Last year was difficult in so many ways, I think none of us are sad to put it behind us. Reflective of the strange year 2020 was, my blogging and reading were equally off. I am not sure I wrote about many (maybe even any) of the books I read. I had to switch down my reading goals at Goodreads not once but twice and it took a very busy reading-vacation-week to meet my goal. I feel that the less said about last year the better, though I do want to give a little anecdotal look back. Maybe the days of keeping reading stats are over for me (they were mostly the same year to year anyway).
So just a few mentions of reading highlights and a few favorite books. It seemed a struggle as I was moving through the year, though in looking back I had more good reading experiences than bad. And while I had to lower expectations I am ending last year with only three carryover books. I always have reading plans for the new year, or rather, not exactly plans but ideas of where I want to begin and what I would like to do, though they always morph over the course of the year.
I think I want to continue my monthly reading prompts in some way. I have an idea, but I want to think about it a little more and will share in a day or two.
I managed to read one book over my 'goal' at Goodreads, which you can take a peek at here if you are so inclined.
Unsurprisingly I read more books by women authors than men (about eight men authors sold me on a read last year). Only one classic if you go by the Canon (and it a translated work!), though you might fudge on a few and call them modern or contemporary classics.
About ten books were translated from other languages (French mostly, Japanese and Italian).
A few repeat authors like Sue Grafton, Susan Cooper, and Wendy McGrath.
I wanted to read twenty graphic novels (in part because they were the most accessible to me last year when reading in general was so difficult), and I managed to get in eighteen.
My newest author (or new series) finds were mysteries. I had read Sarah Stewart Taylor before, but I loved her newest series. Ed Ruggero also has a new sleuth and a second book coming out soon that I will definitely be reading. And I loved Caz Frear's detective and with only three books so far in the series, I think I can catch up this year!
And so, here are ten reads that I really enjoyed last year (in order that I read them):
Why did I wait so long to read one of Alison Bechdel's graphic novels, Fun Home? I read some really great graphic memoirs and this is top notch and highly recommended. It is a very raw look at her upbringing and family relations. I am going to read her other graphic memoir (about her mother) this year.
Dominicana by Angie Cruz was a longlister for the Women's Prize for Fiction. It is a heartfelt story about a young woman entering into a marriage to an older man and what it means to be an immigrant in America.
Otessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation is sort of a crazy choice as the narrator drove me crazy and I was shaking my head so often as I was reading, but it made for compelling reading and the story has stayed with me. I want to read more of her work.
Yes, Attica Locke is as good as everyone says she is! I loved The Cutting Season. Crime novels are always eye openers when it comes to social ills and this one as much as any set on a former plantation in Louisiana. I want to read more of her work this year, too.
I love memoirs and Charlotte Amelia Poe's How to Be Autistic is a brave and courageous story of growing up on the spectrum but not being diagnosed until she was close to adulthood. She writes from the heart and lays bare her soul in telling her story. There need to be more books like this from diverse voices.
How can you not appreciate an Agatha Christie mystery, and a Miss Marple story to boot. At Bertram's Hotel is a favorite, I think. It is a later book where the modern world encroaches on proper British sensibility. The modern world is coming. And the crime is as usual a wonderful puzzle!
I read Wendy McGrath's three novellas (Santa Rosa, North East and Broke City) about childhood in 1950s Edmonton, Alberta, Canada back to back (highly recommended if you can) and they were wonderful. These were beautiful and poetic and lush with imagery. Not a lot happens but life happens, so I guess you could say a lot happens really. It is very internal as the story is narrated by a young girl, but also her adult self looking back. They feel both fresh and today yet curiously nostalgic at the same time. I read library copies, but maybe someday I will buy them to add to my shelves and revisit.
The right book for the right mood at the right time? Kind of quirky, but I loved The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood. It's about consumerism and feminism and marriage and independence and the role women must play in the world, which here is ca. 1969. When I read Carol Shield's The Stone Diaries last year, this book was on the Daisy's bookshelves at the end of her life. There seemed to be a sort of symmetry for me to pick it up next.
I think S is for Silence by Sue Grafton might top the list of Kinsey Millhone investigation favorites. It is a rare cold case she takes on. It was a little different than the usual alphabet mystery in that the crime was a violent one and the story was told in parallel--Kinsey's investigation, talking to the cast of characters, as it were, so many years later, but also the crime played out in real time. You get to see the people acting out the events and Kinsey poking around in those events much after the fact.
Phew. Last but not least my single classic of last year, Junichiro Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters. There is such an elegance to this story, reflective of the lives of the Makioka family. Once a rather seemingly aristocratic family very traditional in their upbringing and outlook but now butting heads with modernity (why does that feel so very Japanese to me--in the books I have read anyway). The story is ostensibly about trying to find a marriage partner for the third of the four Makioka sisters, but of course it is about so much more. Long had I wanted to read it and I loved it and am happy to finally tackled this chunky story.
This kind of looking back I don't mind, but now I think I am ready for some new reading adventures.