

While this was very different from her first novel, I found it equally mysterious and compelling. Piranesi's world is an infinite marble set of rooms and stairs and oceans and sky -- it feels so strange, and gets stranger as we get deeper into the story of how he came to be one of the only people alive there. 

8. The Sewing Machine / Natalie Fergie

I loved this one for its comfortable family history setup, with great Scottish highlights. One of the reasons I loved it was that I listened to it as an audiobook and the narrator had the best accent! It really added to a story I was already inclined to enjoy as it was all about sewing and the history of women's lives. 

9. From What Is to What If? / Rob Hopkins 

This is an uplifting and encouraging book to read in these troubled times. It's an examination of imagination and its role in changing our future together, with examples of people and places who are actually doing things to envision something different for our futures. Really needed this in 2020!

10. The Night Watchman / Louise Erdrich

I loved this book so much that I read it three times this year. Once when it first came out, once just before highlighting it for my Literary Sewing Circle readalong, and then as an audiobook since it's read by Erdrich herself. Enjoyed it each time. This book moves between various characters on the Turtle Mountain Reserve in North Dakota, in the 1950s, as the government is trying to "emancipate" them. I loved the quiet, measured pace and strong characters. And the political relevance to events of 2020!

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So there it is, my ten best of the year, and a good reading year it was. At least we had books! I found quite a few great translated reads, some that included my favourite hobby, and some uplift in my reading as well. 

I hope your reading year was equally satisfying, and here's to more wonderful discovery in 2021.