2020 End Of Year Survey
First, let’s all take a minute to celebrate the end of 2020. Pour yourself a glass of your favorite beverage and raise a toast to surviving the end of the most incredibly stupid and horrible year ever.
Okay, now it’s time for my yearly end of year survey looking at the best and worst of the year!
Bookish things I accomplished this year? Not much, really. You’d think that being furloughed from your job but still have enough financial stability to just live off your savings for a while because the unemployment guys are so overwhelmed that they neglect to even look at your claim for three months would give you more time to do things like film and edit Youtube videos or make content for a blog, but… when I wasn’t reading, I just played video games without writing any reviews or content of any sort.
(side note: if you struggle with mental health, anxiety, depression, etc. please make sure to take care of yourself first! If all you are able to do is get out of bed, take a shower, and feed yourself before you start experiencing symptoms of burnout, that’s okay! You’re clean, you ate something, and hopefully you also drank some water and got a good night’s sleep! 2020 has been a rough year for humanity in general and there is no reason to feel ashamed of yourself for not being “creative” or “productive” during this pandemic! I just like to make self-deprecating jokes about my own mental health as a way of coping. xD)
Oh, but I did rearrange my room a bit! I had a giant IKEA storage-thing in my room that was taking up a lot of space but not serving much function aside from giving me an excuse to be a packrat, so I got my dad to help me take it apart, we threw out the pieces with the bulky pickup trash, and I pulled this little bookshelf out of the corner of my room (literally, part of it was tucked BEHIND MY DRESSER and I could not access it) to actually make it do what it was meant to do: be a bookshelf.
Also, not reading-wise, but writing-wise, I hit a major breakthrough with my WIP (Work In Progress, a YA romance)–I’d previously done all the steps, like self-edits, beta reads, more edits, etc. and written up a book that I thought was the best thing since sliced bread, but just didn’t get any hits when I queried it around last year. But this past summer, I got the most brilliant brainstorm ever, and realized that the one who goes through the most character development and essentially carries the story is the male main character, whereas the original version had the female main character as the star. She doesn’t even really have a proper character arc, so it was just a bunch of random scenes that had a sort-of-maybe plot. Once I’d reworked the outline to be from the male character’s POV, figured out the character arc he was going to take and how he was going to grow and change, and changed a few key scenes in the last third of the book, it all seemed to just fall into place. So I’m very proud of that, and in 2021, I will be attempting to continue writing that book, along with my YA fantasy Ocean Mage (working title).
Without further ado, here are my 2020 bookish stats!
Original survey taken from Perpetual Page Turner.
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I read 124 books this year, which is very impressive. Last year, I managed 120, but it took me until midnight on December 31st to accomplish that goal. The past three years in a row, I’ve increased the number of books I’ve read, and therefore, the time I’ve spent reading!
In 2018, I only read 41 books. Then I read 120 in 2019. Now I read 124. Except that my total pages read, at least according to Goodreads, has dropped about 400 pages from last year–this year I read a lot more short stories/novellas/shorter books, whereas last year, almost everything I read was 250 pages or longer.
My average rating for books in 2020 was 3.9–exactly the same as last year, which was also 3.9. I think that’s a perfect average rating, because if you read 120+ books, you’re not going to love all of them.
Last year I made a huge montage of my rereads over the year (because I love rereading lol) so… here we go again!
(yes, Arrows of the Queen is on there twice. No, that’s not a mistake. I just reread it twice this year.)
I reread 33 books this year, which means I read… (does math) 91 new books. The genre I read the most from is of course, fantasy. I even made a cute little pie chart of all my genres and age categories!
And now for the Best of Books for this year! (I will be making a proper wrapup discussing all my favorite books of the year in a few more weeks, but for now, here’s a quick sneak peek!)
What is the best book you’ve read this year?
My favorite book that I read this year was definitely A Confusion of Princes by my favorite author, Garth Nix.
This book really pushed me out of my comfort zone. It’s a YA scifi space opera, which I normally don’t reach for. I only picked it up because of the author–again, Garth Nix is my favorite author ever.
Wow, this book blew me away! It exceeded all my expectations, earned a glowing five-star review from me, and opened me up to the idea of reading more sci-fi/space operas down the road. I loved Khemri’s voice in this, and despite being only 330 pages and some change, the world feels so fleshed out and the characters are so real! I’ve actually read this book twice this year: my first time reading it was in March, and then I loved it so much that I reread it again in October!
Read my review for this book here!
