Time to Vote for the Top 10 Books of 2020

[punxsygal]

Book Concierge wrote: "Here are my top 10, in alphabetical order by author last name

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee - Brown
Notorious RBG - Cramon & Knizhnik
The Boston Girl - Diamant
The Only Road - Diaz
The Gift of Rai..."

I, too, read The Nickel Boys last year. And The Gift of Rain is on my list to read this year.

[Raine]

My top 10 books of 2020

Please See Us - Mullen
Daisy Jones and the Six - Reid
The Sun Down Motel - St. James
Long Bright River - Moore
A Good Neighborhood - Fowler
Dear Edward - Napolitano
The Last Flight - Clark
My Dark Vanessa - Russell
The Dutch House - Patchett
The Magic Strings of Frankie Pesto - Albom

Least Favorite - Truth and Justice by Fern Michaels. This author is a type of go to to break a reading slump, but this book
really upset me. It was good until the end. I didn't research that this group of women who searched for justice were
vigilantes and I just didn't like it.

[Mindy aka serenity]

I read 95 books this year, which is quite an accomplishment for me. There were some standouts and some outright duds. I'm getting my PhD in history so my reading is definitely weighted in that direction.
Here are my top ten:

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making - Valente
Time's Convert - Harkness
The Selection - Cass
Isabel the Queen - Liss
A World Divided - Weitz
Dance in Chains - Kenney
Trigger Warning - Gaiman
Queenship in Britain 1660-1847 - Orr
Witch Craze - Roper
Vernacular Bodies - Fissell

Stinker of the year
In the Company of the Courtesan - Dunant. I loved The Birth of Venus but could not for the life of me get into this one. Shame.

[Yvonne]

City of Girls - Gilbert
Daisy Jones & The Six - Reid
Homegoing - Gyasi
The Henna Artist - Joshi
The Beekeeper of Aleppo - Lefteri
Olive Kittridge - Strout
Station Eleven - Mandel
The Education of an Idealist - Power

[Nikki]

A Gentleman in Moscow - Towles
Station Eleven – Mandel
Nixonland - Perlstein
The Sympathizer - Nguyen
The Yellow House - Broom
Happiness - Ricard
Happiness - Forna
Circe - Miller
The Immortalists - Benjamin
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous - Vuong

I found this REALLY hard to pin down to a top 10 - I read more than usual this year but in a strange way - periods of being unable to focus, a lot of unreflective binge-reading during our summer quarantine when we arrived in the UK, and when I looked back at my reactions to books I read in the start of the year, some of the reviews felt like they'd been written by someone else - what a year it's been! So my top 10 isn't based on what I gave the highest ratings to over the year or even which I thought were 'best', but on which ones got under my skin and stood out in my memory when I looked back. I'm sure on a different day I might have picked a very different list! (I'm not even going to do honourable mentions because there would be about 15...) I do quite like it that in this unsettling year I read two books called 'Happiness' and loved both of them ;-)

I don't think I read anything offensively awful in 2020 so I won't pick a 'worst' either - there were a few that didn't live up to my expectations (e.g. Hillbilly Elegy, Eleanor Oliphant) but nothing actively bad.

Happy New Year to everyone!

[Booknblues]

Nikki wrote: "A Gentleman in Moscow - Towles
Station Eleven – Mandel
Nixonland - Perlstein
The Sympathizer - Nguyen
The Yellow House - Broom
Happiness - Ricard
Happiness - Forna
Circe - Miller
The Immortalists -..."

Happiness by Forna made my list the year I read it, as well.

[LibraryCin]

Mindy aka serenity wrote: "I read 95 books this year, which is quite an accomplishment for me. There were some standouts and some outright duds. I'm getting my PhD in history so my reading is definitely weighted in that dire..."

Hi, Mindy! Nice to "see" you!

[Anita]

**Last Day to Cast Your Vote**

[Tessa (FutureAuthor23)]

forsanolim wrote: "I read far, far more than I expected this year (110 books!), mainly due to Covid and to Poll Ballot. My top 10, in order that I read them (and interestingly also in a perfect split between fiction ..."

I loved Shadow of the Wind when I read it. I should probably re-read it cuz it's been 10 years.

