2020: The Year in Reading

To see all the books I read this year, check out my reading stats here:

https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2020/38210129

Here are three of my favorites this year in the genres I read most: fiction, graphic novel, and memoir.

Novel: The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami continues to be one of my favorite authors. I read this book throughout May, two months into quarantine. I often felt like I was crawling into a well along with the protagonist, Toru Okada. Toru climbs into a well throughout the novel, as he discovers that he is able to enter an alternate world while isolated down in the solitude of the darkness and silence. The book became my own figurative well, where I go on a magical journey while confined at home. Isolation permeates the book, an appropriate thematic element in 2020. It is a mystery wrapped in Murakami's unique brand of magical realism. The cast of characters are quirky and mysterious, as it seems only Murakami can achieve. Toru is reminiscent of the other protagonists I have read in 1Q84 and Norweigan Wood by Murakami: intelligent loners, looking for meaning in a harsh, post-modern world. Murakami is always sprawling and can be a challenge, but I always feel rewarded for undertaking the task. 

Graphic Novel: Saga: Volume 7 by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan

Really, I could have selected any of the volumes in this series. I began the series in 2019, but in 2020, I finished it up to the authors' hiatus point (please write more of these!). Volume 7 sticks out, as it recounts much of the war that defines the hatred between Marko's and Alana's warring species. The series centers on the interspecies relationship between Marko and Alana: theirs is a love forbidden. The story is narrated by Hazel, their daughter, a mixed aberration to the people in this universe, who didn't even know that a mixed-species child was possible. The apparent commentary by Staples and Vaughan relates to the atrocities of war and race relations. The series is relevant, exciting, hilarious, and tragic all wrapped up into an engaging and thoroughly imagined universe.

Memoir: Sign, Gone by Phuc Tran

I only finished this book last week. It was a birthday gift from Liz. She was excited because she had found a book that I didn't know about that I would enjoy, which is evidently a tall order. She was spot on in her choice. Tran recounts his childhood and adolescence, growing up in a small town as one of the only minorities, a Vietnamese refugee. He finds his complex identity through a connection with great literature and punk rock, two things I can get behind. He mixes humor, anger, and drama that comes with the struggles of the teenage years in a well-realized memoir. The often-overlooked real-life examples of racism against model minorities are perhaps the best-expressed addressing of this topic I have ever read. It brought me more understanding in my ever-necessary and ever-growing journey in empathizing with others and thinking about my own identity and where I fit in the world.  

Also recommended: Locke & Key series by Joe Hill (graphic novel), The Other Americans by Laila Lalami (novel), Conjure Women by Afia Atakora (novel), Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (novel), Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (novel), Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn (memoir), Maps of Injury by Chera Hammons (poetry)