20 Books of 2020 (Pt.8)

I have done many of these lists so far and the only real reason I was late with Part 7 was because I got sick. Anyways, we're pretty much back on track now and here we are at part 8, numbers 141-160. Now, as I've always said - it is never the quantity of what you read, it's not even what some consider to be the 'quality' of what you're reading. Reading is a medium of entertainment and is subjective to the individual, that is all. As long as you are enjoying yourself, you could spend ten years reading the same book - it is nobody else's business but yours.

I love to read, many books per day at most times. This is mostly because of the fact I seem to consume books by sitting down and planning on reading ten pages and then just finishing the entire book. The way I read isn't really how I would like to most often. I would like to be able to slowly savour a book, but I simply end up getting lost in it and then, it tosses me back out again and it's all over.

If you haven't read the other sections, let me show them to you:

Part 1: https://vocal.media/geeks/my-first-20-books-of-2020

Part 2: https://vocal.media/geeks/20-books-of-2020-part-2

Part 3: https://vocal.media/geeks/20-books-of-2020-part-3

Part 4: https://vocal.media/geeks/20-books-of-2020-pt-4

Part 5: https://vocal.media/geeks/20-books-of-2020-pt-5

Part 6: https://vocal.media/geeks/20-books-of-2020-pt-6

Part 7: https://vocal.media/geeks/20-books-of-2020-pt-7

So here we go with Part 8!

141-150

141. Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

What in god's name did I read? This book is about a family which purposefully tries to breed deformed children. I'm not going to tell you too much because it can get a bit sickly. However, the writing style can sometimes sound a bit forced with the whole shocking nature of the situation. But apart from that, it's a pretty good read. I would not recommend this though, if you are not ready to read about some pretty horrific child abuse. It's quite disgusting.

142. Suffer the Children by Craig Dilouie

This one was very upfront shock horror. Now, I don't mind shock horror from time to time, but this one wasn't very well written. There was no real atmosphere, there was no real character development and everything seemed very far-fetched or matter-of-fact. I wouldn't call this a good novel at all - I've heard more developed stories on the NoSleep Podcast.

143. Like Death by Guy de Maupassant

About a Parisian painter, this book reads and reminds me a lot of the book "The Masterpiece" by Emile Zola. This is because they're both about painters with a strange love and obsession for a woman that won't go away and yet, cannot seemingly be requited. There's a madness in this novel that colours it quite dark and from the title, I think you can gage that this is no love story. It is possibly the most beautifully written thing I've read by Maupassant.

144. Novels in Three Lines by Félix Fénéon

This is a fairly depressing book with a lot of death, suicide and people promising to kill themselves if certain outcomes do, or do not happen. There are also a number of political stories but yes, the book does do exactly what it says on the cover. There are various stories that only take two or three lines to tell. However, these stories are expansive and often tragically beautiful - they are well crafted, well-written and they have the brilliance of an epic of over 800 pages. I really enjoyed this one because there was always so much character reflected in pure action. I've never read anything quite like it.

145. Goya by Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen

This was a great book on Goya because it gives you an overview without going into too much technical detail. However, it does go into private aspects of his life which help us understand parts of his art where he transcends genre. The sketches were very interesting to me - I loved learning about the darker moments in his life. Another thing about Goya is his work is always shrouded in psychological mystery - you will find out so much more about it in this book. It's a brilliant companion to Goya I believe.

146. Happy Ever After by Paul Dolan

This book was hardly "Happy Ever After" like it intended to be. As I've always said, happiness is subjective. This book seems to suggest there's some sort of formula and I don't like the way it does. For me, happiness is a very personal thing and if other people get in the way of it, it won't be happiness anymore. This book suggests that you can only be truly happy if you find a partner. It more or less sounds like a bitter man who doesn't want to end up alone. It's not written well, but some points are alright.

147. The Inexplicable Logic of My Life by Benjamin Alire Saenz

This new Benjamin Alire Saenz book I read because Aristotle and Dante is one of my favourite YA Novels. This new one is all about grief and it really hits hard. Some of it can be a bit much to digest if you're planning to read the whole book in one sitting. Some of the characters die and you go through the grieving process and funeral arrangements with the character.

148. Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson

This book was absolutely captivating. It's about a bunch of bank robbers who escape from prisoner only to find they're robbing banks again. They're all on the run with the youngest falling in love with Keechie, a woman. The youngest one is also wanted for murder. It's a brilliantly written Dashiell Hammett style crime novel with elements of Graham Greene.

149. The Walls of Jericho by Rudolph Fisher

This book is essential to understanding the Harlem Renaissance. It is about a black lawyer living in a white neighbourhood during the times of high racism. It is an awfully brutal and unbridled look into the world as it once was - that no matter how successful a black person is, the colour of their skin will always make them a second class citizen to the white folk. It is a true work of art by a man who was never a writer to begin with. Read this lost classic today and see just what injustices were faced back then, and some that still go on today.

