Books I Read in 2020

[Kyle]

Link to old reviews: http://nerdprideradio.com/nerds/viewtopi...070f75942b

Books I Finished Reading in 2020

Speak- Laurie Halse Anderson
This is How You Lose the Time War- Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Dreadnought- April Daniels
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter- Erika Sánchez
Devolution- Max Brooks
The Hate U Give- Angie Thomas
Between the World and Me- Ta-Nehisi Coates
Sovereign- April Daniels
If it Bleeds- Stephen King
Aliens: Phalanx- Scott Sigler
The Devil Crept In- Ania Ahlborn
Survivor Song- Paul Tremblay
Mexican Gothic- Silvia Moreno-Garcia
House of Purple Cedar- Tim Tingle
21 Lessons for the 21st Centruy- Yuval Noah Harari
The Demon Next Door- Bryan Burrough
Stop With Your Purple Precociousness- Ken Marteney
Humanimal- Adam Rutherford
Console Wars- Blake Harris
Full Throttle- Joe Hill
Internment- Samira Ahmed
The Pocket History of Human Evolution- Silvana Condemi

Unranked, but still great: How Not to Diet- Michael Greger

[Kyle]

Internment- Samira Ahmed. Hmmm. I'm always careful when I talk about a book I didn't care for because it's hard to write a book. Especially when it is personal and you've clearly put your heart on your sleeve when writing it. And that's what Samira Ahmed has done here. This book is about a 16 year old muslim girl who lives in a very near future setting where a Trump-like has become president on racist and anti-muslim propaganda. His administration passes an interment law that rounds up muslims and puts them in internment camps. And the book starts right away with that and it's breathtaking. I enjoyed the very beginning of this book and how it fearlessly jumps into its subject matter. But then they get to the internment camp. And it's run by an evil warden who is basically a stand in for Trump. And the book then examines the atrocitiies of hate and dehumanization, while telling the story of hero's experience under these conditions. But I just had so many problems with it. First, the actions of the blatantly evil warden just didn't make sense in a real world. He's so evil he does things against his own interests, and that really bugged me and seemed cartoonish. I was also bothered because I was hoping to get some insight in Muslim-American experience and culture. But I only got a scant glimpse of that because the author spent way more time convincing the reader that "We're exactly like you" which was disappointing. But here's what really broke it for me: it's one of the worst examples of juvenile wish-fulfillment that I've read in a while. The lead character is clearly a stand in for the author herself, and she uses the character to just preach directly to the reader about injustice, instead of actually showing it through plot and character. It was insufferable. My kids are reading this for their book club, and I strongly suspect they'll have a different opinion- loving the "Kids Speak Truth to Stupid Adult Systems" but I just found it so dumb.

[Kyle]

Mexican Gothic- Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I picked this one up because I read that it's a cool horror story from a mexican writer. I enjoyed this book quite a bit, but it's a hard recommend. Let me begin by saying, I have a weird love for victorian and turn of the century classic romance dramas. If it resembles Jane Austen or Dickens, and is a churning love story with flowery language (which I normally despise)-- and I can't explain this-- I love it. War and Peace? LOVED IT! Look. I know it's not right. But you know how some people love country music and you just can't understand how? It's like that.

Which brings me back to Mexican Gothic. Set in the 1950s Mexico, our heroine, who comes from a wealthy family, is sent to the country side to check in on her cousin, who married into an English family that owns a silver mine in the sticks. When she gets there, the manor house is creepy and everyone acts very off. Her cousin is confused and incoherent and no one will give her a clear answer as to what's going on. Ostensibly a ghost story, this novel isn't really about the ghosts, but it's about the characters and their reliance on old world ideas versus new world beliefs. It's about the rot that sets into human nature when you cling to the old traditions. But it's also about ghosts! Kind of! And it's cleverly written like a real period gothic piece! Look- I like all of those things and I liked this book. But it's a hard recommend because I feel most people I know would think that it's boring and slow. But I loved it.

[Kyle]

21 Lessons for the 21st Century- Yuval Noah Harari. I was a huge fan of Harari's book Sapiens and his follow up Homo Deus. The first looked at the history of humans and the second looked at the future. This book was somewhat disappointing to me because it was kind of a rehash of his second book. Divided into 21 chapters, each one focuses on a different issues and the challenges that humans have to tackle: Religion, Politics, Technology, etc. In the forward, he confesses that many of these chapters were originally written as published essays that he updated for the book. And it really read that way. It's not that the issues and topics weren't interesting- they were. But if you read Homo Deus, you already kind of read most of this book. It discusses all of these same issues, just organized differently and more effectively. So as I worked my way through this book, instead of being inspired to explore new ideas I hadn't given much thought to (like with the first two books), I mostly just reacted with a "Yeah. I guess I see that." Disappointing.

