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: January 2020

The first month of the first year of the decade is over! Hard to believe that in another year, I'll be in full prep for legislative session, but I'm enjoying the easier pace of an off-year for now. And any month where you get to put your feet in the ocean is a good one, eh?

In Books...

• Catch-22: Oh boy did I hate this book! It's a modern classic satire about the absurdity of war. It sort-of has a plot and characters but is mostly just "wow, war is absurd, isn't it?" for nearly 500 pages. This is just very much not my type of humor so it did not work for me at all. 
• Native Speaker: A second-generation Korean-American, Henry, has had a mostly successful career in a sort of corporate espionage, but his latest mark, a Korean-American city councilman in New York City, raises a lot of complicated feelings: about immigration, about language, about being an American. And then there's his personal life, where he's estranged from his Caucasian wife. Mostly meets its high ambitions, though its debut-ness shows at times. 
• Queen of Scots: For a 500-page biography, this actually moves pretty quickly! I'd really had very little understanding of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots before I picked this up but it was fascinating. It's thoroughly researched and mostly well-paced, though it does start to drag a little near the end. If you're interested in the Tudor era, it's definitely worth your time.
• Sin in the Second City: As much as I love Serious Books, a little change of pace is always welcome. This book tells the story of the Everleigh Club, an exclusive brothel in turn-of-the-century Chicago run by two sisters, and the development of the Mann Act/eventual closure of the vice district in highly entertaining fashion. There have to be some slight embellishments here, but they're in service of telling a good story and this was really fun to read!
• Mozart in the Jungle: This isn't just a memoir about Blair Tindall's experiences as a classical musician playing the oboe in New York City, but also about classical music as a cultural phenomenon and industry. The latter works better than the former, because once you get over the shock value of the casual sex and substance use among orchestra members, there's not much compelling left...unless you too have tried to make oboe reeds and found it as stressful as she did, because she talks about it quite a bit.  
• Followers: This exploration of the world that social media has wrought has two storylines. In the present, gossip blog writer Orla helps launch the influencer career of her roommate, Floss. In the second, Marlow, a government-sanctioned "celebrity" living in a town that's a full-time reality show, gets off the mood stabilizing drug she's been the face of for years and starts to see the appeal of the outside world. Mostly decent characterization, with a few missteps, snappy writing, page-turning plot, but it never came together to be more than the sum of its parts for me. 

 
In Life...

• Work retreat in Newport Beach: This year's work retreat was in Orange County, which meant I got to visit the Pacific for a little while along with the actual work bits. The weather was lovely and I had a nice time reconnecting with my colleagues who work in Las Vegas and Phoenix that I never get to see!

One Thing:

Do you need your heart warmed in this cold month? Check out the Dads Who Did Not Want Pets subreddit. Reddit has some toxic communities, but this is just what it sounds like: dads who didn't want to get a pet, got a pet, and now adore the pet. If you are softhearted like me, make sure there are some nearby tissues as you may get something in your eye.

Gratuitous Pug Picture:

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A Month In The Life: January 2020

Top Ten Tuesday: Most Anticipated Book Releases for the First Half of 2020

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, my least-favorite biannual topic: upcoming releases! Like I mentioned in my December monthly wrap-up post, I read over 80% backlist, and like to chose books that have stood the test of time. But I do have 2020 releases that have made my list to read, so here are the ones coming out before the end of June, all of which I am fortunate enough to have review copies of!

Followers: This one will be my first 2020 release of the year. It's a speculative fiction about women getting wrapped up in the world of influncers and social media and seems like a thought-provoking, engaging read.

The Holdout: As a former lawyer, I've always been interested in stories about trials and juries, and so this seems right up my alley. After a holdout juror swings the verdict towards not-guilty in a high profile trial, the jurors come back together for a true crime documentary years later. And then one of them ends up dead. I'm usually a person who prefers character over plot, but this seems like the kind of twisty I could get into.

The Magical Language of Others: A memoir in letters from a mother who leaves her teenage daughter behind in America to return to her native South Korea, this seems like it will be heart-tugging.

Every Reason We Shouldn't: Contemporary romance not usually my genre, but I can never resist a skating angle, so this story about two teenagers who connect at the rink is on my list!

Hidden Valley Road: I was a psychology major, so a book about mental illness research will always grab my attention. This book examines the story of one seemingly-average family who had 12 children, half of whom were eventually diagnosed as schizophrenic, and the role they played in scientific investigation into the causes of this disease.

The Body Double: Another subject area that will almost always catch my eye is the nature of celebrity and fame, so this fictional tale of a young woman hired to impersonate a reclusive Hollywood star who had a nervous breakdown is intriguing.

My Dark Vanessa: This has already gotten a good amount of pre-publication buzz, and promises to tell a compelling story about a woman who finds herself re-evaluating the relationship she had with a teacher when she was in high school, that she felt in control of at the time but is no longer sure about.

Run Me To Earth: I enjoy reading fiction about areas of the world I'd like to learn more about, and southeast Asia is a region I'm definitely under-educated in. This book is about three orphans in Laos in the 1960s, who grow close and then are split across the world when they're evacuated from their homeland, and sounds really interesting!

The Companions: I've always had a soft spot for dystopias, but they have to have a good concept. This one, about a world where one's conciousness can be uploaded before death into various robots to either continue on with one's family (for the lucky) or just rented out for anyone by the company that controls the technology, has caught my eye!

Lakewood: Another dystopian novel, this looks at the history of medical experimentation on people of color by telling a story about a young black woman looking to help her family who finds a job that seems too good to be true. There's a great salary, free housing, and more...she just has to volunteer to be a secret lab rat. Definitely sounds like something that I'd appreciate reading!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Most Anticipated Book Releases for the First Half of 2020

Top Ten Tuesday: Winter TBR

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're talking about the books up next on our to-be-read lists! So here are the ten books I'll be curling up with this winter (or at least, for the next several weeks).

Catch-22: I've never read this! I'm not sure that I'm going to like it, honestly...it doesn't necessarily seem like my kind of humor. But it's a classic, so...

Native Speaker: This is my book club's choice for January! It had already been on my list as a significant Asian-American book, so I'm excited to bump it up.

Queen of Scots: I'm very well-versed in the Tudors, but don't know much of anything about Mary, Queen of Scots, so this bio seems like a good place to start.

Sin and the Second City: Brothel drama in old-timey Chicago is my kind of non-fiction!

Mozart in the Jungle: I have not seen the Amazon series they made out of this memoir about the behind-the-scenes world of being a professional classical musician, but I'm always interested in a peek into a world I would otherwise never see!

Followers: I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about social media and what we give up in return for connection, and this novel looks to explore those themes.

Perfume: Another one where I've not seen the screen treatment (in this case, a movie), but I'm always interested in reading books in translation and this was a big bestseller.

Funny Girl: I'll admit that my most recent experiences reading Hornby have been a little bit on the disappointing side, but he's good enough that I'm always willing to try his work!

The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women: I read a bunch of nonfiction from the Tudor era, usually centered on women, so this deep dive into what their daily lives would have been like is right up my alley.

The Year of Reading Dangerously: Obviously, I love books, so I'm definitely the target audience for a memoir about how reading changes one's life.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Winter TBR