I read 30 books in 2020 and this is what I thought of them.

This post does what it says on the tin, so let’s dive right in.

#1
Outline by Rachel Cusk

3.5/5
This book was a slow burn. I enjoyed reading it. But I struggle with novels that don’t have a plot, and this didn’t. Not really. The way the conversations were written sometimes had me not sure whether the narrator was observing things or listening to the person she was speaking with actually describe things. That’s the bit I liked most. How detailed the observations were. And how intent of a listener she is.

But. Who has conversations like that?! Especially with brand new people? I don’t know! I found that hard to reconcile.

There were quite a few really great and beautifully written moments that kept me reading but I felt like I was waiting for Godot a little. Not sure if I will finish the trilogy.

#2
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

5/5
A beautiful story about growing up, loneliness and abandonment, love and friendship, chosen family and prejudice, the earth and our similarities as humans to the overlooked occurrences in nature. I didn’t want it to end.

#3
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

4/5
This was my first foray into the world of Didion. I’ve wanted to read her books for ages but always felt I had to start in the right place. The owner of my local bookshop recommended I start here and I’m so glad that she did. It took me a little while to get into the headspace of Didion’s writing style but once I was in, I was hooked. I’m a sucker for any perfectly put observations of feelings, dialogue and human dynamics, especially when you have to remind yourself that it’s non-fiction. Excited to read more.

#4
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

5/5
This has been on a to-read list of sorts for me since I was a kid, and every opportunity I’ve had to read it, I’ve consciously avoid. I think I doubted my ability to be able to immerse myself in the language and make it through a story where most of the characters are “unlikable” but they turned out to be the main reasons I absolutely loved this book. I am glad I’ve read it as a 26 year old and not as a 16 year old (when I made my first attempt), I think if I read it when I was younger, I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate as much the way that people change through age and circumstance, nor relate to it. I wouldn’t have understood and empathised with the contradictions in personalities, or have been mature enough to know that love is complex and is sometimes entirely contextual. It was a challenge and one I thoroughly enjoyed.

#5
The Overstory by Richard Powers

3.5/5
I haven’t been able to bring myself to write a review of this one for months. It was a big book to get through and I felt it changed pace a few times. I wouldn’t have read it if it weren’t for a book club I joined right before the pandemic hit and thus never followed through with joining properly. I devoured the first part of the book, the individual stories of people and their relationships with families, friends, and trees. But I struggled through the second part of the book, where everything became intertwined. Now I know that the root systems of trees do this, I wonder if it was a way to say that humans are like, that too. But a lot of it felt forced, like connections were made for the sake of connections being made. The main think I took away from reading this is a newfound fascination with trees and how they care for each other and how we humans (sweeping statement) don’t care for them at all.

#6
Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom

5/5
This collection of essays made me question a bunch of things I’ve been conditioned to accept, not only about myself but about the world we live in. Things that I expect of myself, and things that I expect of others. I read them with a pen in my hand so that I could come back to it and make sure that I remembered all of the important things I learned. Like the discussion of beauty as capital, specifically as a tool in continued oppression, black girlhood and how it is so different from white girlhood and how chasing competence is often fruitless.

#7
What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt

5/5
My feelings throughout reading this book just hurt. Not always in a bad way. The characters were written so well that I was so upset, happy, excited, worried, scared, thrilled etc. for them throughout the lives they led. I’ve not read a novel that so heavily leans into the art-world before, and I loved the way it was done here. The way that loss and love was handled with so much realness at times made me feel like I was reading a memoir instead of a work of fiction. It’s the first piece of fiction I’ve read by Hustvedt and I can’t wait to read more.

#8
Just Kids by Patti Smith

5/5
I rarely venture into the memoir world and I have no reason for that, after reading this, that will change. Having studied Robert Mapplethorpe throughout uni I feel like this was a more personal insight into the kind of life and world that existed at the time he and Patti Smith came into their fame. It was like reading an extremely personal, poetic, coming of age story mixed with a historical glimpse into the art and rock’n’roll scene in New York City. The cameos of famous names fascinated me as they were just normal run-ins for Patti and Robert. The documentation of the inner turmoil Patti was wrestling with while working towards her goals, and supporting Roberts, was beautiful. I’m looking forward to reading her other memoirs.

#9
Emma by Jane Austen

4.5/5
This was a hoot. I genuinely enjoyed how dramatic this entire book was. It’s another one I can’t believe I haven’t read before. I adore Emma. Her stubbornness, and even her meanness. I respect a woman in fiction who has the courage to be disliked. I especially enjoyed when Mr Knightley couldn’t understand why Harriet Smith refused Robert Martin’s proposal of marriage and Emma said:

“it is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her.”

#10
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

3.5/5
The perfect binge read. Suspenseful endings to each chapter. Characters that get under your skin. Clues throughout that keep you turning the pages. I love books like this for when I’m in a reading rut and need something to devour quickly.

#11
Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

3/5
This was one of those books that I read after the hype around it had already infiltrated my ability to read it and not be pressured to love it. And… I didn’t love it? That’s not a terrible thing. I just found it hard to grasp onto the stories, and the fact that they were fictionalised versions of real stories. I think the three women’s stories had a lot to do with why I struggled with the fact that there was build on top of the truth, and it comes from a personal place. If I hadn’t experienced some of these things myself, or know people who have, perhaps I would have had a different response. But I found myself interrogating it too much rather than just taking it for what it was. Maybe that was the point.

#12
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

5/5 (again)
I think this book will always have something new to teach me.

#13
The Plague by Albert Camus

4.5/5
I read The Plague during a global pandemic, super original of me. I really, really enjoyed it though. Mostly for the observations of human behaviour in times requiring particular obervance of guidelines, acceptance of medical facts, and periods of time where we collectively don’t know what is next.

This book was published in France in 1947, to highlight it’s maintaining relevance, here’s an excerpt from one page that I found particularly poignant:

“The word ‘plague’ had just been spoken for the first time. At this point in the story, leaving Bernard Rieux at his window, the narrator may be allowed to justify the doctor’s uncertainty and surprise since, with a few slight differences, his reaction was the same as that of most of our townsfolk. Pestilence is in fact very common, but we find it hard to believe in a pestilence when it descends upon us. There have been as many plagues in the world as there have been wars, yet plagues and wars always find people equally unprepared. Dr. Rieux was unprepared, as were the rest of the townspeople, and this is how one should understand his reluctance to believe.

One should also understand that he was divided between anxiety and confidence. When war breaks out people say:”It won’t last, it’s too stupid”. And war is certainly too stupid, but that doesn’t prevent it from lasting. Stupidity always carries doggedly on, as people would notice if they were not always thinking about themselves.

In this respect, the citizens of Oran were like the rest of the world, they thought about themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they did not believe in pestilence. A pestilence does not have human dimensions, so people tell themselves that it is unreal, that it is a bad dream which will end. But it does not always end and, from one bad dream to the next, it is people who end.”

#14
Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld

5/5
Ah it is just fun to imagine how things could have been, not even necessarily in an ideal-world kind of way. I genuinely really enjoyed this book. It was fascinating. The way it ran parallel to things that actually happened, but splintered off into general what-ifs was great. Although I never want to read the word ‘plunged’ in a sex scene again.

#15
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

5/5
Just like her first novel ‘The Mothers’, I devoured this. A heartbreaking but fascinating story of two black women, and how they come to realise the functioning of their race in America. I can’t do justice to how good this book was by writing a measly worded review. I just very much recommend reading it.

#16
Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera

5/5
An extremely comprehensive book on the life, work, health, politics and love of Frida Kahlo. I searched for this specific edition for so long and took my time reading it once I found it. The mix of carefully researched history, interspersed with letters of Frida’s and friends, artwork context, political background and opinion was just phenomenal. I’ll be picking up sections of this book to read again and again forever.

#17
How To Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

5/5
It sounds daft to say a book changed my life. But, this book, has definitely at least driven a change in how I look at life. On the outset I definitely thought I’d be reading a book that would tell me to delete all of my social media accounts and live a life of minimalism off the grid. It wasn’t that. Odell recognises the world we live in and the irony in hating the capitalist monster but having no choice but to feed it. Instead of unrealistically advising to actually do nothing it’s a manual, with plenty of contextual and historical background, on how to try and do less. To reassess my perspective when it comes to productivity, to create a ‘third space’ for myself where I’m not letting the data surveillance machines learn even more about me and to listen to birds and smell the damn roses.

#18
Severance by Ling Ma

3.5/5
Another pandemic book! During a pandemic! Lean-in, I say. Honestly it was a great binge read. Set in 2018-ish New York, there were so many things that had me like ‘I relate’, and so many that just didn’t at all. But it was chaotic and other-wordly, too, like all good post-apocalyptic books are.

#19
Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

5/5
I’m a sucker for Moshfegh, after My Year of Rest and Relaxation, I think she’ll have me hooked with anything and this was no exception. First of all, 72 year old woman, Vesta, as the protagonist? More of this across all writing please, it was such a refreshing perspective to read from. I read this while I was alone in the mountains in an airbnb and I was genuinely spooked, I wouldn’t read it in that setting again. But the story had me captivated, I was convinced by the end that it was all the doing of Vesta, that it may have not all been real, the internal monologue was just THAT relentless (in a good way), and I love that I’ll never know. I’m just waiting for more people to read it so I can discuss it with them. I loved it.

An extra note and extra large cover image for the 10/10 cover design.

#20
A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind by Siri Hustvedt

5/5
I don’t know how to review these essays and not do them a great disservice. Hustvedt was meant to be at Sydney Writers Festival in 2020 and I was so looking forward to seeing this incredibly intelligent woman in person, but, pandemic! I started reading this collection of essays last year and it’s taken me so long to get through them because, honestly, they’re above my normal level of intellectual ability to just simply read through. The variety of topics throughout that she was able to provide such insightful perspectives on genuinely blew my mind. I learned so much reading it that I know it’s only stuck in a home brand blu tac sort of way. I need to read them all again so it all really sticks.

