20 Books of 2020 (Pt.18)

You all probably know by now that I'm reading more purely because of this pandemic and being able to stay inside and not go to work. However, I do love reading at least one book a day, just to keep myself sane. People keep themselves sane in many different ways: some bake, some write, some study new things, some exercise, some relax in the garden, some sleep but we all do something - there is no such thing as doing nothing. Even when you feel you are doing nothing, you are doing something. Even at 'nothingness' you are recharging and re-evaluating yourself.

That's what I wanted to talk about today. The Guardian recently ran a piece about feel-good books and how to survive during a pandemic. I think that their approach to feeling during a pandemic was pretty much wrong though. I found that these feel-good books didn't have enough of a range of emotion to be close to the human experience (at least most of them, I don't want to put all of them under the same umbrella). When it comes to books to get you through a pandemic, you don't require a 'feel-good' package but instead you require a range of emotional novels in order to make you feel like you too, are mortal and human and can be infected at any given time - just like those we have unfortunately lost. It is important to give yourself a range of literature, to try new things and to give yourself a feeling of being human. It is also important to read whatever you feel like reading and not what the newspaper tells you that you should read.

I normally get my recommendations on Instagram or various websites and people. This gives me a range of fictions. The recommendations on Instagram are normally things I'm looking for through a hashtag of some kind. The recommendations I get from people are normally things I haven't read or heard of before, so I'm willing to give them a try. What is most important in this pandemic is to make sure you are reading for you, but also make sure that once in a while - you push the boat out to new grounds and explore. I mean, who knows what you will find - you could gain a new favourite genre!

Let's begin with this list then. If you're curious about where we are then visit my public page and you'll find all of the other sections there and waiting for you. I hope you enjoy this particular section...

341-350

341. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

This is probably the best Joan Didion book I've ever read because it is so heartfelt and personal. I love the writing style because it is filled with grief, perspective and this undertone of complete sadness and loss. It's about the death of her husband and the grieving process. There are passages about grief in this book that will absolutely leave you breathless. I cannot say very much more because I don't want to spoil the experience of it. But it is such a sad and yet, hopeful novel - it's one of the most beautiful things she's ever written.

342. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J Gaines

This book is about a man called Jefferson who is found guilty of a crime he did not commit and sentenced to death by electric chair. Whilst in jail, he sees there is no way out but, his teacher Grant comes to ease his pain by teaching him about being a man and what that means. The story is narrated by Grant and we get to see all the different opinions on Jefferson of people from the outside, it is truly a beautiful and heartbreaking story of the Southern States of America in the 1940s, when black people really had no rights at all. With a mostly black cast, this book will shock and appall you as they were treated as nearly inhuman. The ending though, it will break you - and if it doesn't then you have no heart.

343. Ash Before Oak by Jeremy Cooper

This is so much more than a diary about nature, it's a diary about life and time as well. I'm not going to lie but when I started reading it, I didn't think too much of it - but when you really get below the surface you begin seeing all the struggles of the narrator. The fact that he lives alone, the fact that there's so much going on in the outside world and very little going on inside himself. The fact that he reads and when he reads, he kind of gets lost into another world, his tone changes slightly and he talks about the different areas of this natural landscape. Discussing tree types with the landlord, the death of WG Sebald and so much more. Some of the entries are only one line long but that doesn't take away from the sheer existential nature of the entire diary. It really is quite a sight to read.

344. Selected Poems and Fragments by Frederich Holderlin

I was reading this in the car on my way around the block to do charity for the people stuck on wards during this horrible time. What I understood was that this was not only about existentialism and how people are connected, but the poetry was also about distance, both physically and emotionally, between two people. It's about the vastness of human connection. This poetry is amazing because not only are a lot of the poems short, but they have a lot to say about compression. They are able to compress so much emotion into such a small space and also able to show human connections, existential thoughts and pondering upon life along the same lines of the French Symbolists into them too.

345. Will You Please Be Quiet, Please by Raymond Carver

I didn't find this as good as "Cathedral" because of the fact the stories weren't as interesting and immersive. However, there was a story that stood out to me called "Neighbours" and it explores the nature of how humans living near each other act together. It explores whether community really works and how aspects involving life and death contribute to whether people get along. It's a brilliant story but I have to say again that this collection is good, but not his best.

