favourite books of 2020

Favourite Books of 2020 – Part 3

Hey, it’s January! This blog is getting ooold. Anyway, this post should have been written in December, but I have a lot of “looking ahead” bookish posts coming up and might as well start with this little unfinished Favourite Books Part 3. Links to the other two: Favourite Books of 2020 – Part 1 and Part 2.

1. All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr – I’d borrowed this gem from a friend and it came highly recommend and it was worth every moment spent on it. I have seen and read enough fiction around WW2 to feel compassion fatigue and a general wariness about picking up yet another formulaic designed-to-make-you-cry book. This was a breath of fresh air. The story is … – quoting the Goodreads blurb – … about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

2. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen – One word: genius! The Sympathizer is set at the end of the Vietnam War. As multitudes of Americans evacuate the country, our narrator is one of the locals who escape. He works for a general of the South Vietnamese army. Except… he’s actually been a North Vietnamese spy all along, a Communist sympathizer. What unfolds is a social satire of the Vietnam War, its depictions by American media, the alienation experienced by those rendered homeless, loss of identity in exile, and the Westerner’s misguided understanding of the East. It’s a comedy, tragedy and psychological thriller all rolled into one.

3. Hidden Things by Doyce Testerman – Full review here. A detective receives a mysterious phone call with some clues from her partner, and hours later, he is found dead. She sets off on a mission to find out what really happened, following the few clues left by her partner… only to be lead into a dark supernatural trap that lies waiting beneath our mundane world. It’s an American Gods meets Dresden Files kind of adventure – with shadow creatures, clowns, goblins… and could it be possible?… dragons! One of the coolest finds of the year.

4. The White Zone by Carolyn Marsden – A touching, sweet story about two ten-year-old boys, growing up in Baghdad, both of them innocent spectators and soon-to-be perpetrators of communal violence, in the aftermath of the Iraq War. In early 2008, there was a snow fall in Baghdad for the first time in a hundred years (in fact, it happened again last year after more than a decade.) This story is weaved around that one event, that miracle, that while it lasted, seemed to blur out the differences that waged war in lives of these boys. The story has an uncanny depth of character, and this subtlety, both surprising for a book means for young adults.

5. First They Erased Our Name: A Rohingya Speaks by Habiburahman – Quoting the Amazon blurb – “Habiburahman was born in 1979 and raised in a small village in western Burma. When he was three years old, the country’s military leader declared that his people, the Rohingya, were not one of the 135 recognized ethnic groups that formed the eight “national races. He was left stateless in his own country. In 2016 and 2017, the government intensified the process of ethnic cleansing, and over 700,000 Rohingya people were forced to cross the border into Bangladesh.” It is a small, personal glimpse into a modern tragedy, a political horror story that is too difficult to fit into words. Unimaginable!

6. What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape by Sohaila Abdulali – Oh man, this book. You really need to have the stomach for this kind of brutal honesty; the kind that makes you uncomfortable, or “sounds funny” or sounds not-true, because it’s so beyond your scope of imagination. It starts out as a quasi-memoir, as Abdudali details her own experience and soon transforms into a cut-throat dissection of rape culture. A must read for any and all of us!

Favourite Books of 2020 -Part 2

This post is the second of its kind and there will be at least one more. Part 1 of Favourite Books of 2020 can be found here.

1. Baptism of Fire (Witcher #3) by Andrzej Sapkowski – This is admittedly a strange choice for a favourites list and it doesn’t work as a recommendation. Surely you would have to read at least 2 books before you start this, not counting the short story collections before that. But I just loved the book! It has so much character development.. and the pace, and story perfectly complement what it sets out to do. Like any mid-series installment, it wants to take a pause, stall the reader and very books achieve that very well.

2. Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward – Short review here. Men We Reaped is a memoir set in Mississippi. It follows the tragic and difficult stories of the writer’s childhood and the men she lost to drugs, suicide, accidents and the kind of bad luck that only afflicts the poor and the minorities. It is anecdotal, emotional, nostalgic… and this style of writing adds substance to a dry discourse on race that often inundates, but does not move.

3. Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje – I often choose to read the “less famous” works to get a taste of the author before reading what they’re best known for. Running in the Family is hilarious! It’s a partly fictionalised, surreal, postmodernism memoir about the writer’s family in Sri Lanka, wherein he traces both their history as well as a recent visit he paid them. It’s also a travelogue and poses as a love letter to Sri Lanka with all its quirks. Superb writing!

4. Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson – I wanted to read this ever since I read about this lawyer through Anthony Ray Hinton’s perspective in The Sun Does Shine. Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer and the man behind Equal Justice Initiative, which is a non-profit that provides legal representation to prisoners who have been wrongly convicted, denied a fair trial or anyone on death row. Just Mercy was published in 2014 and it is interesting to see what the initiative has done in the years since. The book itself is heart-breaking and terrifying at once… the information just plain scary and the stories heavy with emotion.

5. Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill – Sea of Rust is this fascinating double dystopia… the human civilisation has been long destroyed and taken over by AI, and now… it’s the robot civilisation that has turned on itself… Left on the planet are a few stray scavenger robots, who are on the run from what seems like inevitable assimilation with their very own big brother. Stranded in this place, called the Sea of Rust, is one old robot. This story is his search for meaning and for some remnant of the humanity in whose image all robots were created.

