{"id":20350,"date":"2021-01-01T17:02:51","date_gmt":"2021-01-01T22:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/?p=20350"},"modified":"2021-01-01T17:02:51","modified_gmt":"2021-01-01T22:02:51","slug":"year-in-books-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2021\/01\/01\/year-in-books-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Year in Books 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>Your Humble Blogger read 62 books in 2020\u2014I\u2019ll do a separate post with statistical analysis, as I like to do. This year I\u2019m grouping them into genres, which is pretty arbitrary. As usual, these are books that I read for the first time in 2020; I\u2019m not counting re-reads. I probably read a few that I forgot to write down, too.\r\n\r\n<p>The largest group are the Speculative Fiction books that would probably be found on the grown-up shelves:\r\n<ul><li><i>5 to 1<\/i>, by Holly Bodger<\/li>\r\n<li><i>A Deadly Education<\/i>, by Naomi Novik<\/li>\r\n<li><i>A Memory Called Empire<\/i>, by Arkady Martine<\/li>\r\n<li><i>A Pale Light in the Black<\/i>, by K.B. Wagers<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Circe<\/i>, by Madeline Miller<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Deathless Divide<\/i>, by Justina Ireland<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Deeplight<\/i>, by Frances Hardinge<\/li>\r\n<li><i>False Value<\/i>, by Ben Aaronovitch<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Tales from the Folly<\/i>, by Ben Aaronovitch<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Gideon the Ninth<\/i>, by Tamsyn Muir<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Lovecraft Country<\/i>, by Matt Ruff<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Network Effect<\/i>, by Martha Wells<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Nine Goblins<\/i>, by T. Kingfisher<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Paladin\u2019s Grace<\/i>, by T. Kingfisher<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Oona Out of Order<\/i>, by Margarita Montimore<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Piranesi<\/i>, by Susanna Clarke<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The Kingdom of Copper<\/i>, by S. A. Chakraborty<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The Left-Handed Booksellers of London<\/i>, by Garth Nix<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The Physicians of Vilnoc<\/i>, by Lois McMaster Bujold<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The Poppy War<\/i>, by R. F. Kuang<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The Resisters<\/i>, by Gish Jen<\/li><\/ul>\r\n<p>Of those, I would say that <i>Deeplight<\/i> is my favorite, alongside <i>The Resisters<\/i> and <i>Paladin\u2019s Grace<\/i>. \r\n\r\n<p>And then the ones that would probably be on the YA shelves:\r\n<ul><li><i>An Ember in the Ashes<\/i>, by Sabaa Tahir<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Faith<\/i>, by Julie Murphy<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Kind of a Big Deal<\/i>, by Shannon Hale<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Landscape with Invisible Hand<\/i>, by M. T. Anderson<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Star Daughter<\/i>, by Shveta Thakrar<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes<\/i>, by Suzanne Collins<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The Fever King<\/i>, by Victoria Lee<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Trixter<\/i>, by Alethea Kontis<\/li>\r\n<li><i>A Wizard\u2019s Guide to Defensive Baking<\/i>, by T. Kingfisher<\/li><\/ul>\r\n<p>I think the <i>Wizard\u2019s Guide<\/i> was my favorite of those. I really liked <i>Faith<\/i> as well, although I didn\u2019t actually know as I was reading it that it was a tie-in to an actual comic book series.\r\n\r\n<p>Some mystery novels, all of which are set in the late 19th or early 20th century:\r\n<ul><li><i>Riviera Gold<\/i>, by Laurie R. King<\/li>\r\n<li><i>A Spy in the House<\/i>, by Y. S. Lee<\/li>\r\n<li><i>A Study in Scarlet Women<\/i>, by Sherry Thomas<\/li>\r\n<li><i>A Conspiracy in Belgravia<\/i>, by Sherry Thomas<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The Hollow of Fear<\/i>, by Sherry Thomas<\/li><\/ul>\r\n<P>I obviously liked the Sherry Thomas books enough to read all three of them, although that was mostly because they were incredibly trashy and light.\r\n<p>Some historical novels that aren\u2019t primarily mysteries or have particular speculative elements:\r\n<ul><li><i>The Evening and the Morning<\/i>, by Ken Follett<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The Nickel Boys<\/i>, by Colson Whitehead<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The War I Finally Won<\/i>, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The War that Saved My Life<\/i>, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Wolf Hall<\/i>, by Hilary Mantel<\/li><\/ul>\r\n<p>I really enjoyed the Kimberly Brubaker Bradley books. The <i>Nickel Boys<\/i> was powerful, but at least at the moment it feels like my least favorite of the Whitehead books I\u2019ve read. \r\n<p>Some novels which aren\u2019t primarily mysteries, and which may have a couple of speculative elements but wouldn\u2019t be shelved in the SF section:\r\n<ul><li><i>Braised Pork<\/i>, by An Yu<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Cactus League<\/i>, by Emily Nemens<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Night Boat to Tangier<\/i>, by Kevin Barry<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Plain Bad Heroines<\/i>, by Emily Danforth<\/li><\/ul>\r\n<p>These all had good and bad points, and I liked them enough to finished them, but I didn\u2019t love any of them, and I probably wouldn\u2019t seek out any of these writers again unless the subject of the book caught my eye.\r\n\r\n<p>Plays and a book of reviews and essays:\r\n<ul><li><i>A Very Very Very Very Dark Matter<\/i>, by Martin McDonagh<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Autumn<\/i>, by Richard Wesley<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Chimerica<\/i>, by Lucy Kirkwood<\/li>\r\n<li><i>The wrong Mr. Wright<\/i>, by George Howells Broadhurst<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Plays and Players<\/i>, by G.B. Shaw<\/li><\/ul>\r\n<p>I also started an attempt to read all of Shakespeare\u2019s plays this year, which tailed off about midsummer. However, I read <i>Cymbeline<\/i>, <i>Henry VI Part I, II<\/i> and <i>III<\/i>, <i>King John<\/i> and <i>Two Gentlemen of Verona<\/i> as well as <i>Venus and Adonis<\/i>, none of which I\u2019ve ever read before. I also am pretty sure I read more plays than this, but I don\u2019t have any in my notes so they don\u2019t go on the list. And during my furlough from the library that employs me, I had access to a lot fewer plays than I usually do.\r\n\r\n<p>Also a few graphic works:\r\n<ul><li><i>Check Please book 2<\/i>, by Ngozi Ukazy<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Guts<\/i>, by Raina Telgemeier<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Ms. Marvel Volume 1<\/i>, by G. Willow Wilson<\/li><\/ul>\r\n\r\n<p>A few memoirs or non-fiction works:\r\n<ul><li><i>Home Work<\/i>, by Julie Andrews<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Me<\/i>, by Elton John<\/li>\r\n<li><i>Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race<\/i>, by Reni Eddo-Lodge<\/li><\/ul>\r\n\r\n<p>That\u2019s all of them. A pretty good Year in Books. \r\n<p><I>Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I><br>-Vardibidian.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger lists, lists, lists.","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20350"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20352,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20350\/revisions\/20352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}