Books of 2020- Installment #13

61. I Hope You Get This Message by Farah Naz Rishi and read by Priya Ayyar 

It's the end of the world! Well, at least it might be. Turns out we've just received a cryptic message from aliens that sounds like in 8 days our fate will be decided. But no one is exactly sure what's going on. This audiobook was great! I was super interested in the how the various characters reacted to the news and how they spent their last days. The fact that Roswell, New Mexico was an important part of the story as well delighted me!! Last year my husband and I went to Santa Fe and got (I think!!!!) a sticker Meow Wolf of a stereotypical 50s UFO beaming up a camper with the caption, "You are now leaving New Mexico"! And my friend went to Roswell and told me about her impressions of the town (and got me some cool alien socks!) which I reflected on a lot as the reader, Priya Ayyar, described the town!

62. His Hideous Heart: 13 of Edgar Allan Poe's Most Unsettling Tales Reimagined edited by Dahlia Adler and read by a full cast 

This anthology was delightful!!! I really enjoyed these fantastic retellings of Poe's stories. Some of the stories I had no idea about the original source material but loved on their own. And I was pleasantly surprised when the originals were in the second half of the book. Poe is excellent read aloud and so the fact that this was an audiobook was quite lovely. And now I know why some people say Poe did Sherlock Holmes first!

63. If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha and read by Sue Jean Kim, Ruthie Ann Miles, & Jeena Yi

This is an awesome story about about a group of young women living in Seoul. They have had different childhood experiences and have different careers but are united by the way society treats women. You've got the two women who work in room salons, the woman who works in a hair salon, the artist, and the expectant mom. It's great! It's sad and depressing and awesome! These women are brave and hurt and funny and mean and kind and selfish and normal. Real. It's great!!

64. The Toll by Cherie Priest

I read her book Family Plot which was great. I still think about certain things she did in that one however many years later August 2020 is from October 2019! So I was quite excited when my library hold came available! And this book is totally different from Family Plot but I love it! I love it! It takes place in the Okefenokee which would have sold me on the book if I had known that beforehand! And then there's this bridge and of course a toll.... I don't want to say more; I just want to say I loooove the way Cherie Priest writes and so far think I like her books more each time I read one!! 

65. The Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton & read by James Cameron Stewart

I have recommended this book to many people and when one of my friends read it, I decided to get the audiobook and revisit this book. I don't reread much at all and another friend had recommended audiobooks as a way to read them anew. It was fantastic!! I still love this book, still think it's amazing, and actually think I might reread it again in the future. So that's amazing!!

I don't know who posted this originally, but I agree!!

I've read 65 books and 52 were by woman, 10 were by men, 2 were anthologies by both women and men, 1 was by a nonbinary author, and 7 1/2 were translations. My year of reading lots of women and at least 12 translations is going well in that I've read mostly female authors, but the world is going through a pandemic and state sanctioned murders in the form of police brutality with a horrible man still at the helm and supported by horrible men in the Congress. In short this year has been really rough. What will this global health crisis leave us with? What changes will we make, not only in terms of the huge inequities of our health system where people of color and the poor (which let's face it- the system works really hard to ensure that people of color, especially black people, are poor) are more than extremely disadvantaged, but also all the other ways in which our society, our systems, actively damage people of color? Only time will tell. But I hope it is a greater sense of community, a need to care for one and another and support each other, not just people with the same colored skin as ourselves, not just people with the same sized wallet as ours. My naive? hope is all of this isolation leaves us wanting to lift each other up and not hold others down.

Books of 2020- Installment #12

56. Memory of Water by Emmi Itaranta

This is a dystopian future where the water of the world is either gone or salinized by the melting of the poles. It is set in what we would call Finland but in the future has become part of New Qian. The narrator, Noria Kaitio, is an apprentice to the town's tea master, her father. So while there's some sadness overhanging all of this, I love all the water contemplations that are sprinkled throughout the book.

57. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and read by Cassandra Campbell

It took me a long time to get to this book because I had heard so many podcasts about Henrietta Lacks. If you're in a similar boat, don't wait any longer! It's an amazing story that really can't be told in a short format. There is so much to her life, to her family's life, to the research using her cells, and the way medical research has been done in the US. 

58. Peace Talks by Jim Butcher

Holy crude! I've been waiting such a long time to get a new Harry Dresden story. Six years but it felt like a hundred- and only some of that is 2020's fault!! Boy! It's a good one.

59. The AI Who Loved Me by Alyssa Cole

This book was originally just an audiobook with apparently an amazing cast, but it recently came out as a non-audiobook, an eyeball book? Since it had such rave reviews, I had to dig in!!!

60. The City We Became by NK Jemisin and read by Robin Miles

One of my book clubs picked this book as our next read. We haven't read a book during this whole pandemic and this book was super popular but I got a skip-ahead-of-the-line copy of the audiobook from my library. I don't think I would have been into it if I had had to read it in text form and wasn't doing it for the club because the beginning felt too male to me. But once that beginning bit was passed I didn't feel that way any more. I really enjoyed the book. She really does a lovely job personifying the different boroughs, which I admit I don't know much about but my husband is from NYC and he has thoughts! There was one character I wanted to like but couldn't, which made me sad. But seriously, can't like them! Can't!! 

I've read 60 books and 49 were by woman, 9 were by men, 1 was an anthology by both women and men, 1 was by a nonbinary author, and 7 1/2 were translations. My year of reading lots of women and at least 12 translations is going well in that I've read mostly female authors, but the world is going through a pandemic and state sanctioned murders in the form of police brutality with a horrible man still at the helm and supported by horrible men in the Congress. In short this year has been really rough. What will this global health crisis leave us with? What changes will we make, not only in terms of the huge inequities of our health system where people of color and the poor (which let's face it- the system works really hard to ensure that people of color, especially black people, are poor) are more than extremely disadvantaged, but also all the other ways in which our society, our systems, actively damage people of color? Only time will tell. But I hope it is a greater sense of community, a need to care for one and another and support each other, not just people with the same colored skin as ourselves, not just people with the same sized wallet as ours. I hope all of this isolation leaves us wanting to lift each other up and not hold others down.