2020 in books
In this newsletter: Books, books, books
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Recently I started reading Jessica Bruder’s nonfiction book Nomadland (which is about the disappearance of American retirement culture, the collapse of the lower middle class, and the resulting explosion of people living in vehicles) and it occurred to me that, given my slower-than-usual reading pace (and appetite) this year, this might be the last book I’d read in 2020. It wasn’t, partly because it was an interesting book that I read rather quickly, but also partly because I didn’t want a book that reflected too much reality to be my final read of the year. I thought I’d go out on a lighter note—something comic or trivial, a little piece of fluff—but instead, my final book of the year is Anthony Marra’s A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, which, as those who have read it already know better than I, begins in an exceptionally bleak way. (I’m captivated, which leads me to believe I’m terrible at judging the sort of reading mood I’m in at any given moment.)
This year I killed a few things off: My web site’s blog, for one, is gone. I’d left Facebook and Twitter a few years ago, and this year I completed the triple crown by stepping off Instagram as well. While all of these have contributed to a better sense of well-being, they’ve also eliminated my handful of small outlets for sharing things I find interesting. This newsletter survived the purge, because I enjoy writing it, when I actually write it. (It’s been six months since the last one.)
Since I’ve nowhere else to do it, and since every other topic I could discuss right now is dismal and dreary, I thought I’d share a few of the books that meant something to me this year. It wasn’t my most prolific year of reading; I started some 83 books, and abandoned about 20 of them (some of which I’ll return to later, and try again). By comparison, I began about 133 books in 2019, and completed about 96 of them. There are two reasons my reading fell off a bit this year, I think: The first is the disappearance of a daily commute, during which I’d grown accustomed to listening to audiobooks; the second is that this year has been spectacular at draining my energies for anything requiring more than cursory glances.
Not all of these books were published in 2020; my only criteria is that I read them in 2020.
Days of Distraction, Alexandra Chang
I am an absolute fiend for bite-sized fiction, and this book is one of the best I’ve read in this department. Every chapter or section is a few paragraphs long, sometimes much shorter. And yet, as the story of a young Asian woman working in tech journalism while also wrestling with her own racial identity, it’s about so much.
The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett
I read Bennett’s first novel, The Mothers, and was amazed at the strength of her voice. Turns out she was just humming in that novel; with this one, she rattles the rafters. This is a powerful story about two Black women—twin sisters—who couldn’t possibly live more different lives. A legitimately great and important novel.
Essays After Eighty, Donald Hall
Until this essay collection, I hadn’t heard of Donald Hall, who was the fourteenth U.S. Poet Laureate. I was compelled to try this by the book’s unusual cover, which depicts every crevice and crag of Hall’s face, in unrefined closeup. I found the book fairly magical in its depiction of the indecencies of growing old, and its appreciations for small things. Appreciations for small things were very important to me this year.
West, Carys Davies
Many of the books that meant the most to me in 2020 were small in size, and enormous in story. West is a slim novel, fewer than 200 pages, that I read in a day. Its premise is simple: During the era of the American frontier, a Pennsylvania widower leaves his home in search of dinosaurs, which he believes, if news reports about unearthed skeletons are to be believed, must be living somewhere in the underexplored west. Beautifully written, and deeply sad.
84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff
I’m very fond of epistolary novels, and until this year, hadn’t read Hanff’s classic entry in this genre. The book collects two decades’ worth of letters between Hanff, living in 1950s New York, and the operators and staff of a small bookshop in London. Utterly charming. I read, too, its enjoyable followup, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, in which Hanff finally travels to London to meet her distant penpals.
The Dog Stars, Peter Heller
I’m fairly late in coming to this book; it was recommended to me by a friend in 2013, the year it was published. I tried it then, and it didn’t click. I’ve discovered in the last decade or so that a book often must cross my path at the right time, and if a book isn’t working for me, I might have found it too early. Such was the case with A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki, and that became one of my favorites when I revisited it years later. For whatever reason, 2020 was the year when The Dog Stars landed for me. Heller’s novel about the end of the world is quiet, interior, and vivid in its violence and compassion.
The Summer Book, Tove Jansson
This was a year for books about small things. I’d never read Jansson before this book, but I’ve lined up another novel of hers because of it. The back cover of my edition reads: This brief novel tells the story of Sophia, a six-year-old girl awakening to existence, and Sophia’s grandmother, nearing the end of hers, as they spend the summer on a tiny unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland. If that makes you want to read it, then you’ll likely find the same magic in its pages that I did. Pure delight.
