Get To Know Your Hosts - Ashtar's Fave Books of 2020

readalertpodcast
Feb 13, 2022
2 min read

2020 was a year most people will likely remember for the fact that they wish they could forget it. For me, it was a year in which I thrived in a lot of ways. I live alone and was lucky to have a job that allowed me to work from home, so, like many others, I spent a lot of time by myself in my apartment. I’m on the introvert spectrum, so I loved having so much time on my own. I exercised in my apartment, read a TON of books, went for 5 mile walks daily while I listened to audiobooks or caught up with friends/family on the phone who live far away.

Some people had a hard time reading at the height of covid because the anxiety triggered by the pandemic made it hard for them to focus. For me, reading was like a salve. I spiraled in the other direction. I subconsciously sought to keep my brain active at all moments to avoid thinking too deeply about what I was experiencing or how I was feeling. I have always been a big reader and books have been my primary form of entertainment for a lot of my adulthood, so I went into overdrive with my reading, more than doubling my previous year book count by reading 226 books in 2020.

My favorite genre is contemporary literary fiction, so I tend to keep up with new fiction that is coming out. While I did read a lot of books that had been published in 2019 or 2020, this list is not exclusively books published in 2020, just books I read and loved in 2020. Let me tell you - 2020 was a BANGARANG year for books and anyone who says otherwise is a liar (remember how most people claimed they couldn’t read in 2020 anyway?! So, who are you going to believe now?). All this is to say I had a hard time narrowing it down to a top 5 or even top 10 in 2020.

Fiction:

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (longlisted for Booker 2020)

A Burning by Megha Majumdar

Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa

How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang (longlisted for Booker 2020)

Memorial by Bryan Washington

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (winner of National Book Award for Fiction 2020)

Real Life by Brandon Taylor (shortlisted for Booker 2020)

The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi

Non-Fiction:

Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong