Best books of 2020
My total for the year will be 59, a new record for me (retirement has consequences). I have mixed all genres together here and given myself 15, in no particular order.
· On Earth We Were Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong – a lyrical and powerful coming of age novel by a young, already noteworthy poet.
· New York Burning by Jill Lepore – the first book by this public intellectual; a stunning history of a racist campaign in early New York; a misuse of legal execution that rivals the Salem witch trials.
· The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead – funny, sad, surprising – a great tale.
· Reconstruction by Eric Foner – the now standard history that changed the direction of thinking on this period.
· The Courtship of Eva Eldridge by Diane Simmons – a thoroughly enjoyable non-fiction look at the life of an ordinary woman and her romantic troubles; excellent, small-bore history.
· Deacon King Kong by James McBride – a comic story of a Brooklyn just as it is coming apart at the seams in the late 1960s.
· New Selected Poems by Eavan Boland – I wish I had read her when she was alive; a worthy companion to Seamus Heaney.
· Normal People by Sally Rooney – a powerful and enjoyable love story, told with great realism; I miss these two young people.
· Night Boat to Tangiers by Kevin Barry – Waiting for Godot with drug dealers.
· The Sounds of Poetry by Robert Pinsky – brilliant literary criticism for the layperson; sensible and smart.
· Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli – a unique and original encounter with an American tragedy.
· Outline by Rachel Cusk – a slow, painstaking, examination of a woman’s life, revealed through her brief sojurn in Athens.
· Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson – several generations of a Bed-Stuy family captured in short, vivid vignettes.
· How to Be Gay by David Halperin – a fascinating examination of what progress costs; a plea for respect for pre-Stonewall gay life; a warning against too much assimilation.
· Apeirogon by Colum McCann – 1001 small stories surrounding a real-life friendship, Palestinian and Israeli.
· Dorothea Lange, A life Beyond Limits by Linda Gordon – the fascinating photographer’s fascinating life; like Lange herself, quietly feminist.
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