#21
Show Me Where It Hurts: Living with Invisible Illness by Kylie Maslen

5/5
This is the first book I’ve read on chronic illness where I’ve genuinely felt understood. Not only from a medical point of view, but culturally as well. Given Maslen also grew up in Australia I think it’s clear that the attitudes to illness, visible or not, in this country deeply impact how those with chronic pain internalise certain struggles. Her articulation of relationship endeavours, the never-ending when will you get better chats, isolation, empathy and feeling seen (or not) by pop-culture hit home, pretty hard. I went away from reading this with better ways of articulating my situation to people in my life. And better ways of accepting it within myself.

#22
Sourdough by Robin Sloan

4.5/5
I adored this book. I’ve never even made sourdough and I still loved it. It went off into a bit of the wild and weird but it was another ideal binge read, an escape kind of book. One to kick back and enjoy when you’re in a reading rut, or any kind of rut.

#23
The Sellout by Paul Beatty

4/5
This book felt like how I felt the entire time watching Uncut Gems. For those that don’t get the reference. Fast paced, chaotic, anxiety inducing. It was full-on. A black man re-introducing segregation? As an art piece? An experiment? Just… because? Another black man happily being his slave? It’s a satirical novel so wearing that hat while reading it made it… easier. But I kept catching myself not knowing whether to laugh or grimace and that was probably good. I think it threw into question a lot of thinks we think are solved in terms of race relations. I definitely recommend it. If anything, you’re left with a lot of questions, and questions are always good things to have.

#24
The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit

5/5
I’m so glad this is the first piece of Solnit’s I’ve read. I’m sure I would have said that about any of her other work, but this was great. The blending of self reflection with accounts of pivotal family and career moments had me assessing parts of my life I never really had before. It’s smart and emotionally intelligent, I know I’ll be referring to it again in the future.

#25
Homesick For Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh

4/5
I paged through these short stories over a series of months in-between other books. The main thing that stood out to me was Moshfegh’s ability to make me love typically unlikable characters. These stories are unlike any I’ve ever really read before, they are so odd, and a lot of the time have no point to them really but they feel real and I love them for that.

#26
Pain and Prejudice: A Call to Arms for Women and Their Bodies by Gabrielle Jackson

5/5
I genuinely cannot express how grateful I am for this book and the research that has gone into it. Learning about the ways that women have been so thoroughly ignored throughout the history of medicine is extremely hard but so necessary, not only because has impacted me quite a bit already, but because the history is important, and it’s important that it changes. Some of the stats genuinely shocked me, others not so much. I read a lot of this feeling quite sad but went away feeling pretty fired up. I wish more people than those affected by what this book is about actually cared to read it.

#27
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

5/5
This was a super hard read. Beautifully written, just an extremely hard and graphic series of events to work through. Based on real events, the book deals with the abuse and deaths of black boys at a reform school in America, abuse and deaths that were covered up. Told from the perspective of a survivor, it’s an honest look into the history too many are too eager to ignore.

#28
Illness as Metaphor & Aids and Its Metaphors by Susan Sontag

3/5
On my venture of reading about women and illness, it’d be remiss of me to not read this. Given it was published in 1978 and medically speaking, a lot has changed since then, but the relevance of the views of illness in society sadly remain largely unchanged. Metaphor wise, Sontag talks of certain illnesses being seen as dirty and others as desirable. She dives into the history of ill women being seen as romantic, desirable figures (think Renaissance paintings of pale, thin women) and how that continued to permeate in various ways culturally. And she talked about with each new disease, illness, vaccination, cure etc. comes new views of which illnesses are dirty or desirable. “Sickness makes people interesting” and it’s something that is evident in the portrayal of diseases like cancer in popular culture.

In my opinion, almost 40 years later, it’s clear that this divide still exists, the views on which illness takes which label might not be so widely shared but lovers dying from cancer together as a plot line for a movie is getting tired, even though it seems to still be what makes people interesting.

#29
White Oleander by Janet Fitch

2.5/5
This was a binge read for sure, but one I binge read through cringe-tinted glasses I guess. I usually don’t finish books like this but I was genuinely so curious as to whether I would ever get the resolution/outcome I was hoping for. There were so many pages, I thought it would happen. Given it was written in the 90s I can see how it was so popular, but to me it sit’s in that trauma-porn category. The protagonist in this book is only 13 when she begins to experience quite extreme trauma, emotional, sexual, physical. We follow along with her until she’s 21 and, she seems fine? It just doesn’t sit right with me that she goes through what she goes through with no huge emotional breakdown. Perhaps I’m just too used to the world of recognising trauma, and the presence of therapy, the privilege of those things, but a lot of it didn’t sit well with me. I still read it though. So the joke is on me.

#30
Blueberries by Ellena Savage

5/5
I truly loved this collection of essays / personal musings / intelligent prose. I’ve never read anything like it and it was so refreshing for that fact. I’m also extremely envious of the authors incredible name.