Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite 2020 Releases

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're talking about our top 2020 releases. As always, I read overwhelmingly backlist, but I read about 15-ish new releases this year and these were my favorite ten (in order from more-to-less loved)!

A Luminous Republic: This short little book feels almost like folklore, telling a tale about a village on the edge of the Argentinian jungle that doesn't quite know how to react when it finds itself invaded by a pack of feral children. This really got under my skin and made me think.

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires: The title is campy, and it often engages in winking humor, but the real story here is about women who feel like they don't quite fit in to their homogeneous southern town finding community together...and also maybe tracking down a vampire.

Mother Daughter Widow Wife: This book was mismarketed badly as a thriller when it's actually much more a work of character analysis, about three women whose lives are forever impacted by the actions of a psychiatrist. 

Plain Bad Heroines: This book has a big story to tell, spanning multiple generations of queer women. It doesn't quite succeed at weaving all of its threads together into a tight pattern, but it's a very atmospherically creepy and entertaining read!

Hidden Valley Road: Imagine having 12 children. And then imagine six of those children developing schizophrenia. It's what actually happened with one family in Colorado Springs, and this book examines the impact of the illness not just upon the children who had it, but the ones who didn't as well. 

Can't Even: Anne Helen Petersen's Buzzfeed article about millennial burnout is fantastic. This book basically just takes the idea and expands it through research and original reporting without adding much that felt new or different. Better for explaining millennials to other people than to themselves.

Followers: This futuristic story based on social media/influencer culture, and it does some interesting things but can't quite sustain itself.

A Beginning at the End: A post-pandemic story about a family which has experienced loss might have landed a little better in virtually any other year. 

His Only Wife: This debut does not imbue the central relationship its narrative depends on with the believablity it needs, but it is otherwise quite promising!

Highfire: I thought this was a bit of a miss, honestly, but my hopes may have been disproportionately high. It's silly and enjoyable enough, if ultimately forgettable. 

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Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite 2020 Releases

A Month In The Life: April 2020

You almost have to wonder if Corona the beer is going to re-brand after all this...I think we're all very tired of hearing about corona anything! I never thought I would miss waking up early and going into the office, honestly, but here I am hoping that I get to spend some quality hours outside the apartment sometime soon (when it's safe, of course).

In Books...

• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: The more broadly I read, the more I learn that there are certain sorts of books that are just not for me. The subgenre I've dubbed "nature thoughts" is one of them. Unfortunately for me, this Pulitzer Prize-winner is exactly that. Dillard's devotion to examining plant and animal life alongside the creek in the Virginia backcountry is clearly deep, and her writing is sweeping and ambitious, but I found it both terminally dull and eye-rollingly overwrought.
• Shatter Me: This, on the other hand, very much worked for me, despite the fact that I've largely moved past YA dystopias of the "chosen one" variety. Part of that is the way that Mafi crafts a unique voice for her heroine, which helps it rise above the many tropes she indulges in. And to be honest, part of it is probably related to the fact that this kind of angsty drama is just easy and fun to read, especially in a time of crisis. 
• Amateur: This short book is about the author's experience of becoming the first trans man to box at Madison Square Garden (as part of a charity match). It's a blend of memoir and examination of masculinity, particularly the ways in which violence is tied in to conceptions of maleness. It's honestly uneven: some moments all but took my breath away with their clarity and insight, but at other times you can feel McBee stretching to pad out the page count with superfluous information or digressions that never really go anywhere. 
• The Perfect Son: This is the kind of low-stakes family drama which I usually enjoy: when a hyper-involved stay-at-home mother has a massive heart attack, her workaholic investment banker husband and their son, who has Tourette's, find themselves really needing to connect for the first time. It is FULL of cliches and lazy sentimentality and the resolution is way too pat and predictable and I did not like it at all.
• A Beginning at the End: First of all, this was 1000% the wrong time to be reading a book about the world in the wake of a major pandemic, but that's not the book's fault. This had promise: the characters were compelling and relatable, and I was impressed by how well it was structured and paced. But there were some clumsy moments, some promising plot elements never really developed, and the end in particular resolved a little too neatly.
• Cutting for Stone: I'm a sucker for a family epic set against significant historical events, so this over-600-pager set in and around a hospital in Addis Ababa during the reign of Haile Selassie was very appealing to me. The storytelling is strong, and I enjoyed it overall, but the main character was underdeveloped and while the prose quality was competent enough it never took off like I wanted it to.

 
In Life...

• Social distancing continues: Like many of you, I spent the month trying to leave my house as little as possible. I'll be honest: this really sucks. I miss my coworkers, I miss my friends, I miss my book club. I miss places that aren't my apartment. I miss going to the thrift store to browse around. I miss planning vacations. I am so happy that we've been able to flatten the curve as much as we have, but I am ready for what's next...but only once it's right, which I very much hope is sooner rather than later!

One Thing:

The library is always a great community resource, but as their buildings are closed, I recommend taking a look at what's available online! I've been able to access Rosetta Stone through the Clark County library system to try to brush up a little on my long-faded Italian, and have been watching some of The Great Courses to keep myself intellectually engaged. I had no idea before the pandemic that either was available to me as a cardholder!

Gratuitous Pug Picture: 

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A Month In The Life: April 2020

Top Ten Tuesday: Spring 2020 TBR

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week is another seasonal TBR. It's officially spring as of Thursday, so let's look at the books I'll be reading over the next several weeks (or maybe faster, if I'm stuck at home without much else to do for any extended period of time!).

The Magical Language of Others: This is a memoir by a woman whose Korean parents, after having immigrated to America with their children, went back to South Korea and left them behind...her mother wrote her letters, and Koh went back and re-read them as an adult to try to make sense of it all. This sounds heart-wrenching and amazing.

White Teeth: I've somehow never read Zadie Smith before, and this story about two war buddies coming back to England and changing as the world changes sounds like a great place to start.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: This environmental non-fiction won a Pulitzer, so I'll read it.

Shatter Me: I don't read much YA, but this book is supposed to be fun and I could use some brain candy right now.

The Perfect Son: I'm a sucker for a family saga and this one has very solid reviews.

A Beginning at the End: I would actually probably skip this pandemic-based post-apocalyptic story right now but I feel bad enough about being late to get to this review copy!

Cutting for Stone: Another family saga! This one has been recommended by people I trust so I'm going to try it out.

Bird Box: I've had this hanging out on my Kindle forever, long before the Netflix movie came out, and I'm finally going to get around to reading it!

The Son: I'd heard good things about Jo Nesbo's work and found this one secondhand before I found the first of his Harry Hole series so figured I might as well start here.

The Weight of Silence: This was a book that looked good during a browse of what was on sale for the Kindle, so we'll see how it plays out (suspense isn't always my fave).

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Top Ten Tuesday: Spring 2020 TBR