A book you were excited for, but fell short of your expecations
I will be making a full list of “Most Disappointing Books of 2020” but Arrow’s Fall by Mercedes Lackey deserves a very special spot on that list. This was the third book in the Heralds of Valdemar trilogy, and my expectations for this book were sky-high. Book One in this trilogy, Arrows of the Queen, turned out to be a new favorite for me (and as you can see from the graphic above, I read it three times this year: once for first time in June, then twice more, once in July in preparation for delving into the sequel, and again in October during a bad mental health period!) Book Two was slightly sub-par: Talia’s character seemed to be reverted to how she was at the beginning of Book One, with all her character development scrubbed away completely, but it still ended up getting four stars because I could see myself rereading it at some point. But oh my God Arrow’s Fall was just a hot mess. Imagine: two full-grown adults (nineteen-year-old young woman, twenty-something year old young man) who are fated to be each other’s true love. That’s cute, if a little cliche. But instead of using their telepathic abilities, or heck, just TALKING LIKE ACTUAL ADULTS, instead they spend over 100 pages of what is supposed to be a thrilling action-packed fantasy novel with political intrigue AVOIDING EACH OTHER LIKE TWO KIDS AT A MIDDLE SCHOOL DANCE. Despite Talia (the young woman) having gone through an entire character arc in book 1 learning to be more open and stand up for herself (because she grew up in a rather abusive household where she was not allowed to express herself or talk back to adults, especially to men) she just FORGETS how to do that and turns back into the scared, timid little thirteen-year-old she was when we first met her in Book 1.
I have a whole rant about this book, but for the sake of brevity, I will move on to the next question. I still like Mercedes Lackey’s writing style and the world and mythos of this series, and I will still pick up other books set in this world, but can I just pretend this book never existed and treat Arrows of the Queen as a standalone?
Buy Arrows of the Queen on Bookshop
Read my review of Arrows of the Queen here!
What was the most surprising book you read, either for good or bad reasons?
Well, aside from A Confusion of Princes above, the book that surprised me the most this year was Reformed by H.L. Burke.
Like A Confusion of Princes above, this was another one in a genre I don’t usually reach for (superheroes, which I suppose would technically fall under the urban/paranormal fantasy genre). But since it was written by another of my favorite authors, I decided to give it a try anyway.
I actually ended up beta-reading the short story Redeemed, first, and enjoyed that so much that I decided to give the main series a try. Long story short, Burke sent me the ebook for review, I loved it and gave it four stars, and then wanted to reread it so much that I decided to treat myself and buy the paperback edition when it came time for Christmas shopping this year.
Like I mentioned in my review of this book, I am not a big superhero fan. In my teenage years, I was really into the original Teen Titans animated series (not Teen Titans Go, don’t even mention that name around me), as well as the X-Men: Evolution animated series. But that was the extent of my superhero fandom–I grew out of both of these shows eventually and didn’t really seek out other superhero-based stories. I returned briefly to the genre when I watched the Pixar movies The Incredibles/The Incredibles 2, but even then, I didn’t really develop an interest in superhero stories.
Then Burke posted on her FB page that she wanted more beta readers for her short story, so I volunteered (hey, short stories get that reading goal finished quicker lol) and enjoyed the characters so much that I decided to go ahead and read Reformed, after all.
Buy Reformed on Booksinc.net (this is not an affiliate link)
What is the book you pushed the most people to read?
Oh, I don’t even know anymore, I shout about so many books.
Actually I do know–it’s Clariel.
This is a prequel to the Abhorsen trilogy, which is one of my favorite series of all time, and usually I don’t enjoy reading prequel stories. Once I’ve started into a series, it’s hard for me to then read a book that takes place before the first one. (though I have done it in the past–not with a series that was an intended prequel, but accidentally; I read book 7 in the series first and then went back and read books 1-6) But I thoroughly enjoyed this one. It had a slower start than the other books in this series, but there was plenty of mystery and political intrigue to keep reading. Also Clariel has been confirmed by Nix to be canonically aromantic asexual and I think that’s so cool.
See a more in-depth review of this book on my blog
What is the best series you started in 2020? Best sequel? Best series ender?
For me, “starting a series” in this case would be that I read two or more books in the series–there are plenty where I’ve read book one but just haven’t gotten around to reading any others, or didn’t enjoy book one enough to want to continue.
I’m going to do what I did last year and highlight three different series for this question. First is “the best series you’ve started this year.”
I’m… gonna cheat and go with another H.L. Burke book. Okay, true, I read Book One of this series back in 2017 (and reread it again in 2019) but I didn’t get around to reading Book Two until this year, so it counts! This is a fun steampunk fantasy series about Auric, a young man who has returned from studying magic in the big city, to his small hometown, expecting to help his father in the magic shop and one day inherit the shop. However, he is rather dismayed to find that his father has made a young man from the village, Jericho, his apprentice. But when his father mysteriously disappears into the Fey Lands, Auric must team up with Jericho and travel into the Fey Lands to rescue his father… only to find the truth about what happened to his mother all those years ago.
