Best Books of 2020 - Part I

10 through 6.

For the past couple of years, I’ve set a goal of reading one book per week. It’s amazing how attainable this is when you have a full list of holds at the library and no regard for your caffeine sensitivity. Some page-turners actually do take a week or less, and some anthologies or poetry collections will start in January and take me through December. One way or another, by New Year’s Eve, I try to get to 52. Here are 5 of my favorites from 2020…

10. New Waves by Kevin Nguyen

One of my last in-person events was the launch of Nguyen’s debut novel at Books are Magic✨ in Cobble Hill. He was in conversation with Hua Hsu, who flipped the usual interview format on its head and came equipped with embarrassing tweets from Kevin’s past to ask about. New Waves is a fun read that weaves grief, technology, writing, and relationships into a modern novel straight out of 2020 (well, early 2020, anyways).

Lynn Steger Strong @lynnsstrong

for a while i got up at 4 every morning and wrote a novel about an exhausted woman who declares bankruptcy and gets in touch with an old friend. it's about motherhood and womanhood and friendship and privilege and downward mobility, anger and language and now here it is:

9. Want by Lynn Steger Strong

What a fool’s errand to try to describe a book better than the author herself. I’ll just add that it’s a timely book about the uphill battle of scratching out happiness and functionality in a society that runs on the energy expended to tread water. At a time when so many are out of work or underemployed at best, Steger Strong explores what it means to want more and the consequences of attempting to get it.

8. The Yellow House by Sarah Broom

This isn’t the New Orleans your bachelor party toured. Sarah Broom grew up in New Orleans East, and despite what a few AirBnb listings might call “20 minutes from the French Quarter!,” it might as well be in Mississippi. Broom relays the history of a family centered by her mother Ivory Mae and the shotgun house where she raised 12 kids. The memoir is ultimately about the gravitational pull of home and how sometimes a running start away from a place only means a faster return.

7. Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

You may have heard the news that this buzzy title’s adaptation has already attracted the likes of Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts. Some books are great candidates for the big screen because of the detail in which a story is told. Leave the World Behind excites me because of the sparse details we get about a world-shaking event that strands two unlikely families in The Hamptons.

6. Memorial by Bryan Washington

If you made a pledge to center diverse voices in your media consumption this year, you could do a lot worse than Bryan Washington. His debut novel splits scenes between Houston and Osaka, refreshing context for the story of “Are we or aren’t we?” Mike and Benson. The melding of Black/Japanese/Immigrant/Working Poor identities with a relatable intimacy struggle makes this one of the best books of the year.

Books 5 through 1 coming soon! 📚