Hosted, as always, by Jamie @ The Perpetual Page Turner.
(Also, I cannot believe I did not post this last year! I may have to do last year’s anyway. I started it but never finished, which ruined my streak. AND ALSO I DON’T KNOW HOW I FELT ABOUT BOOKS. What a tragedy.)
I’m trying something new this year, which is not repeating answers. So even if a book fit more than one category, I put it in the one I felt it best fit.
Reading Stats
Number Of Books You Read: 48
Number of Audiobooks: 6
Number of Rereads: 4
Number Unfinished/Abandoned: 6 (2 of these were audiobooks)
Best in Books
1. Best Book You Read In 2020?
The Vanishing Half by Brit BennettMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Well, this was just awesome. I loved the narrative voice, the seamless transitions from past to present, and the characterization. That Stella is something else, but I think Bennett deftly shows how though her world seems larger, it’s actually just as small–if not smaller–than Desiree’s. I also appreciated the skewering of moderate racist White people.
All the characters here are sympathetic, and this just further proves my point that fiction can be a better entry point into anti-racist teaching than nonfiction. Also, as always, all Black lives matter and the reminder that “unimportant men were killed to make the point that they were unimportant–that they were not even men” (179) was as true in the 1960s as it is now.
The title works on ~levels~ and I am here for it.
View all my reviews
The Englishist 