In 2019, I read 51 books in all. I had been really upset that I could not even read 5 books in 2018 and had set myself a target of 50 books for 2019. While I 'outdid' myself, I also did little else I felt. So in 2020, I only set myself 36 books as a target, or 3 books per month. Well, I fell two short. I think I could have pushed myself to finish 36 but 2020 was no ordinary year. But I also learnt to play the piano, went back to some singing and dancing, stargazed, travelled to the hidden parts of the UK but also discovered my little neighbourhood, and worked from home.
2020 in Books: I read 34 against my target of 36.Three of them are written by friends !!!
For the ones that I recommend, I have put pictures of the books. So even if you don't read the whole blog, you can just browse through the pics.
Book1 Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey: I sincerely recommend it. You feel the helplessness of old Maud as your own, when her mind slips away and she tries to hold it together. Sometimes memories get jumbled and it's hard to follow what's happening, but so is it for Maud.
Book 2. Educated by Tara Westover: This is a story of a girl rising out of her circumstances. Perseverance is at the heart of every good story. Yet she repeatedly flags that she's different and is adamant not to be relatable. Culture shock should have been a very relatable topic.
Book3 Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner: A well-loved book that I misunderstood? About female loneliness, it feels like a 1900s Mills&Boon. Relationships begin with no preamble and end in high drama and the author refers to our heroine as Virginia Woolf one too many times.
Book 4 The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota: It's a slow book about the world of illegal immigrants, living in the dark corners of society, invisible to most and exploited out of choices. A political commentary, it's a reality check for the naive and the policymakers alike.
Book 5 Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo is a phenomenal celebration of life. Like Humans of NY or Humans Of Bombay, it's just stories about 12 people - mostly black, female, sometimes cruel, sometimes funny. It's rollercoaster ride through life, in different shades.
Book 6. The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante: The tour de force comes to its glorious conclusion with Italy moving from fascist to communist to democratic but from violence to corruption. But the portrayal of the friendship loses track and the punch line feels lost.
Book 7. Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman: Finally read this thought-provoking book that makes you question your beliefs. But it's heavy like a textbook and I'm not sure how much I can retain. It's also scary; how easily can one be manipulated! Self-awareness is a myth!!!
Book8 The Mummy Case by Elizabeth Peters: my fascination with Egypt continues with Barbara Metz's fictional Amelia Peabody and her delightful family. In the 3rd book in the series, they get trapped inside the Black Pyramid while hunting down criminals in Dahshur.
Book 9. Heirs of Masaha by Sachit Handa
: the 1st in the saga, it introduces the 'magic' of aether and the wonderfully layered characters who wield it. Apart from the rich history of the land of Malurk, what captures is the beautiful writing; almost philosophical. I would highly recommend it. Please check out Aethons of Malurk
. It's written by friend who also put together some music and has made a few chapters available on the Facebook page.
Book 10. Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez: it's a hard-hitting look at the gender data gap, but who is it for? I wish it was aimed at the default male statistician. Instead, it reads like a "women's book" that falls through the same crack that female data historically has.
Book 11. The Tiger and the Wolf by Adrian Tchaikovsky: 1st of saga, a coming of age story of Maniye 'Many Tracks', it introduces a world where humans can transform or 'step' into animals. Too focused on Maniye's story, I wish supporting characters, say Asmander, were more center stage.
Book14. The Bear and the Serpent by Adrian Tchaikovsky: following on from Book11, two amazing characters take centre stage, Asmander and Loud Thunder. Both are outsiders within their tribes, yet leaders in their spirit. It's a joy to discover new tribes, their gods and complex politics.
Book19. The Hyena and the Hawk (#3 of Echos of the Fall Trilogy) by Adrian Tchaikovsky: In the finale, a plethora of different tribes rally together to fight against the common enemy, the plague people. The truth about who the plague people are left me spellbound; ingenuis world-building! I couldn't shake the melancholy.
Book 12. The City of Brass by S A Chakraborty: Lovely to read a pager-turner fantasy with djinns, flying carpets and political games where every character is grey! A saga of love, betrayal, magical grandeur and politics, reminiscent of GoT, like the Tywin-Lannister-esque Ghassan.
Book 15. Kingdom of Copper by S A Chakraborty: Continuing from the cliffhanger in Book12, it has one too many plot twists. It's amazing how the author builds up each character into such layers of good and evil that there is no clear character for the readers to back. It's about trying to choose which of these characters is a lighter shade of evil. To each, their own actions seem justified. I actually feel sorry for the 'cruel' Ghassan who spares the traitors only to feel their wrath. Chaos looms at every turn, setting the stage for a grand conclusion in the final book.