6. My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elisabeth Russell – Detailed review here. An incredible book! This is the story of a woman who discovers that one of her old teachers has been accused in a #MeToo scandal. Soon, we learn that Vanessa had an affair with the very same teacher. In fact, she had been in love with him. The story unfolds through her fifteen year old perspective. Meanwhile, in the future, the woman comes to terms with a reality that she had buried.

Favourite Books of 2020 – Part 1

A third of the year is over. I haven’t read as much as I had planned, and I haven’t blogged at all! It’s hard to write individual reviews or a full recap at the end of the year either. So I have decided to do it in three parts. So here’s what I’ve been reading:

1. Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
This is one of the craziest books I have ever read. Cosmicomics is a collection of anecdotes from a omnipresent narrator at different points in space and time. Each short story is built around a scientific or pseudo-scientific concept; a “what if” question. There is a story about a creature who, as his galaxy slowly turns, is eaten up with the frustration of being unable to leave a lasting impression on the endless nothingness around him that is sure to outlast him. Another story is about a couple living on an early planet where their blossoming romance is interrupted by the formation of the atmosphere, and therefore, the introduction of colour into their lives. The first tale, The Distance of the Moon, imagines life on earth if the moon were so close we could climb on to it! I could go on and on. Each story is bizarre, hilarious, beautiful.

2. The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton

This one of the most beautiful books I have ever read and the most difficult to write about. I have never given much thought to capital punishment or the laws that surround it, but after this book, I found myself reading up on the death penalty in India and contemplating how many lives depend on a flawed system. So this is Hinton’s story. At the age of 29, a poor black man was convicted of murder and spent three decades on death row in Alabama, after being finally freed for wrongful conviction. This is his memoir. I don’t even know where to begin to describe this book. I don’t know what I could say to capture how it tore at me. The raw terror, the compassion, the fear he describes are feelings I was not prepared to understand or confront. To spend thirty years proving your innocence, to be set free as an old man into a world changed beyond recognition? Just the thought of this book still gives me goosebumps. This is the only time that I’ve read a memoir once and then immediately flipped back the pages and read it all over again, cover to cover. Indescribable!

3. Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

This book is about something I hadn’t given enough thought to but should have: geriatrics. Gawande talks about how we see death as inevitable and yet, an enemy, and know only one way to approach it: through weapons of modern medicine. He sheds light on the dearth of facilities that ensure an old person’s comfort in his final days. He describes the inadequacy of nursing homes in looking after an old person’s emotional and mental health. He tells us the importance of geriatrics and the lack of funding. He gives a unique doctor’s perspective on how, in the final years of one’s life (as perhaps at any other time) it is quality that matters over quantity. This book makes one demand: we need to change the conversation about old age.

4. Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine

I never would have realised how greatly I needed to read a book on conservation by a sort of cynical comic science fiction writer… And now that I have read it, I don’t know what I would have done without it. Books on conservation have some things in common – they’re sad, disconcerting, hopeless even when they’re trying to be hopeful. I am still drawn to writings about wildlife in spite of the hopelessness they often fill me with. But this wasn’t any old book on wildlife. Adams was able to give a new flavour to an old disconcerting conversation. And I am much the wiser for it. I couldn’t put it into a coherent review if I wanted to, but this is a must read – an unexpected perspective at the very least.

5. Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto

Yoshimoto has been on my list of to-reads for years and years. It seems to me as if this is the first time that a Japanese-translation has resonated with me. This is a young adult book, but not your typical one. Goodbye Tsugumi is the story of our narrator Maria and her cousin and unlikely friend – a young girl named Tsugumi, who is sassy, blunt and bold. Bubbling with anger at a world that hasn’t given her a fair chance, Tsugumi has spent most of her life bedridden with an unnamed ailment. It’s a story about transitional periods in life, coming to terms with our destiny in a manner of our own choosing; it’s about family and friendship and all the pastel-tinted sweet nothings we associate with growing up. For the reader, Yoshimoto has crafted a character who creates such conflicting impressions at every turn – both instant dislike and unwavering compassion; Tsugumi pushes us to question our prejudices.

6. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin

Like the previous book, I just randomly found this on Scribd and fell in love with the concept. The book is a collection of short stories which are strung together by one shared element: all the characters are related in some way or the other to K.K. Harouni, a wealthy landowner. Servants, businessmen, relatives and acquaintances, all tied to each other through this patriarchal figure. The stories are rich, character pieces, with complex world building, which traverse the social and economic hierarchies in contemporary Pakistan. Very engaging.

I’ve built a habit of writing Goodreads reviews capturing my thoughts right after I finished the book, so this post should have been easy to compile. Here’s the trouble though. For most of these books, my review just says “no words,” or “no words until I chew on this a bit more.” So I had to spend quite a bit of time writing this post, but it also gave me a chance to revisit the books and rediscover why I loved them. (It’s weird that three of these books are non-fiction, this has never happened to me before.) I hope that the rest of the year is as fulfilling. Have you read any of these? What have you been reading?