I made a rash commitment to finish my book list over the three-day MLK weekend. And then all of a sudden the MLK weekend was here and gone, and as the next three-day weekend approached, I still was not finished. I always forget how much work this is. I write about some books right after I read them, and then I have to search my blog and my Google Docs folder to find what I wrote. That’s easy enough. What’s not easy is to remember what I thought about the books that I read but didn’t write about during the year. Thank God this isn’t my actual paid job.
I wrote that paragraph well over a week ago. Now two people in my house have COVID, and the other two of us can’t go anywhere--I mean even more than we couldn’t go anywhere before. Being nearly totally housebound drove me to get this done so I can waste your time with my inane observations about things other than books. I spent a few days updating the blog with posts about specific books and authors, which I am linking to here, so that this list won’t be quite so God-awful long and meandering. I do try to be helpful.
Anyway, in very approximate chronological order according to my now very messy handwritten list, here are the books I read in 2020.
*****
The Little Friend (Donna Tartt). This was my 2020 - 2021 overlap book. I wrote about it here.
*****
Working (Studs Terkel). Working, which made Studs Terkel famous when it was published in 1974, is a series of stories narrated in the first person by a huge collection of people spanning a pretty big variety of professions, social classes, and education levels. Its full title is Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. That title is exactly right. Terkel adds short introductions of each subject, and occasionally adds his own comments and observations; but most of the book is people talking about their work and how they feel about it. Their voices come through very clearly.
Here’s a question: What makes a job a good job? Pay, hours, working conditions, title, commute, benefits--all of those things are important. But Working makes clear that the work itself is the most important thing. If the work isn’t interesting or if the person doing the job doesn’t see its value to the world, then it almost doesn’t matter how much it pays, or how prestigious it is, or how pleasant the working conditions are. We have an innate need for meaning in our work. As one of Terkel’s subjects says, "That's the difference between being alive and being dead."
*****
How to Ruin Everything (George Watsky). Certain smarmy younger people, including one to whom I actually gave birth, have expressed surprise that I read this book. I see no reason why this should be surprising. I hope Mr. Watsky writes more books. And I hope some millennial or Gen Z-er stumbles across this blog post and finds it hilarious that I refer to him as Mr. Watsky.
The Best of Marlys (Lynda Barry). This is an anthology of Ernie Pook’s Comeek, one of the best comic strips ever. Last year, I bought Making Comics, and it made me remember how much I loved Lynda Barry, so I bought this best-of directly from the publisher, Drawn and Quarterly. I didn’t read it all the way through in 2020, so maybe it shouldn’t be on my list, but I’m counting it anyway because I’m pretty sure that I read most of these strips when they were originally published. When I was in my early 20s, my friend and I used to cut these out of the Philadelphia City Paper and mail them to each other, even though we lived in the same town and saw each other at least once a week. I found a few of them among my old letters when I was cleaning out cabinets. It was a different time, but Ernie Pook’s Comeek holds up.
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| Does this picture make you hungry for a fried-baloney sandwich? |
*****
The Princess Diarist (Carrie Fisher). I loved Carrie as an actress, but I love her even more as a writer. This is the book in which she famously revealed the long-suspected affair with Harrison Ford, who appears to have been a bit of a jerk. She shares long entries from her 1976 journal (she was 19 at the time), and they are astonishingly good. I write every day, but when I read writing that’s so effortlessly beautiful and incisive, I wonder why I bother. But then I go back and read some of my own work, and I know why. It’s because I’m good at this. So was Carrie Fisher. God rest her soul.
*****
Sally Rooney:
- Conversations with Friends
- Normal People
For some reason, it is now fashionable on the Internet to talk about how overrated Sally Rooney is, and how ordinary and dull her two novels are. Disregard all of this talk when you come across it because Sally Rooney is a wonderful writer, and Normal People and Conversations with Friends are both beautiful books. I wrote about Conversations with Friends early last year, but I never got around to writing about Normal People. It’s not very long; or maybe it is but it didn’t seem long because of two things: I read it just after I finished Ron Chernow’s Hamilton, also wonderful, but VERY long. And because it’s so good that I didn’t want it to end, but it did end despite my best efforts to ration the last few pages so that I wouldn’t finish it too quickly.
Normal People gets so many things right, but if I had to pick just one thing, it would be the beauty and pain and loneliness of a young person’s first time away from home; especially a certain kind of introspective young person, and really especially the kind of young person who doesn’t always understand the social signals in a new environment. I was nowhere near as bright or as sensitive as Normal People's Marianne or Connell; and I grew up in a place and time quite different from Ireland in 2011, but I was very much like Connell in one way. I was the child of an unsophisticated working-class family who encountered worldly, cultured, well-educated people for the first time when I went to college. Like Connell, I didn’t know how to fit in with them; and then later, I didn’t know if I even wanted to. Like both Marianne and Connell, I experienced real loneliness and depression for the first time as a young adult. And like both of them, I learned that “life offers up these moments of joy despite everything.” It still does.
*****
Loving My Actual Life: An Experiment in Relishing What’s Right in Front of Me (Alexandra Kuykendall). I know that I read this because it’s on my list. If I’d especially loved or especially hated it, I’d have written something about it. Anyway, the message is right there in the title, and it’s a good one.