Book17. Empire of Gold by S A Chakraborty: Epic conclusion to a page-turner trilogy! Like the first book (Book12), it starts with Nahri on a journey, but this time with Ali. A convoluted plot ensues with all sorts of magical beings getting involved, like the marid or the water beings and the peri or the air beings, apart from the fire beings or Daevas around whom the story revolves. As you would expect, the protagonists, Nahri, Dara and Ali pick up some special powers along the way. The story heads towards a battle, that is short and ends rather abruptly I felt. But after the battle, it's heartwarmingly hopeful as they pick up the pieces.
Not sure what the title refers to, apart from just fitting in line with the previous titles.
Book 13. The Talking Dead by Chandrima Das
: Not referring to the Walking Dead after-show, this is a book and a collection of four short horror stories written by a friend, set in Indian residential college campuses. Rest assured, I was as scared as a child reading the Goosebumps series, which was the last time I read a horror story. Horror is a very difficult genre to write considering you need to keep your readers' fear ticking up but without dragging on. The stories in the books capture that anticipation brilliantly. The icing on the cake is the nostalgia of studying in such a college campus.
Book 16. The Fifth Season by N K Jemison: Even with the best starting lines, the book drones on. Then I realised, I had internalised the incessant drone of the protagonist, Essun's life. It builds the most unique fantasy world: Angry Earth and civilisations that rebuild seasonally. It's refreshingly original.
Book 18. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides: A disturbed therapist with a saviour complex wants to 'save' the beautiful artist who became silent after the death of her husband. It's a thriller with a solid twist. Makes for an easy page-turner/ popcorn read, I read it in a day.
Book 20. The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami: It's a surreal novella that follows a boy on his fantastical trip to the local library that becomes a trap. He overcomes his fear to outgrow his childhood and grapples with loneliness while his memories help him deal with loss.
Book 21. Those People by Louise Candlish: As a satire on the snobs of a posh South London neighbourhood who hate their new 'uncultured' neighbours, it's brilliant. Characters are so comical. As a suspense thriller, it's terrible! The pace and the (non)twists are poorly written.
Book 22. A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro: Estuko, grappling with her daughter's suicide, starts telling us a seemingly unconnected story of her friend in Nagasaki at the end of the war. As the story progresses, the ghosts of the past dig up Etsuko's guilt.
Book 24. Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler: To turnaround and look into another point of view, a view where you are wrong, is always so hard. Harder still in today's world. But we could all do with a little bit of that. A warm introspection set in Baltimore
Book 25. She by Deepa Mardolkar
(another book by another friend): It's a collection of poems, reflections on being a woman. Every poem is so well modulated. It could be a celebration, a spark of anger, defiance, or a designated sigh but there is an undercurrent of strength and calmness that pervades all of them.
Book 26. An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro: A master in introspection, Ishiguro paints the generational disparity after WWII in Japan, but draws a contemporary picture. A poignant view of the acceptance of guilt of the older generation & resentment of the young. It is hard to accept and live in a world where your way of life is wrong even though you have been so diligent about it.
Book 27. A Man of the People by Chinua Achebe: A political satire, it's a short book that explores the corruption of democracy and how the democratic people begin to accept it as part of everyday life. Greed transcends cultures and peoples.
Book 28. The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Twelve short stories from the master storyteller. The overarching immigrant narrative is relatable. Even in the 12th which as I started it, thought was not relatable at all, until I reached the very end and burst into tears.
Book 30. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng: Is there a right or a wrong decision; Or are there just decisions and we need to believe they are the right ones? Like Celeste Ng's debut (Everything I Never Told You), the story starts at the end and then builds the characters towards it, who ask the question in different ways.
Book 29. This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga: Tambudzai's hopelessness permeates all. The use of the second pronoun draws you in and holds you accountable for the plight of women in independent Zimbabwe. But it's a finale of a trilogy I did not read, so to begin with, I was lost. #bookerprize #shortlist
Book 31. The Crowd and the Cosmos by : A fascinating read about how crowd sourcing comes to the aid of science in the Zooniverse project. This democratisation of science gives the new phrase #CitizenScience. Would Wikipedia be the first such successful crowd creation?
Book 32. Weather by Jenny Offill: It's a worryingly witty doomsday book, sprinkled with weird questions and observations. I warmed to it because I often have similarly weird questions in my head. But it's sad to think that we won't have apples anymore as global temperatures rise.
Book 33. The Forty Rules of Love by : Challenging the rules of righteousness that we've created, it gives us the rules of love, in the form of a discourse between Shamz & Rumi and Aziz & Ella. But rather simplistic, it reads like a sermon, making for a difficult read.
Book 34. Jaya by Devdutt Pattanaik: It's a thoughtful introduction to Mahabharata for children. It has these grey boxes which are sometimes filled with tidbits of info on the vast folklore that originated from the great epic and sometimes it has thought-provoking points of discussions. The breath of the epic is always fascinating.
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