20 Books of 2020 (Pt.26)

Reading books has been the answer to my life. Sometimes I think about how I'm spending my life, getting up every morning just to read books on books on books. I think about how I'm spending my existence reading all these books and that one day I'll die and I'll wonder if it's all been worth it. Well, I can honestly say - life well spent. Everything about reading is brilliant and here are a few reasons you should read if you don't already. And whether it's comic book or classic novel, romance or racing magazines, whatever you like to read it doesn't matter as long as it's for your enjoyment.

Here are some reasons that reading is better than real life:

1. You can travel without leaving your chair

2. You can read a bunch of different genres

3. It's a medium of enjoyment in which you get to meet a ton of interesting people without ever having to create conversation

4. You can learn so many things.

5. You can spend time with some of the greatest lines ever written

6. Reading is relaxing as hell and you can take it with you wherever you feel like

So, without further introduction - let us get on with part 26, this is numbers from 501 through to 520.

501-510

501. Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

This book really confused me at first because it said that he didn't have cancer. But then he had a tumour. It was like the hospital was trying to convince the character that nothing was wrong with him when there was seriously something up. But, be that as it may, this is the best book I've read by this author because not only is it massively serious and emotional in its style, but its also satirical, sometimes humorous and has a great amount of philosophical viewpoint that comes from the main character. It is a brilliant novel with many, many great emotions.

502. Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino

This one didn't interest me as much as many of Italo Calvino's novels normally do. Initially I was impressed with the family dynamics, especially the closeness that the narrator seemed to have with his brother Cosimo. Even though they weren't together much, the narrator definitely knew Cosimo very well. But when the novel progressed into the narrator going to live amongst nature, I felt like the writing style got a bit lazy and it was almost about nothing. Yes, there were the deep contemplations associated with Calvino, but the whole thing just felt very disjointed.

503. Pastoral by Nevil Shute

Nevil Shute's novels are often emotional to a degree that almost makes you cry and this book is no exception. When a man is trying to get back to his mother as her life falls apart, he is caught in the midst of a war. His family background is often described as being rocky and without much direction. His father is no more and his mother struggles to survive but retains a romantic spirit that even though is fun and energetic, artistic and beautiful, doesn't make much money. As the family is plunged into poverty, the son must help his mother survive in the war-stricken world.

504. Lost Horizon by James Hilton

I really enjoyed the concept of this book but honestly, it was a bit short and lacked a bit of description for me. This book is about a bunch of people who get kidnapped only to find that the place they are kidnapped to is better than their own home. Not many of them want to leave and there seems to be a logistical reasons as to why they were kidnapped in the first place. As one man called Conway struggles his way out, the others seem to develop some sort of Stockholm Syndrome in this adventurous novel about a world they've never seen before.

505. Vera by Elizabeth Von Arnim

This book seriously creeped me out because it is about a woman called Lucy who is grieving for her dead father and a man who is grieving for his dead wife. Eventually, these two people end up falling in love over their grief and getting married. Lucy eventually realises that she's made a mistake and her husband begins to become abusive and cruel towards her. During all this time, she wonders how his first wife, Vera, actually died. The ending is so damn creepy I almost screamed.

506. Pied Piper by Nevil Shute

This is one of Nevil Shute's great emotional novels about an elderly man who goes on a vacation to France during the war and in the coming days, Nazi Germany arrives in France. Not only must he protect the children around him but, when the other children realise that he is giving children safety and refuge - kids everywhere flock to him and he gains a small army of children which are in his care. It is absolutely moving and at all costs, he tries to protect these poor, innocent children from being blown up or kidnapped by the Nazis.

507. After Many A Summer by Aldous Huxley

This book didn't impress me as much as other Aldous Huxley novels have in the past. This book was basically an ironic twist on a man's life when he spends the entirety of his life being completely afraid of death. It was written well with the continuous satirical philosophies you'd expect from Aldous Huxley but it just doesn't have a compelling story with enough internalisation for me. It's probably just my personal opinion showing through though.

508. Educated by Tara Westover

I really enjoyed this book. I was recommended it by going on Gates Notes and it was all about this girl who grows up under an autocratic religious Mormon father. She never attends school, so when she finally does under the order of her grandmother, she doesn't know anything about anything and finds it really difficult to assimilate. As she edges out into the open world, we start to get more and more of a picture of the person she's becoming - though she misses home. There are clear cuts in her character that weren't there when she was living at home. Everything changed and it was brilliantly penned too.

509. Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance

This one was amazing. It's about a man who comes from a family of what Americans call 'rednecks' - he is a working class boy through and through and yet, he gets into Yale and starts to hang out amongst a different crowd. Whilst he's growing up, he has next to no luxuries and the bare minimum is all his family can afford. He explains that he is the only one in his family to make anything out of himself in higher education and at Yale, he meets an entirely different, and rather snobbish, crowd. It's an amazing book written by such an incredibly interesting human being.