Book Two focuses on Auric and Jericho directly after this event. In their attempt to fix the balance between the Fey Lands and the human world, Auric and Jericho had to take some severe actions to restrict other magicians’ use of magic. Now, at the start of Book Two, they are under investigation by the government for their involvement in the closing of the magical rifts. I loved Book Two so much, and it gets bonus points for having an autisic female adult character!!! (:o) A rarity in literature in general, but especially in SFF!! I have yet to obtain and read Book Three of this series, but I have very high expectations for it and it is one of my most anticipated reads of 2021, and I intend to obtain a copy of it for myself next year and finish this series!!
Read a more in-depth review of this book on my blog
Buy Magician’s Rivalry on Venti Book Lair (not affiliate link)
As for the best sequel I’ve read this year…
This honor belongs to My Brother’s Husband volume 2. This duology of contemporary LGBTQ+ manga was just SO ADORABLE and MADE MY ACTUAL FEELS HURT SO BAD. In this story, written by a gay author (!) we follow Yaichi, a single father to his young daughter Kana. A number of years before the story started, Yaichi had an estranged twin brother, named Ryouji. When Ryouji came out to Yaichi as gay, they drifted apart from each other, and Ryouji eventually moved to Canada and married a man.
After Ryouji dies in a car accident, Yaichi is surprised one day to find Mike, his Canadian brother-in-law and Ryouji’s widow. Mike came to Japan to connect with Ryouji’s family and to see where his husband grew up. As Mike spends time with them and develops a loving connection with Kana as her beloved uncle, Yaichi is forced to reconsider what Ryouji really meant to him and his own prejudiced ideas about what gay people are like. In volume 2, Mike has become like a member of the family, but now his impending return to the States means that they’ll have to say good-bye. Yet Mike and Yaichi make a promise to Kana that will cement them as family forevermore.
I picked up this manga series on the recommendation of Codie from the Youtube channel Codie’s Book Corner, and BOY DID MY FEELZ HURT AFTERWARD. My dad saw me sitting in front of my bookshelf and crying and I had to explain that no, nothing was wrong, except the BITTERSWEET ENDING IN THIS MANGA HIT ME IN THE FEELZ.
And the best series ender I read this year was…
Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke. This is book three in the Inkworld trilogy, and BOY DOES SHIT GET REAL IN THIS BOOK. I don’t want to talk too much about it in case of spoilers, so I’ll just give a brief overview of the series as a whole:
In Book One (Inkheart), we follow Meggie, a twelve-year-old bookworm, living with her single father, Mo, who is a bookbinder by trade. One night, a strange man comes to their home, and Mo seems to know him, calling him Dustfinger and reminiscing about a shared past together. Dustfinger’s presence brings forth a chain of events that reveal the mystery behind Meggie’s mother’s disappearance over ten years ago and the reason Mo never reads books aloud to her–he has the power to read characters from books into reality! Ten years ago, Meggie’s mother disappeared into the book Inkheart, and Mo accidentally brought forth both Dustfinger and an evil villain named Capricorn, and the two must go on the run to avoid becoming tools in Capricorn’s machinations.
In Book Two, we actually get to see the world of Inkheart–Meggie uses her newfound powers that she inherited from her father to read herself into the book, and Mo goes in after her. They get involved in a political scheme–a man called The Adderhead is trying to install himself as dictator over the kingdom, using his daughter’s marriage to the prince as his claim to legitimacy. Inside the world of the book, Mo and Meggie are torn further apart as Mo becomes the Bluejay, a legendary Robin Hood-like thief, and Meggie becomes romantically entangled with Farid, a young boy Mo read out of Arabian Nights.
I think this might be one of my new favorite series, and I will definitely be embarking on a reread of it very soon. Inkdeath finished up all the story threads very satisfactorily, while leaving enough room for a possible #4 in the series (confirmed by Funke, there will be a Book 4)
Favorite New Author You Discovered in 2020
That would probably be Mercedes Lackey. Despite my disappointment with Book 3 of the Heralds of Valdemar trilogy, I still really enjoyed her writing style (and she’s also a lyricist, having written several albums of songs based on the Valdemar stories, which are AMAZING!)
I will definitely be picking up more of her stuff in 2021, and I still have high expectations for any other books I might read from her. Also the general world of the Valdemar series is just AMAZING and I want to explore more stories within this world, especially as it pertains to the Heralds and their legends.
Best Book From a Genre You Don’t Typically Read
I don’t usually reach for thrillers, but Surrender Your Sons by Adam Sass was amazing! This is a story about Connor, a teenage boy, who has recently been outed as gay to his super-conservative mother. His mother is not happy about her son’s sexual orientation and has him kidnapped and shipped off to conversion camp, where he discovers a ten-year-old conspiracy meant to cover up a murder committed by the very people running the camp. I gave this book four stars and enjoyed it very much, thank you. It’s a hard book to read, and I probably will be saving my reread of this for next Halloween when I want all the spooky vibes again, lol.