The Last Pilot, Benjamin Johncock
As research for a book project, I gathered up all sorts of space-race materials, and discovered along the way this novel and its British author. In the book, Johncock tells the story of a fictional member of the early American experimental flight scene as he sets records and escapes catastrophe in the Mojave desert, then ultimately is drawn into the space program—while at home, his marriage is put to a terrible test. The setting and all its myriad details are so strikingly drawn that I forgot, at times, I was reading a work of fiction. An exceptional novel with unexpected emotional power.
The Housekeeper and the Professor, Yoko Ogawa
My wife, Felicia, has an uncanny knack for knowing just what novel will connect with me at just the right time. One of the best novels I read a few years ago was Lily Brooks-Dalton’s Good Morning, Midnight, which Felicia suggested to me on instinct. This year, she did it again, bringing me Ogawa’s story of a housekeeper hired to work for a mathematical genius with severe memory loss issues. This is a beautiful, tender novel, and one of my most beloved reads this year.
The Queen’s Gambit, Walter Tevis
I discovered this forty-year-old novel at the same time everyone else did, when Netflix announced a limited series based on it. Having heard good things about the series, I thought I’d give the book a read first—and was thrilled to see it was written by Walter Tevis, who wrote the novel which inspired one of my favorite old movies, The Hustler. I’d never read Tevis before, and took this opportunity to correct the error. The book offers something the Netflix series doesn’t: A window into the internal mechanisms of chess prodigy Beth Harmon’s existence. Seeing the world through her eyes makes all the difference. This is a great read—and had the same effect on me that the show had on viewers: I ordered a chess set, and learned to play. (And now Squish has picked up the interest as well, and plays much more capably than I do.)
Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson
Wilson’s previous novel, Perfect Little World, was one of my favorites last year. I’d read and enjoyed The Family Fang as well. But Nothing to See Here really ups his game, and brought to mind early John Irving. This book is the story of two ordinary children, and the young woman hired to be their nanny. There’s nothing not ordinary about this story—except that the children, from time to time, burst into flames. Given that premise, you’d be forgiven for expecting this to be a silly novel. It’s anything but. It’s touching and observant, and a fabulous read.
Exit West, Mohsin Hamid
I’d read this novel before, a few years back, but I re-read a lot of things this year. Comfort reads were another theme of mine. I appreciated Exit West in a totally new way this year. It occupies a central place in one of my favorite little zones of fiction: Fantastical concepts, portrayed in ordinary ways. Wilson’s novel about combustible children fits in here, too. Hamid’s story goes quite a bit deeper, probing the troubled history of its protagonists’ homeland at the same time that it explores the real-world consequences of a portal that sends people around the globe in an instant.
A Promised Land, Barack Obama
2020’s insane politics have done a number on us all. Our current president has spent the year throwing tantrums about the election, about slights against him, etc., while sidestepping responsibility for the COVID crisis. President Obama’s book arrived at both the perfect time and the worst time: Obama was a thoughtful leader who genuinely cared about America and her people, and that was a major comfort to revisit. At the same time, closing the book meant letting our current reality back in, along with the sad realization that we don’t enjoy that sort of compassionate leadership now. This is a great book, filled with humility and joy. And that’s also what makes it sad to read it.
Last Night at the Lobster, Stewart O’Nan
One of the slim novels on my reading list this year, Lobster tells the story of a Red Lobster restaurant that’s to be closed at the end of the night. If that sounds like a strange premise for a novel, I suggest you give it a shot anyway. O’Nan follows the restaurant’s manager as he struggles to wrangle his staff for one last hurrah, weaving in stories about the regular guests whose routines depend on the restaurant as well as the extracurricular lives of the workers. It’s a surprisingly poignant novel, and this year, with a large percentage of American restaurants and cafes falling under the wheels of COVID, it’s undeniably relevant.
I hope to read more books next year. I hope you’re reading, too. Remember those posters they used to hang in the school library when we were kids? Movie stars pretending to read books, encouraging kids to read, too. One of the posters in my school in Alaska—I can’t recall the celebrity’s face—read READING IS AN ADVENTURE. Or maybe it said READING IS AN ESCAPE. All these years later, during a year like this one, those words ring true all over again. If you need one, I hope you’ll find a good book that gives you that escape.
In the meantime, may you and yours remain safe and healthy for the rest of this year and into the next.
✏️Happy holidays,
Jg
About the author
Jason Gurley is the author of Awake in the World, Eleanor, and other books. He lives and writes on a hill in Scappoose, Oregon. More at www.jasongurley.com.
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