346. The Years by Annie Ernaux

I read this purely because it was on Kindle Unlimited and was therefore, free for me. I ended up enjoying it but not entirely loving it. It's written in a post-modern style and reminds me of Ernest Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast" in a sense that it is a memoir set in France and that it doesn't really make France look like the romantic and picturesque city it is. This book is though, more post-modern than that. It seems to start in media res and has almost an endearing feel to it. This book is a beautiful tragedy of life, a sadness but also an aspect of hope that only France brings.

347. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokaczuk

This book was really strange because I'm not going to lie, I hadn't read the summary before I bought the book. I just bought it because it was cheap. It's about a woman who cannot forget the disappearance of her dogs and yet, she has this incredible personality filled with vibrant stories. Then, when a murder happens in her town, she becomes involved in the investigation and her life livens up even more. From past to present and then to future, we see this woman develop and become even more of a woman than she already is. It's a pretty amazing story and I'm glad I found it, both dark and humorous, it makes for brilliant reading in one sitting!

348. Settling Scores by Martin Edwards

Yes, I read another classic crime set. This one I had been putting off because I'm not that much into sport but I loved it so much when I did read it. There's a story by one of my favourite crime writers, J Jefferson Farjeon in there and it's about a suicide note and then the head of this family dies and a mystery has to be solved. Then, there's one about a murder at a boat race which is brilliantly written and you'll never really see the twist coming (pay attention to the petrol meter). It's actually an amazing book and I regret waiting this long to read it.

349. River by Esther Kinsky

This book makes me think about the Joni Mitchell song and really, it helps listening to that song whilst you're reading the book. It's about a wonderful and yet tragic life story, written as a memoir and set around various rivers such as The Rhine, The Thames and The St. Lawrence River. Not only does it describe life around the river but it also intensifies all the emotion of life experience, for example: for some time the protagonist knows a woman called 'Mi' who ends up in a wheelchair. The protagonist suffers the grief of her father's death and then recalls beautiful childhood memories.

350. The Old Man and His Sons by Heoin Bru

This book is about a family and their whale meat. They live in the Faroe Islands and they suffer all the griefs of familial existence such as the mother who argues to death with her daughter-in-law, the brothers who have to rescue their fellow brother from the open sea. Oh and did I say that there's so much great language about the sea that in all aspects, it can remind you of reading Moby Dick by Herman Melville. It's such an incredible achievement of literature and I'm so glad I read this. It's a beautiful book and I recommend it to everyone because the ending, even though it becomes more about a father and his son, is just as satisfying yet offers very little closure whatsoever.

351-360

351. It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track by Ian Penman

Again, I only got this book because it was on Kindle Unlimited and even though I've heard of the author before, I had never heard of the book nor bothered to read the summary of it. I just wanted it to be a random choice on my Kindle Unlimited account. This book is an account of music, how music has changed and how music has become commercialised, especially that of the African-American generations. It goes through people like James Brown who practically invented funk, to Frank Sinatra who through singing jazz taught us that even though he commercialised it - the southland was really the birth of the blues. It's a brilliantly written book filled with information and entertainment. I actually really enjoyed this one even though I actually got it for free.

352. Smiling in Slow Motion by Derek Jarman

This book was completely different to Part 1 of this series entitled "Modern Nature". This book was so incredibly sad in comparison I felt like I was going to cry halfway through. Derek Jarman's diaries are absolutely heartbreaking because at this point, he is very very sick and clearly dying. We get to see into his life on medication, in love, in hospital, how his medication is making his skin burn and we even get to see into him losing some of his closest friends to the illness that will eventually take him. In the year before his death, Jarman talks about turning 51 years' old and not believing that he actually made it there - but he also describes his stomach collapsing and not being able to see or walk properly. He is also unable to eat or sleep correctly and the amount of pain he's going through, you just want to get up and give him a hug. It is intense.

353. Old Food by Ed Atkins

What the hell did I just read? This book is one long poem that describes foods in correlation with the most tormenting, violent and uncomfortable of human situations. Let me give you an example. We go from collecting and gathering Rhubarb to dreaming of joining a death cult in about two lines. We go from nice foods, the natural world and a woman called Hannah to the death of a mother, the painful losses of human years, the turning of youth to older ages. It is a desperate and uncomfortable read and often I had to just set it down and think about it for a bit because of the way it's written. Through all of the vast poetry though, I have to admit that it is written beautifully.