Buy Surrender Your Sons on Bookshop.org
Book You Read in 2020 That You Would Be Most Likely to Re-Read
(credit Gus Johnson on Youtube)
When do I NOT want to reread a book? xD Let’s just do what I did last year and have a Lightning Round! Top Ten Books I’d Be Most Likely To Reread in 2021!
My Brother’s Husband by Gengoroh Tagame
The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife by Phillip Pullman (in preparation for finally reading The Amber Spyglass!)
Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
The Abhorsen series by Garth Nix
Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson
Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey
Orchards by Holly Thompson
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
All the Stars and Teeth by Adalyn Grace
I Love You So Mochi by Sarah Kuhn
Favorite Cover of a Book You Read in 2020
Is it cheating to put this book twice on this list? Because I’mma put this book twice on this list. You can’t tell from the cover image itself, but the dust jacket of this book is embossed with Charter symbols and is soooooo pretty. It is my favorite cover of all time and I can’t stop staring at it.
Best Debut You Read in 2020
Well, aside from Arrows of the Queen above (I’m trying to do a different book for each question so I give every wonderful book I read in 2020 an equal chance, except for Clariel, because, y’know, I’m not ever going to shut up about that one lol) this would probably go to Last Leaves Falling by Fox Benwell.
(note: all editions of this book have the author listed as Sarah Benwell, but the author is trans and has since changed his name to Fox–one has to assume that the creative team has not yet pursued the option to get a new edition with Benwell’s name change reflected on the cover)
This was another difficult book to read. Our main character is Sora, a high school student in Japan, who was recently diagnosed with ALS (yes, that ALS, from the Ice Bucket Challenge) He has so many mobility issues that he’s needing to use a wheelchair 24/7, and because his school is not wheelchair-accessible, he’s dropped out and now stays home, spending his time reading books and going on the Internet and looking up morbid topics. He is going to die. Yet before he does, he makes a connection with two other users on an online forum, and they go from being online friends to in-person friends. Sora finds acceptance and love in his two new friends, who don’t judge him for his disease, who listen to his conflicted feelings, and who understand that he is terrified of what he will become: the disease will steal so much of his function that he’ll end up bedridden, not able to talk, or express himself in any way, before dying a horrible death. So he and his friends hatch a plan to help Sora take some control over his situation and die, his way.
What initially drew me into this book was that it was set in Japan. Then, when I started reading it, I had fun with the multimedia format (lots of page time is dedicated to Sora’s online chats with actual chat logs, etc.) which I am trash for. But it was also a hard book to read because of Sora’s terminal illness. If you’re looking for a book that examines assisted suicide and dignity in death, then you should pick this one up. Just be prepared to shed a few tears at the end.
Buy The Last Leaves Falling on Bookshop.org
Hidden gem of the year?
WHY DOES THIS BOOK ONLY HAVE 700 RATINGS ON GOODREADS IT IS SO SUPER CUTE
This is a MG contemporary about a boy and his dog. Cosmo is a thirteen-year-old golden retriever who is devoted to his 8-year-old owner Max. Unfortunately, Max’s mom and dad are getting a divorce. Max and Cosmo devise a plan to keep the family together: they’ll enter a local dance competition for dogs and their owners, win first place, and then his mom and dad will be so impressed that they’ll see they can’t tear Max and his beloved doggo apart! So despite his developing arthritis, Cosmo enters the competition with Max and OH THIS BOOK IS JUST SO SQUISHY AND CUTE AND FRIENDSHIP!!! The one telling us the story is Cosmo, the aforementioned golden retriever, and YES I AM TRASH FOR BOOKS NARRATED BY ANIMALS SO SUE ME MEANWHILE I WILL CONTINUE TO BE TRASH FOR ANIMAL BOOKS.
This is one of those books where it’s like DO YOU LIKE DOGGOS? ARE YOU SOMEONE WHO READS BOOKS? THEN READ THIS!! I don’t usually like to say that a book is for “everyone” but if I did have to pick one book that would be for “everyone” it would be this one. There’s something for everyone here. You like a well-established friendship? This is your book. You want a book with an unusual narrator? Cosmo’s the BEST DOGGO. You like books about competitions and sports? The main plot is literally about a dance competition!
That’s not even mentioning the thousands of readers who would like this book because it’s about a GOOD DOGGO and I LITERALLY CANNOT TRUST YOU IF YOU DON’T THINK COSMO IS A GOOD DOGGO.
Well, that’ll just about do it for my 2020 stats, I think. I have some videos forthcoming of my favorite/top books of 2020, along with my most disappointing reads of 2020, so look out for those!
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Corinne 乙女
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