BOOKS

2020 Booklist

For ten years I’ve been tracking the books I read in a spreadsheet and categorizing them by type, style, era, and author. Once I realized how much of what I was reading was by old white men who referenced other old white men, I made it a goal to increase the diversity on my reading list.

Last year was the first year I achieved gender parity, with more than half of the books I read written by women. This year

I read fifty-eight books, with exactly half by men and half by women.

More than half of the books I read this year were non-fiction and more than half by Americans. One third were by Black authors. Some of the reason for that was because of BLM and all the book recommendations people shared, but among the first two books I finished in 2020 were by Angela Davis and Roxane Gay, so feminist, Black, and American were on my plate from the get go.

Another fifteen percent or so of what I read this year was by Asian authors. Thinking about how to record that on my spreadsheet caused me no end of anxiety: by “Asian” do I mean just East Asian, or South Asian too? Is “Asian” a cultural category, or is it only meaningful as representing the racialized experience of Canadians and Americans whose families immigrated from Asia? How I answer those questions changes whether I include Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese authors that I’m reading in translation or people of Japanese or Chinese heritage whose families have been in North America for longer than mine. Basic Ethnic Studies stuff, I imagine, and not something I feel like I’ve fully resolved (and intend to read more about), but at least I have an awareness that a category like “Asian” is ridiculously reductive.

Last year my two favourite books were Jason Deparle’s “A Good Provider is One Who Leaves” and Bernadine Evaristo’s “Girl, Woman, Other,” which are both outstanding. I still recommend those any chance I get (along with Matthew Desmond’s “Evicted” which I read in 2018). I’m not sure anything I read this year was as exceptional as those, but I read a number of very good books.

Isabel Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns” about the Great Migration in the US and the parallels between the Black American experience and the immigrant experience might be the exception. It is fantastic. Her newest book, “Caste,” which got a lot of attention this year, is also very good.

Ann Hui’s “Chop Suey Nation” is lesser known but a wonderful book. In it she travels across Canada from Victoria to Fogo Island, and talks to families that run little Chinese restaurants in small town all across the country. She also explores her family’s experience immigrating and getting settled in Canada. It’s a really moving read.

Although when he blogged for The Atlantic I read everything he wrote, I hadn’t read Ta-Nehisi Coates “Between the World and Me” until this year. I was afraid it might not live up to all the praise it received when it came out, but it is indeed an excellent book.

Mmm… what else? Chanel Miller’s “Know My Name” about the experience of prosecuting her attacker for attempted rape and sexual assault is very very good. “A Burning” by Megha Majumdar and Emily St. Join Mandel’s “The Glass Hotel” both came out this year and are very good works of fiction. Charles Yu’s “Interior Chinatown” won the National Book Award for fiction this year, deservedly in my mind. It is a very good exploration of Chinese American portrayals in the media and personal identity.

I’m truly not a sci-fi fan, though I make sure to try at least a couple of sci-fi books each year to confirm or overturn that opinion. One of my last read of the year was Stanisław Lem’s classic “Solaris,” which I surprisingly really enjoyed. After reading it I read that he was influenced by Borges, which makes total sense and explains why the scenes in the library reminded me of Umberto Eco, who also adored Borges.

On the final day of the year I read Lulu Miller’s “Why Fish Don’t Exist,” which I saw someone list as their favourite book this year. It’s a great one or two day read.

Some disappointments too. J.D. Taylor’s “Island Story” (a travelogue both too long and too superficial), Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower” (oh god, another dystopian road story), Jesmyn Ward’s “Salvage the Bones” (too much dog), Wesley Yang’s “The Souls of Yellow Folks” (too incel-y). I will try some of these authors – Butler and Ward – again, but neither book did it for me.

  1. Bullough, Oliver - Moneyland
  2. Davis, Angela Y. - Women, Race, and Class
  3. Gay, Roxane - Bad Feminist
  4. Davies, Norman - God’s Playground v.1
  5. Wilson, Kevin - Nothing to See Here
  6. Davies, Norman - God’s Playground v.2
  7. Szabłowski, Witold - Dancing Bears
  8. Wright, Richard - Native Son
  9. Coates, Ta-Nehisi - Between the World and Me
  10. Gay, Roxane - Hunger
  11. Brand, Stewart - How Buildings Learn
  12. Panyotis, Cacoyannis - Bowl of Fruit
  13. Whitehead, Colson - The Nickel Boys
  14. Hui, Ann - Chop Suey Nation
  15. Beatty, Paul - The Sellout
  16. Smith, Zadie - On Beauty
  17. Wilkerson, Isabel - The Warmth of Other Suns
  18. Lalonde, Julie - Resilience is Futile
  19. Davis, Angela Y. - Abolition Democracy
  20. Yang, Wesley - The Souls of Yellow Folks
  21. Ward, Jesmyn - Salvage the Bones
  22. Nam-Joo, Cho - Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982
  23. Johnson, Walter - Broken Heart of America
  24. Roche, Charlotte - Wetlands
  25. Yamashita, Karen Tei - Tropic of Orange
  26. Lerner, Ben - The Topeka School
  27. Dangarembea, Tsitsa - Nervous Conditions
  28. Wilkerson, Isabel - Caste
  29. Kendall, Mikki - Hood Feminism
  30. Ninh, Bao - Sorrows of War
  31. Anderson, Sam - Boom Town
  32. Applebaum, Anne - Twilight of Democracy
  33. Thistle, Jesse - From the Ashes
  34. Majumdar, Megha - A Burning
  35. Higginbotham, Adam - Midnight in Chernobyl
  36. Taddeo, Lisa - Three Women
  37. Pomerantsev, Peter - This is Not Propaganda
  38. Jerkins, Morgan - Wandering in Strange Lands
  39. Miller, Chanel - Know My Name
  40. Manne, Kate - Entitled
  41. Yu, Charles - Interior Chinatown
  42. Grann, David - Killers of the Flower Moon
  43. Laveau-Harvie, Vicki - The Erratics
  44. Ferrente, Elena - The Lying Life of Adults
  45. Baldwin, James - The Fire Next Time
  46. Savage, Dan - Skipping Toward Gomorrah
  47. Hodgson, Godfrey - The Myth of American Exceptionalism
  48. Butler, Octavia - Parable of the Sower
  49. Villavicencio, Karla Cornejo - The Undocumented Americans
  50. Roy, Arundhati - The God of Small Things
  51. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph - Silencing the Past
  52. Taylor, J. D. - Island Story
  53. Mandel, Emily St. John - The Glass Hotel
  54. Mitchell, Jon - Poisoning the Pacific
  55. Henriques, Diana B. - The Wizard of Lies
  56. Lem, Stanisław - Solaris
  57. Vonnegut, Kurt - Breakfast of Champions
  58. Miller, Lulu - Why Fish Don’t Exist

My first book in 2021 is Ayad Akhtar’s “Homeland Elegies”. Very very good.