510. The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins

This book actually made some pretty good points, it was all about how we can literally prove things about our own existence and yet, there are certain things we cannot prove. It's about the fact that things are true even though we haven't experienced them in our own lifetimes. It's about how we can be certain that we exist due to the fact that we can go back through generations and generations. Unfortunately, it's written by Richard Dawkins and his arguments are filled with terrible tangents.

511-520

511. The Chequer Board by Nevil Shute

This is a brilliant novel by Nevil Shute and it's all about a man who is told that he's only got a year left to live. He is deteriorating fast and yet the book is filled with these great emotional conversations whilst it's narrated by the doctor who is treating him. There are these deep contemplative moments too and the ending is just brilliantly written. It's so heartfelt and sounds just like the kind of thing you'd expect from Nevil Shute.

512. The Worm Forgives the Plough by John Stewart Collis

I've never read anything like this before, it's a very interesting novel filled with anecdotes about the war, emotional and philosophical talks about how the world is changing right before your eyes, 1940s English countryside areas, massive descriptions of the idyllic lifestyle in comparison to the war and one lone farmer who has had to help his country out. It's a beautifully written book in which you will find a brilliantly human story about a man completely displaced by his new position in life.

513. The Sympathiser by Viet Thanh Nguyen

This book is a great example of literature in which you see the real duplicity of human nature. It's about a political prisoner in 1975 in Vietnam in which they have been captured for being a spy in Saigon. Throughout this book, they explain their confessions, their different characters in which they led different lives, handled different informations and watched as the political world went to the brink of destruction. I found this book on Gates Notes and I absolutely loved it on every single page. It was both saddening and humorous, it was amazing and expansive in its view of culture and politics during a turbulent time.

514. Ruined City by Nevil Shute

A brilliant book about a man who is so dissatisfied with himself, he feels like he has to move away from this life and start all over again. Though it isn't as great as other Nevil Shute novels - it still has the contemplative, deep and emotional nature of the Nevil Shute classic style. When it comes down to it, the quality that you really want to read about in this book is the deep grief that comes with leaving one life for another whilst the extreme hope for another place and time. It's just brilliant and beautiful in every way.

515. Then and Now by W Somerset Maugham

When I first read the back of this book I swear I was surprised at the thought of Maugham writing about Machiavelli, but I had to give it a go. At first, it started off a little slow and out of wit, I couldn't imagine the Renaissance picture that Maugham was really leaving out description of. But, as the book went on, I could really get the wit of Machiavelli. The duplicitous natures were shining through and there was a chapter that reminded me of David and Bathsheba from the Bible. The second half was way better than the first in this case.

516. Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman

This book is about a man who has been locked up in a prison camp for almost thirty years and his name is Ivan. Stalin has just died and he's been released. Upon his release, he contacts friends and his former love. All of these people have aged and changed significantly and yet, they still remember him. It backtracks over his life into why he got locked up and what purpose Lenin served to him becoming a political prisoner. The book is moving and the ending is absolutely emotionally heart-wrenching.

517. The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley

This book is about Aldous Huxley taking a new drug and writing about his experiences upon it. Now, he doesn't only write about his experiences directly, but he also writes about how the drug was found and then through science, synthesised. He goes on to talk about opening 'doors in the walls' and how drugs have influenced thinkers over time. However, he does actually say at one point that the drug he has taken is neither agreeable nor disagreeable. It's fairly confusing but a drug that induces schizophrenia can never be any good.

518. Butterfield 8 by John O’Hara

Now, I've seen the movie to this and the film admittedly was a bit bland in my personal opinion. The book however was better. It's about a murder of a woman and how this man is trying to get himself go free but cannot find the last piece of evidence that was linking him to the crime - a coat. As people have weird affairs in the novel and as the main character steal each other's hearts and break them - this book, set against a New York backdrop of the early 20th century, represents the displacement of Americans between the war.

519. Points of View by W Somerset Maugham

This is Maugham's final book. It is a book of essays in which he writes about people like Goethe, his trip to India and other things that have influenced him over the years. The part on Goethe is really expansive. He really gets into telling us all about the autobiographical nature of "Sorrows of Young Werther" and how Goethe's own life was a bit tragic if not very upsetting for him. His trip to India to live amongst the Hindus for a while, he states, was inviting and interesting. He talks about Hindu philosophy and what he learnt there. I was impressed, but the book doesn't seem to mention enough authors that would've been of keen influence to Maugham except Goethe.

520. Landfall by Nevil Shute

This is a book about a man who is reprimanded for accidentally blowing up a submarine on the same side as him in the war. He's sent on a deadly mission as his lover wants to clear him of any wrongdoing and prove it was a total accident. What awaits is deadly and absolutely fascinating. Not Nevil Shute's best book but it's definitely up there with being one of the best. It has a stellar storyline with love and relationships between two very common people at its heart - but in their commonplace humaneness, they are something really special in the way they go out of their way for each other.