150. The Darker the Night the Brighter the Stars by Paul Broks

This book is pretty sad, it starts with the author's wife dying and then it moves on to how to find grief in the situation and what to do with all of it. It is all about processing the emotions of losing someone that close to you for so many years and yet, it is also about the celebration of the human condition, to tell stories and be here now. The book was an amazing thing to read because it was so full of intense emotion - I couldn't put it down.

151. A Handbook on Hanging by Charles Duff

This person seemed to be obsessed with the death penalty. Over the course of the first part of the book, he seems to go over the different methods for execution throughout different countries in different times of history. He settles then on the British Hanging Method and discusses the different variables involved when hanging someone. To be honest, there was a lot of detail and graphs in there, I felt like it was going to go on forever. With the first part better than the second, I feel like the writing style goes downhill slightly halfway through the book.

152. One Day When I Was Lost by James Baldwin

Nobody bothered to tell me that James Baldwin once wrote a book on Malcolm X and so, I had to find it all by myself. I thought I had read everything by James Baldwin, but obviously I hadn't. I discovered this book and read about how Baldwin tries to reason Malcolm X's assassination and how this book really is a political statement that basically states 'well, look what you've done. Don't expect us to sit down and be quiet now..." and that is true. They cannot go and assassinate a leader and then expect the movement to quieten down. It just isn't possible and James Baldwin was one of the people who wouldn't be silenced.

153. Chaos and Night by Henry de Montherlant

This book is about a Spaniard Man who has been exiled to Paris for 20 years and lives there with his daughter. The thing I was most impressed about in this is the witty conversation. It sounded like something by Oscar Wilde or maybe something I read in "The Marriage of Figaro" and "The Barber of Seville" because it had that level of quickness to it and a level of wordplay that was pretty impressive. All in all, I very much enjoyed reading the characters converse with each other in this book.

154. A Way of Life, Like Any Other by Darcy O'Brien

I read this book in the space of maybe 2 hours because not only was it pretty good but it is also quite short. I feel like though ideas aren't explored in much depth, there's a real depth to the mother and her new lover, Anatol. The son, on the other hand, is trying to do some sort of balancing act between his mother and his biological father. All about Hollywood in the 40s and 50s, it really does have a dark sense of decadence to it that you will only find in novels of this genre.

155. The Five by Hallie Rubenhold

About the women who were killed by Jack the Ripper, this book gives them face and identity. This book takes away their gory ends and gives them new life. The research and writing is so good, I have no idea why I waited so long to read it. A Dickensian Victorian backdrop shrouds the strange underbelly of London and other cities around the area. There is something sinister going on but, in the book, we get to see whatever light there was in their lives before it was untimely put out.

156. Oil by Upton Sinclair

Yes, this is the book that supposedly "There Will Be Blood" (2007) was based on but wait, it is nothing like the film. First of all, there is so much story in this book it is actually a difficult tracking of who's who throughout the first half. The second half is a lot better but again, still not a lot like the film. I have to say though I did find this book challenging, it is a pretty good read - though I think I would just stick to the movie. There's less characters to remember and his son isn't called Bunny in the film. That name really ticks me off in the book.

157. Journals 1935-1944 by Mihail Sebastian

These are a personal account of what it was like to be Jewish in the age of rising antisemitism in Romania. I'm not going to lie but some of this stuff is angering because there are people who are so obviously racist, that kind of behaviour would never be accepted today. I love the fact that Sebastian suggests that the Jewish Man had to work harder than his fellow men because of the fact he was Jewish not through just words but through the fact that he refers to his inability to write due to some sort of regiment in place to keep him quiet and working.

158. The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller

All about the dreamworld landscape of Greece and how much of an impact it has on the writer, Henry Miller's discussion of why he prefers Greece over America is a drawn out appreciation of Greek food, life and culture and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about his times on holiday and other characters he meets along the way. The language Miller uses is so bright, airy and languid that it feels like someone is composing a long piece of music all entirely in legato.

159. Morte D’Urban by JF Powers

A comedy book but not laugh-out-loud funny - I would say this is more of a satire on Church and State in America. What we have is the character of Father Urban being told he must work in the Minnesota branch of the St. Clements congregation. Through turmoil, triumph and even the grieving process, we begin to uncover the real strengths, weaknesses and moral ambiguities about this character we know to be a father of the church. But then again, they are all just men, aren't they?

160. The Waste Books by GC Lichtenberg

At first, I really thought this book was enjoyable. It is a series of philosophical thoughts written in notebook chapters (a, b, c and so on). But as the book progresses, some of the philosophical thoughts turn into contradictions upon life, many of them attempting to make the writer out to be smarter than he actually is. I feel like even though I enjoyed reading it, it was a bit pretentious. I also feel like you have to be in the right state of mind to read it or everything will just go straight over your head.