354. Disturbing the Peace by Richard Yates

I had a better reading experience of this than I had of "Revolutionary Road" about ten years' ago and well, even though that reading experience was good ten years' ago, I have to say that this one was far more enjoyable. This is about a woman called Janice Wilder and her husband John. Her husband ends up in an institution after he says he's not coming home and then on, their child (Tom) begins to play up after being a fairly good student, John's friend becomes a bit too involved with his life and the marriage between Janice and John begins to break down. This dysfunctional marriage is one of the most incredible things about the book because what we though was the perfect lifestyle clearly isn't at all.

355. Crossed Skis by Carol Carnac

I'm on the fence about this one. Even though the premise was pretty amazing, I wasn't crazy about the writing style - here's why. First of all, we have the storyline. The storyline was amazing. We have a murder in the alps (a snowy place) in which the body has been burned beyond recognition and beyond recognition of how they actually died. We have a cold place with a very heated situation at the head of it. However, the writing style I felt was a little bit crazy. There was so much back and forth between so many characters, I felt a little lost sometimes. I didn't get a lot of atmosphere - but what I did get of the alps was pretty beautiful indeed. On the whole, I liked it - but the writing style could've wowed me a little bit more.

356. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

So I only just read this novel because I'm not going to lie, when it first came out I wasn't all too excited. I read it and I can honestly say that it starts off as the saddest thing ever. Someone dies of TB and another person almost gets raped, there's people having massive identity crises and others can no longer function within their own space. This is all taking place in the midst of an invasion, a war, a mass death of humankind. These people must deal with their crumbling lives and the lifestyle they once knew that is changing before their eyes. It's written beautifully and I can't believe I waited so long before reading it - but my god that ending is powerful.

357. The Ebony Tower by John Fowles

This book is a set of strange short novellas/short stories about art and how art changes the human experience. Art is normally essential to us and the very first story in the series shows us that. It's about a man who meets an art collector with some questionable morals. There are a number of oddities about his lifestyle including two women who are considerably younger than him. The other stories are just as poignant (but I don't want to give too much away). It's a brilliant set of writings and I don't think I've read something so internal by John Fowles before - even though he wrote "The Collector" - I would argue that this is far more internal and questions human morality in art.

358. Nowhere to be Found by Bae Suah

Now, I found this one on Kindle Unlimited and I thought that maybe I should give it a go since it has been staring at me for ages now. This is one emotional book even though the main character claims that she does not care too deeply about anything. The main character is 24 years' old and lives with her older brother, her younger sister and her mother. The girl herself has a dead end job that hardly pays for food and her and her sister share a winter coat. Her older brother moves out to go and work as a sewer cleaner. Her father, well you'll find out what happened to him in the book. The girl has a boyfriend who is like a giant baby, he can't seem to do anything on his own and his mother is like an overbearing nanny to him. It is written tragically with a raw beauty that shines on through the book and makes you feel so empty, even though it fills you with this strange cross between pity and anger. God, I loved this book...

359. Resorting to Murder by Martin Edwards

This was a strange book because it was all about crimes and murders that were committed whilst people were on holiday. Now, I remember reading a novel like this but this book was something else entirely. It was a bit predictable sometimes, but I like the way that the holiday time of the characters presented some sort of serenity and then, we get this crime that shakes up the entire scene. The atmospheres of the stories are amazing and even though they were in different locations, this book still managed to make you feel as if you were right there when everything was unfolding.

360. Soviet Milk by Nora Ikstena

This book was absolutely heart-breaking. It's about a girl's relations with her mother and how this is impacted by the way they live in Soviet Latvia. Her mother is quite distant, her father is dead, her grandparents are the ones who look after her. Her attempts at becoming a doctor are first praised during the time she is working on cadavers. She beats up her friend's husband for beating her when she finds out he is apparently a war hero. The various contemplations she has on where and when she lives becomes more and more clear as we see the impact it has on her as she's growing up. The book is told in various flashbacks to random ages and you'll soon see what the title means. This book almost broke me. You have to read it. It's beautiful.