Happens Every Day (Isabel Gillies). Early pandemic reading. I wrote about this one right here. I might read it again. It’s very good.
The Reading Life (C.S. Lewis)
The Hope of the Gospel (George MacDonald). George MacDonald had been on my to-read list for a long time, so I’m glad I finally got around to reading him. Now I don’t have to feel guilty every time I read C.S. Lewis, who urged everyone to read George MacDonald. He was right.
Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl (Jeannie Vanasco)
Goodbye to Berlin (Christopher Isherwood)
*****
Hilary Mantel:
- Wolf Hall
- Bring Up the Bodies
- The Mirror and the Light
- Giving Up the Ghost
- Eight Months on Ghazzah Street
- Mantel Pieces
Hilary Mantel was my author of the year for 2020.
*****
Not That Kind of Girl (Lena Dunham). I wrote this down, so I suppose I read it. IDK why. I guess I wanted to catch up with what young women were thinking about five years ago.
*****
- 84, Charing Cross Road
- The Duchess of Bloomsbury
- Underfoot in Show Business
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| Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins as Helene Hanff and Frank Doel in the 1987 movie version of 84, Charing Cross Road. It almost doesn't matter if you see the movie first and then read the book or vice versa. |
*****
Your Blue Flame (Jennifer Fulwiler). I like Jennifer Fulwiler, and it’s hard not to admire a woman who decides that she needs to go on tour as a stand-up comedian, and then just does it, successfully, on her own, with no backing or support from the entertainment establishment. I don’t remember much about this book other than the general premise, which is that you should find the thing that you’re meant to do--your blue flame--and then just do it and don’t let anyone stand in your way. To which I say, absolutely. Sure. Why not. You go, girl. Get it. Get after it. Crush it. Kill it. Slay.
*****
- This is My Life
- The Wife
- The Interestings
The Rent Collector (Camron Wright). A friend recommended this to me, and I read it, and then I felt bad about myself because I did not find the story as moving and inspiring as I was supposed to. What the hell is wrong with me?
*****
The Life of Elizabeth I (Alison Weir) and Mary Tudor, England’s First Queen (Anna Whitelock). It was a year full of Tudors.
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| Always a bad relationship choice. He only killed two of his six wives, but that's 33 percent. Are are those odds that you want to mess with? |
*****
Hamilton (Ron Chernow). I can’t be the only person who saw the musical first and then read the book. Among many things for which I will remember 2020, some good, and most bad, Hamilton is among the very good.
The Man Without a Face (Masha Gessen). I didn’t need any more proof that Vladimir Putin is a bad, bad man, but thanks to this book, I know that he’s even worse than I thought he was.
Look Alive Out There (Sloane Crosley). What did I think about this book? I read it many months ago and I only remember two essays. One is about the author’s housesitting stay in an isolated mountain home in California; so isolated that when the homeowner is delayed by a few days, Crosley has to befriend the neighbors in the hope that they’ll invite her to dinner, because there’s no more food in the house and the nearest store is 20 miles away. And of course, she doesn’t have a car. Fortunately, the neighbors are friendly and they invite her to dinner. In fact, they’re too friendly, and it gets weird. The other one was about Crosley’s unsuccessful attempt to climb Cotopaxi. Well, she did climb it, but didn’t make the summit. She gets credit for trying. I wouldn’t have made it to base camp, whatever that is. But I don’t know that she gets credit for this book. I came away from it with no real idea of who Sloane Crosley is. And that’s her prerogative, of course, but I feel that a book of personal essays should reveal a little bit more about the person who wrote them. That’s just me.
*****
P.D. James
- Time to Be in Earnest
- The Children of Men
P.D. James was one of my four favorite author discoveries of 2020. I wrote about Time to Be in Earnest here (and I’m still cracking up about my dolla dolla bills joke). Then I read The Children of Men. Time to Be in Earnest was my first P.D. James, but it's probably not the best exemplar of her work because it's a memoir, and she was actually a novelist. I think I need to read some of her detective novels, which is what she is best known for. The Children of Men, though technically called a novel, is really a morality tale disguised as a novel. And it’s a very good morality tale, with a relevant and urgent message; and it’s full of beautiful writing. But it’s not really a novel. That’s what I think, anyway. What do I know?
OK, here’s what I know--it’s very rare for me to prefer a movie to the book that inspired it, and this is one of those rare cases. "Children of Men," the 2006 movie version, is great, and very different from the novel, though I read that P.D. James liked the movie version very much. Anyway, a book about the impending end of the world was either entirely appropriate 2020 reading, or very inappropriate, depending on your mood. I will be seeking out additional P.D. James, but probably not until 2022 or so.
*****
Things I Want to Punch in the Face (Jennifer Worick). This book was among the many, many things I wanted to punch in the face in 2020. But whose fault is that? I'm the one who chose to pick up a book titled Things I Want to Punch in the Face; and then having picked it up, chose to actually read it. Maybe I should punch myself in the face.
Crazy Salad and Scribble Scrabble (Nora Ephron)
How to Be an Antiracist (Ibram X. Kendi)
*****
- Hyperbole and a Half
- Solutions and Other Problems
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