[Phoebe]

Finally read The Kite Runner and it was good. I'm not sure how to describe it without giving spoilers but it's about two young friends growing up in Afghanistan, as their lives are affected by everything from local violent bullies to the large-scale geopolitical changes that affect their society. We see much of the story looking back through the eyes of one young man as an adult, and then he undertakes various actions to repair issues lingering from his youth. That's a very awkward way of describing it but it seems accurate?

[Kyle]

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter: Erika Sánchez. Read this book. I should just end it there, but I won't. When I agreed to read these "diverse YA" books that my wife is reading with her homeschool teen group, I wanted only a couple things: (1) to learn something from voices, cultures and perspectives that I wasn't familiar with; and (2) to have it sound authentic. This book is both of those things perfectly. The story is about Julia, a 15 year old girl whose parents are undocumented Mexicans living in Chicago. In the very beginning of the book, she reveals that her older sister, who was 22, was hit by a bus and killed while crossing a street. You think the book is going to be an exploration of the complexities of grief-- and it is-- but it's also about Julia discovering her identity while trying to figure out who her sister really was. But the real power behind this book isn't even the main themes and plot- it's in the dozens and dozens of "slice of life" scenes that show how difficult/funny/racist/joyful situations that occur to an extremely poor Mexican girl encounters as she's trying to figure out her future and place in the world. It's truly just the best. I loved this book so much and you really should read it.

[Phoebe]

I'm plucking things off your list for Christmas thanks.

[Stan]

I'm plucking things off your list for Christmas thanks.

Note that This is How You Lose the Time War is still at the top. Mike and I loved it, too. And it's a novella so it's a modest time commitment.

[Phoebe]

If there's anything I love it's a modest time commitment! Definitely adding that one.

[Kyle]

Speak- Laurie Halse Anderson. Well something had to depose How to Lose a Time War as the top book, I suppose. And what a worthy victor. There's only a couple of writers that I read and get actively jealous when I read them- Patrick Rothfuss and Stephen King were really the only ones. But Laurie Halse Anderson is now on that list. This book is so good and just so damn smartly written. If you want to read it on a superficial level, here's how I'd summarize it: imagine one of Judy Blume's older teen books, but about a 14 year old girl that's raped. And if you read it just on that level, you'll still love the book. It's got one of the most authentic voices I've ever read and written so simply and smoothly that the hard details of the story still feel like their being naturally told to you by Melinda, the 14 year old protagonist. But this book works on a much more intricate level, and that's where my jealousy arises. While at the same time that she spends three pages making fun of everyone that scrutinizes every detail of the Scarlet Letter for symbolism, and how pointless symbolism is-- this book is so steeped in powerful symbolism that it's simply beautiful and moving. It works on so many levels and is one of the most powerful novels I've read recently. Top of the list. No question.

Also Phoebe- this is another very short book with a low time commitment.

[Kyle]

Survivor Song- Paul Tremblay. Paul Tremblay wrote one of my favorite books that I read last year: The Cabin at the End of the World. I was excited for this one- about a rabies plague that breaks out. Apparently he started writing it before the pandemic, but edited it to reflect some of the realities we're currently facing. Cabin at the End of the World was good because of the deep characters and gut-punching plot. And while Survivor Song has those things, it's much more limited in its characters. Essentially there are only two Nats, a 9-months pregnant lady who gets bitten, and Rams, her college friend who is a doctor. For some reason, going into this book I was expecting something on a bit of a grander scale. But this book is very limited in it's scope. It's essentially a One Bad Night story about the rush to get Nats to a hospital in time to give birth to her child before she "turns." And while that's a compelling idea, it's just not what I thought I was getting- but that's on me. One of the other things is that the Nats character never clicked with me. I didn't like her and I had issues with the realism of her character-- she just did some stuff where I was thinking, "Nope. You've just suffered a soul crushing trauma. You're not just moving on like that." So that took me out of the book a bunch. Still Tremblay is a good writer and his characters are always deep. This book just didn't mesh well with me.

[Phoebe]

Anyone here ever read anything by William Gass? Should I buy one of his books and if so, which one? I am intrigued by tales of his misanthropy and am faintly hoping for some vicarious experience, either reinforcement or purgative.