SJJ Book Club: 2020’s Favorite Reads
The creepy, hangover-inducing, only-the-best books of 2020.
I read a lot. And this year surpassed my expectations of the number of books I would read. Might have been something to do with all the unemployment time I had on my hands or my deep need to escape from the world for a while. In total, I read 65. That’s 1¼ books per week. Here are the ones that I particularly liked and think you might, too.
Did I mention I’m starting an official book club? We’re in the process of picking our first book. If you’re interested, hit that button below and I’ll give you a big virtual hug and all the details.
A Book to Read Over and Over
For me, a classic is a book that I can read over and over again and gain new insights. Siddhartha is just that type of book. A journey from adolescence to enlightenment with hundreds of teachable moments along the way if only you know how to look. “When someone seeks,” said Siddhartha, “then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.”
Books That Gave Me a Hangover in the Very Best Way
The Secret History by Donna Tart
Donna Tart has the wonderful ability of creating a world so rich that I felt as if it was my world too. She also plays tricks with her storytelling and kept me propelled through the book. What I thought was going to be the climax was only a quarter of the way through, and then another climax, and another, and probably another until she buit to the ending. She had me so in love with the characters and the story at the end that I was genuinely sad when I finished it. The night I read the last page I wrote in my journal: Do you ever get lonely for a book? Like the way you might for a friend who just left your house? Staying up late into the night, conversations about nothing and everything. But it is late, and they have to go. . . all the way home, which is very far from here. And once they’ve gone you wander around the house feeling it’s emptiness. Like you need to adjust your own body to the lack of the other. To come down from the high you were on. Back to yourself. Alone.
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
A two-stories-in-one and a yep-they’re-connected all in one book. I fell in love with the main character and wish she were a real person. She raised herself from a very young age on a marsh in North Carolina after her dysfunctional family deserts her one by one. I want to tell so much more of her story, bragging about how cool she is, but then I’d give too much away. You should just read it. She’s a gentle badass in the most I-don't-care-what-the-world-thinks-of-me way. Her actions are certainly predicated by childhood trauma, but she makes it work for her. Included in the story are some awesome plant and wildlife facts, including a sinister fact about fireflies.
The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker
A sickness spreads rapidly through a town in California. The town is locked down, people are quarantined. Told from multiple points of view, this story gets at many aspects of what living through the experience of a great sickness is like. I loved how the plot weaves between the real world and the dreams of those affected by the sleeping sickness. Haunting and beautifully written. Karen Thompson Walker expressed how the sleeping sickness exploits our human need for connection, using that as a way to attack: This is how the sickness travels best: through all the same channels as do fondness and friendship and love. I was glued to this book from the moment it started.
Books I Can’t Stop Thinking About
Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman
I think about this book all the time and wish I had retained more of it. Each chapter takes place in a town but each town is different in that time moves differently in each one. Chapter by chapter, Einstein’s theory of relativity is explained in an easy to understand way. A brilliant way to imagine time! And, maybe I’m having a bit of confirmation bias, but goes to show that time is a totally subjective and made up thing and we can think about it however we want.
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
Yikes. This book. This country. This judicial system. Nonfiction and a heavy read. But a necessary read. Stories about people who are wrongly convicted of murder facing the death sentence and told by the lawyer representing them. I cannot get the stories or people out of my head. I was and still am so blind to the injustices of our country. I keep thinking about the woman who was on death row for “murdering” her miscarried and stillborn baby. Let this be a call to action to all of us to fix this system. And let 2021 be the year we start. Please.
Mind F*cks
Ottessa Moshfegh is a brilliant writer. Her characters are simultaneously real, fucked up, normal, outcasts, freaks, and your next door neighbor. Her ability to put so much depth into her characters impresses me. I loved the unreliable narrator style of Eileen. It kept me guessing until the end, and even now, I’m not sure what really happened. Normally, ambiguous endings feel like a cop-out but not this one. Moshfegh left it ambiguous in the best way. By far my favorite author of 2020. I’ve read three of her books and can’t wait to read everything else.
A crime blogger is so good at research and tying clues together that she ends up working with detectives to solve a string of burglaries, rapes, and murders that happened in California in the 70s and 80s.. Need I say more? I’m a sucker for true crime, but this one is something else. The details that the Golden State Killer (GSK) used to evade the cops are astounding: placing a teacup and saucer on the back of a tied up man so that the GSK can hear if he tries to move? Brilliant and so terrifyingly creepy. The HBO documentary series is, while slow at times, is a good companion to the book, but when you watch it don’t fool yourself into thinking you got the whole story.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
Another win for Ottessa Moshfegh. She wrote a character who is quite unlikeable yet I couldn’t stop reading about her. A beautiful trust fund model is so tired of her life that she goes through with a plan to sedate herself through an entire year. I can’t get enough of the characters in Moshfegh’s worlds. Terrible yet so interesting to read about. I really cannot wait to see what other stories she writes. I’m hooked.
Unique Books
Just what I needed at this time in my life. Brought me back to my days in college studying buddhism and meditation. While not specifically tied to any religion, it leans quite heavily eastern. It speaks to the universal truths in all religions and delivers those truths with some pretty groovy illustrations. I’m keeping this around to flip through whenever I need to reflect. A valuable read if you are even the tiniest bit interested in eastern thinking.
Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
No particular characters. No central plot. Just sentence-long fragments of stories that are strung together to tell the diverse story of Japanese women in America before and during World War II. A unique storytelling format and a gripping way to get so detailed. I am shocked at how much depth was packed into this tiny book. Not a word was wasted. While it is a novel, it reads like poetry. This has earned a permanent place on my bookshelf.
