Book of the year 2020

 Our list of books in 2020:

 

Fierce Attachments, Vivian Gornick

Extra credit: Belonging, Nora Krug

Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier

Small Fry, Lisa Brennan Jobs

The Book of Delights, Ross Gay

Fascism, Madeline Albright

What Alice Forgot, Liane Moriarty

Hot Milk, Deborah Levy

The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabelle Wilkerson

Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi

Amateur, A Reckoning with Gender, Identity and Masculinity

Deacon King Kong, James McBride

It's a rare year where we have twelve (eleven if we remove the extra credit book) books to choose from.   Many of these titles were loved and there was a lot of discussion about possibly choosing a favorite fiction and non-fiction this year.  

We tried to each list our favorite two titles, and it went south pretty quickly.  

H: 1) Deacon King Kong
2) Warmth of other Suns

B: 1) Warmth of other Suns (woos)

    2 a) Amateur

        b) Rebecca

       c) Fascism

        d) Deacon King Kong

M 1) WOOS

     2) a) Rebecca

         b) Amateur

A: 1) WOOS

     2) Rebecca

T) Transcendent Kingdom

     Fascism

D) WOOS

      Fascism / Rebecca

Clearly the Warmth of Other Suns wins hands down as the favorite read for 2020, but then the debate about number two evolved into a great discussion about how Deacon King Kong, Fascism and Rebecca were superb reads.  That brought up the love for the Book of Delights.

We agreed that there were no stinkers this year, but that there were a couple that might not have been worth the time during this crazy busy year.  One was described as a "written for the planned Netflix adaptation."   2022 edit:  What Alice Forgot (still not a Netflix movie.)

Then we did something that we've never done, we discussed our favorite "worst" character.  We decided that descriptions of real people disqualify as they might have been just terrible people.  The overwhelming love was for the dastardly evil and malicious housekeeper at Manderley,  Mrs. Danvers.  

Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson, actress)