[Hannah]

Despite reading 500+ books last year, I only had 16 books I rated 5 stars, though I had a few that were 4.5 stars. My top 10 are:

This Is How It Always Is - Frankel
Just Mercy - Stevenson
A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America - Miller
Dear Martin - Stone
The Huntress - Quinn
The Widows of Malabar Hill - Massey
Salt to the Sea - Sepetys
The War That Saved My Life - Bradley
March (Book 1) - Lewis
Mafia State: How One Reporter Became An Enemy of the Brutal New Russia - Harding

Worst book by far for me this year was A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by McBride. It was written in an experimental / stream of consciousness style with very few verbs in the sentences. It was a very dark, depressing book, with the main character being betrayed, abused and sexually assaulted by relatives, raped and beaten by strangers and more incest.

[Book Concierge]

Anita wrote: "Book Concierge wrote: "NOTE - above post edited to include that 10th book, which I somehow overlooked."

Thanks! I got that 10th one yesterday."

The one I added was DIAMANT'S The Boston Girl

Sorry it wasn't at the end ...

[NancyJ]

Anita, I didn't finalize my list until Dec 31. I hope I didn't mess up your scoring if you started early.

I really love reading these lists! It's interesting to see that some books made both the best and worst lists. It reminds me to not to automatically dismiss a book with a negative review.

Thanks for doing this. I can't wait to see the results.

[Anita]

Nancy, I didn't add yours in yet because it didn't seem ready. Thanks for letting me know it is now ready . . .will go back to add it.

[Anita]

Will double check on it, BC to make sure I got it.

[Anita]

Book Concierge wrote: "Anita wrote: "Book Concierge wrote: "NOTE - above post edited to include that 10th book, which I somehow overlooked."

Thanks! I got that 10th one yesterday."

The one I added was DIAMANT'S [book:T..."

Good thing you pointed this out! I somehow got you confused with BooknBlues and thought you had already told me about the missed 10th book. Yikes.

[NancyJ]

Can you provide a link to last year's results? I think there was a long version with more than the top 10. I thought I saved it, but I don't see it. Or maybe it was a spreadsheet?

[LibraryCin]

Anita, it was less than a day gap (can't recall how many hours), but when I posted mine, I got one of the titles slightly "off". No one else has read it (barely), so it won't make a big difference in your tally, but I decided I'd point it out in case you'd made a note of it before I made the change to the title.

The book (correct title) is: Shelter: Lost & Found - Conroy.

I originally posted it as: Rescue: Lost & Found - Conroy.

[LibraryCin]

NancyJ wrote: "Can you provide a link to last year's results? I think there was a long version with more than the top 10. I thought I saved it, but I don't see it. Or maybe it was a spreadsheet?"

This isn't the full thread with discussion and all, but we keep track of the top titles on our bookshelf, too.

Here is the link to the top (11 - must have been a tie) from last year on our shelf:

https://www.goodreads.com/group/books...

[LibraryCin]

You can see each year of our top "10" in the bookshelf with the shelf names:
pbt-top-10-XXXX

(XXXX being the year starting with 2008).

And this link is to our decade top 10 (2010-2019)
https://www.goodreads.com/group/books...

[Jen K]

My top 10 for 2020:

Invisible Women- Criado Perez
Behold the Dreamers- Mbue
The Bell Jar- Plath
Indian Horse- Wagamese
Vanishing Half- Bennett
Just Mercy- Stevenson
If Beale Street Could Talk- Baldwin
How to be Anti-Racist- Kendi
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee- Brown
Kindred- Butler

It was a year of reflection and learning for me and these books made an impact on my thinking and awareness. I discovered that I really like James Baldwin and made an effort to read more indigenous perspectives.

My worst book: Switching Hour. This was awful. I couldn't even bear to finish it.

[Booknblues]

Jen K wrote: "My top 10 for 2020:

Invisible Women- Criado Perez
Behold the Dreamers- Mbue
The Bell Jar- Plath
Indian Horse- Wagamese
Vanishing Half- Bennett
Just Mercy- Stevenson
If Beale Street Could Talk- Bal..."

Behold the Dreamers made my list as well and last year, Indian Horse made my list.

[DianeMP]

My top ten for 2020:

Glass Castle-Walls
Garden Spells-Allen
Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows-Jaswal
A Thousand Splendid Suns-Hesseni
Boy's Life-McCammon
The Sugar Queen-Allen
The Art of Racing in the Rain-Stein
A Walk in the Woods-Bryson
In the Garden of Beasts-Larson
Night-Wiesel

[Joanne]

@ Diane-3 here that I loved-Night, In The Garden of Beasts and Sugar Queen