Best books read in 2020

[justbecause]

SO the reading thread:
What book/s did you enjoy the most this year?

[abs]

It was a tough reading year for me but I did get in some good ones!

Big Lies in a Small Town-Diane Chamberlain
The Unhoneymooners-Christina Lauren
A Woman is No Man-Etaf Rum
The Last Train to Key West-Chanel Cleeton

[kittyriot]

How to Pronounce Knife
The Henna Artist
Calypso
The Splendid and the Vile
Beautiful Ruins
Circe
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
The Bookish Life of Nina Hill
I've Been Meaning to Tell You
Love Lives Here
Indian Horse
Untamed (I know lots of people didn't love this book, but I really enjoy her, the way she writes, and her insights often speak to me)

[justbecause]

Best ones:

Six of Crows
The House in the Cerulean Sea
Ninth House
The House with a clock in its walls
Becoming

Honorable mentions:
Little Fires everywhere
Yellow House
Artemis
The Revenant

[Deleted]

One of my goals this year is to get back reading knife. I’ll be following this for ideas to add to my list.

[flamingo]

I don't normally 'go' here but I love book threads!

The Secrets We Kept (Prescott)
An American Marriage (Jones)
American Dirt (Cummins)
The Splendid and the Vile (Larsen)
The Silent Patient (Michaelides)

honorable mention: The Mother-in-Law (Hepworth)...purchased on a whim on my Nook b/c it was $3 and sounded interesting...very entertaining and a page-turner.

[djs]

The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Strange Weather in Tokyo, by Hiromi Kawakami

[caer]

These were my favorite books of the year - they weren’t all necessarily the “best” books in a literary sense but they are the ones I enjoyed the most:

- Anxious People
- The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
- Writers and Lovers
- The Guest List
- Beach Read
- Trust Exercise
- Long Bright River

[leahcar]

I fell in love with Taylor Jenkins Reid this year. Daisy Jones & the Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo were my tops this year.

[northernlghts]

Dec 29, 2020 8:25:33 GMT -6 abs said:

It was a tough reading year for me but I did get in some good ones!

Big Lies in a Small Town-Diane Chamberlain
The Unhoneymooners-Christina Lauren
A Woman is No Man-Etaf Rum
The Last Train to Key West-Chanel Cleeton

The Unhoneymooners was really cute!

[angelashly]

It has been a weird reading year for me none have been 5 star worthy so I’ll be following this thread

Books I’ve enjoyed:
The hideaway
The bromance book club series
Lock every door
The wives (until the end😡)
Open Book (Jessica Simpson’s book)
The wife stalker

[angelashly]

Dec 29, 2020 8:34:15 GMT -6 kbw said:

One of my goals this year is to get back reading knife. I’ll be following this for ideas to add to my list.

Join us in our reading thread it always keeps me reading

[northernlghts]

I have one more book to finish this week to get to goal of 50.

The Woman in the Window (Finn)
Reconstructing Amelia (McCreight)
Sometimes I Lie (Feeney)
The Wives (Fisher)
The Chain (McKinty)
The Last Mrs Parrish (Constantine)
Finding Tranquility (Heffernan)

[emma]

I haven’t read much this year but by far the best was The Hearts Invisible Furies - John Boyne

[flamingo]

Dec 29, 2020 9:12:31 GMT -6 swellist said:

Ooof, kittyriot , flamingo and whoever else read it — I found The Splendid and the Vile to be suuuuuch a slog. Maybe it’s because I was first tri and pandemicking, but no thank you.

I love Larsen's books and anything WWII, so found it fascinating. But yes, it's long and definitely not a light read!

If you want something in a similar genre, but more fictionalized, Lady Clementine was entertaining. You get the wife's story, she was a very interesting person in her own right. 

[emma]

Dec 29, 2020 8:54:29 GMT -6 northernlghts said:

I have one more book to finish this week to get to goal of 50.

The Woman in the Window (Finn)
Reconstructing Amelia (McCreight)
Sometimes I Lie (Feeney)
The Wives (Fisher)
The Chain (McKinty)
The Last Mrs Parrish (Constantine)
Finding Tranquility (Heffernan)

mean book club does a great episode on The Woman in the Window

[adelbert]

I actually had a lot of books I loved reading this year. In no particular order...

This is How You Lose the Time War
The Prefect
Never Split the Difference
Maybe You Should Talk To Someone
The Book of Koli
The Girl Who Smiled Beads
A Deadly Education
Network Effect
No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us
Rising: Dispatches From The New American Shore

[cdnfroggy]

Oh man, I had a really good reading year and Had quite a few favourites, so in no particular order:

-The Witches are Coming (Lindy West)
-White Fragility
-The Sothern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires (Grady Hendrix)
-The Deep (Alma Katsu)
-Hairspray and Switchblades (V. Castro)
-Worst Laid Plans (Horror anthology)
-The House in the Cerulean Sea (TJ Klune)
-Tender is the Flesh
-Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers
-Hex Life (Horror anthology)

[flamingo]

Ooh, the Dutch House (Patchett) was another really good one.

[wedding]

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (Gail Honeymain)
I'm Thinking of Ending Things (Iain Reid)
The Glass Hotel (Emily St. John Mandel)
Station 11 (Emily St. John Mandel)
The Butterfly Girl (Rene Denfield)
The Silent Wife (Karin Slaughter)
Anxious People (Fredrick Backman)

[Ls2012]

I haven't read nearly as much as intended, but there were some good ones.

Circe (Miller) * honestly can't remember if I read it this year or last, but it stands out *

Hamnet (O'Farrell)
The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne (Hart)
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (Turton)
Into The Planet (Heinerth)

[microworm]

Dec 29, 2020 8:34:15 GMT -6 kbw said:

One of my goals this year is to get back reading knife. I’ll be following this for ideas to add to my list.

Same. I just downloaded Lying Next to Me on my Kindle and it is the first book I've read in....a very very long time. I was just perusing the free Prime books and picked it. Got decent ratings.

[microworm]

But I will be bookmarking this thread!

[brux]

This was the first year in many years that I read more than a handful of books. It felt really nice.

Some of my favorites (keeping in mind that I tend to like most books and didn't read that many to have a list of actual faves):

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal

[CestLaVie]

brux kitchens of the great midwest is one of my faves. I can't wait to read his new one.

[CestLaVie]

Mine were:

Code Name Helene
Between the World and Me
The Dutch House
The Splendid and the Vile
City of Girls

Buy Yourself the Fucking Lillies
24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a week
The Power of Ritual

[brux]

Dec 29, 2020 10:30:53 GMT -6 CestLaVie said:

brux kitchens of the great midwest is one of my faves. I can't wait to read his new one.

is there a new one coming?  I read his Lager Queen one immediately after the Kitchens book and found it meh.  Like, same book formula but not as good.

[CestLaVie]

Dec 29, 2020 10:33:37 GMT -6 brux said:

Dec 29, 2020 10:30:53 GMT -6 CestLaVie said:

brux kitchens of the great midwest is one of my faves. I can't wait to read his new one.

is there a new one coming?  I read his Lager Queen one immediately after the Kitchens book and found it meh.  Like, same book formula but not as good.

Thats the one I was thinking of, damn!

[sweptaway]

I just went through my Good Reads and my favorites from this year were all non-fiction; they were actually published in 2018 and 2019 but I read them this year
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
The Yellow House by Sarah Broom
Amity and Prosperity by Eliza Griswold

[kenzie]

Favorites:
Commonwealth
You Think It, I'll Say It
The Heart's Invisible Furies
Pachinko

Honorable mentions:
Homegoing
Calypso
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone