Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

Hello everyone,

December is a time to reflect on the events of the year as it nears its end. I am asking you to list your five favorite books/short stories that you read in 2020 The books could have been published in any year. If you like you may mention any DNF books at the end. It is fun to see what others liked most and this can spark ideas for new reading.

Addendum: In 2019 we did this, but listed ten books. I am not overly concerned about the number. List more if you wish. You also might want to go back and look at the 2019 thread. I just did and it was interesting.

My top five are in no particular order. Just by accident 4/5 are female authors. Two books are not considered "classics", because they are too recent. I see I really gravitated to sentimental writing this year. There were not any DNF (did not finish) books in 2020. Two of these books were rereads for me - Sonnets from the Portuguese and Anne of Green Gables.

Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yōko Ogawa

Oh wow. I still have some this month that might become in my top 5. But just in case here are some of mine. I did a lot of rereading but these are all new, some of them nonfiction baseball books. I guess The Era counts as a classic as do all of the Agatha Christie mysteries I read as comfort reads. Like Lynn, I didn’t read many classics this year, hence next year’s tbr was already made for me. I read comfort reads by favorite authors and still read a lot. In a year like this one, I think what’s important is that I read, not what I read. Happy reading in the new year to everyone!

The Era, 1947-1957: When the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers Ruled the World by Roger Kahn
Review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid by Willie Mays
Review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende
Review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman
Review- work in progress

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Top rereads:
Harry Potter Series Box Set by J.K. Rowling
-with new reviews for each book, book 3 is still my favorite
Review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Wait Till Next Year by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
Review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

My top 5 for 2020:-

01. Heir of Novron - in the top 10 of my best books ever read. I have read it only once, but its power pervades my memory still.
02. The Path to Power - This was a very, very good biography. Robert A. Caro deserves to be lauded for this effort. An effort of titanic proportions. An intellectual tour de force.
03. Moment of Truth - a superlatively nice book, underrated by me when I overlook this gem in my top books of all time. Maybe the second best YA book I have ever read.
04. The One - best YA book for me. Excellent.
05. Written in Blood - Wonderful thriller with nary a dull page or word. Chris Carter is criminally underrated.

My top five (in no particular order)

The Waves by Virginia Woolf
Inferno by Dante Alighieri (reread)
Emma by Jane Austen (reread)
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery

I normally don't DNF, but I struggled heavily through The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo and The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas. They were some of my favourites when I was young, but sadly, no more.

My top five in no particular order:


The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

Luffy and Brina, great lists. You both have already fulfilled what I wanted on this thread. I have not heard of any of your books! Ha! That is a very good. Lists like these make me see whole new possibilities of books out there for the future.

Lynn, to be fair, other than the Willie Mays memoir, and he’s a living legend, the other four were books by favorite authors that were either new or I hadn’t read yet. They lived up to their billing hence they get there 5 stars from me that I generally rate these authors. In fact Magic Lessons moved me that I still haven’t written a review of it. Next year I hope to get back on track with classics and nonfiction which is usually the majority of my reading. I’m excited to see everyone’s lists.

My favourite for the year is The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan
Others I loved :
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

I loved If Beale Street Could Talk and I’m reading Waiting for the Barbarians in January. Great list, Janelle.

Great, Lynn! It amazes me that 2020, despite everything, was such a good reading year. Here are my top five:

1. East of Eden by John Steinbeck. About as perfect a book as you can get.
2. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Absolutely transporting--back to that time period and into Cromwell’s mind.
3. The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations by Toni Morrison. Everything she wrote is gold to me, but here she lays out her wisdom.
4. Dubliners by James Joyce. Each story was a separate little trip, not just to Ireland but to an aspect of humanity.
5. Orlando by Virginia Woolf. For me this odd adventure had a charm similar to Don Quixote, and I found it just the most fun.

All of these books used the highest caliber of writing to pull me into another world I’ll never forget.

Thanks Brina, Long Petal of the Sea would make my top 10 !

Subject to change (there's still some time left in the year):

The Book of Lamentations - Rosario Castellanos (panoramic view of an indigenous uprising in Mexico)
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism - Naomi Klein
Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets - Svetlana Alexievich
Near to the Wild Heart - Clarice Lispector (experimental loveliness)
Marcella - Mrs. Humphry Ward (social issues informed Victorian marriage plot loveliness)

One 19th c., a couple of pre-1970 20th cs., and a couple of 21st cs, the first three fiction and the second two non. Pretty good spread, I'd say. It's a good thing that the cut off is five this year, as my only other five star went to half an autobiography. I'd have to scramble around in the four stars, trying to remember enough to pit one against the other, otherwise.

What a difficult task whittling down my year's top reads to just 5 books. I cut the list down to 6 but got stuck there.

Love is Blind by William Boyd

Not Forgetting the Whale by John Ironmonger

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

Essays of E.B. White by E.B. White

The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig

My Wild Garden: Notes from a Writer's Eden by Meir Shalev

Top 4 best book read in 2020 from our group shelf:
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold
Our Man in Havana
84, Charing Cross Road
Lonesome Dove

Top 5 other books:
Copenhagen, play by Michael Frayn
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
The Things read for free here: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts...
When We Were Starless read for free here:
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/audio...
Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

As usual, I had some books I didn't think I was going to like become part of my permanent library, and some I thought I would be crazy about that I've already discarded.

Best books of the year--

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Short Stories of Anton Tchekov: A Comprehensive Collection

Best re-read--

Julius Caesar

Best book I'm so ridiculously happy about getting off my TBR--

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Biggest, best surprise of the year--

The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker

Best books I thought I wouldn't like--

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley

(I know--that's seven, but Lynn said it would okay)

These were all five stars for me.

nice to see The Machine Stops, The Leopard, Trainspotting and The Mezzanine cropping up in other people's lists
and I'm going to read Near To The Wild Heart before end of year, so that might force its way into contention
Also I'm quite close to finishing The Viceroys and that might displace one of these 5:
High-Rise (Ballard)
The Death Of Virgil (Broch)
Youth (Conrad)
The Crime Of Father Amaro (Eca de Quieros)
The Sot-Weed Factor (Barth)

I'm still reading some that might come in as top reads, but for right now... (listing first time reads only)

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
3. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
4. The Misanthrope by Molière
5. An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo

The last one isn't a classic (yet) as it is too new, but it was a great read.

No order:

The Three-Cornered Hat
On Chesil Beach
The Hours
The Book of Tea
Woman at Point Zero

I am glad to have read some

from my lifetime bucket list:
🌼 Inferno by Dante Alighieri
🌼 The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
🌼 A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe (something from Defoe)
🌼 Twenty Years at Hull House by Jane Addams

from my folktale list :
🏵 Solomon and the Ant: And Other Jewish Folktales edited by Sheldon Oberman
🏵 The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio

Five books with one listed twice.

Anne wrote: "What a difficult task whittling down my year's top reads to just 5 books. I cut the list down to 6 but got stuck there.

Love is Blind by William Boyd

[book:Not Forg..."

Oh the essays of E. B. White. I had forgotten about that one. I read an essay for a class, and then wanted to order the entire book!

John_Dishwasher wrote: "No order:

The Three-Cornered Hat
On Chesil Beach
The Hours
The Book of Tea
Woman at Point Zero"

'The Book of Tea' AND 'Woman at Point Zero'! Talk about great representation of the classics! Glad they went so well for you.

Lynn wrote: "Oh the essays of E. B. White. I had forgotten about that one. I read an essay for a class, and then wanted to order the entire book! "

The book is excellent!

This made make look at my 5 star books for the year, and I now wonder if some only merit 4.5. But these five books unquestionably deserved 5 stars.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (reread)
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini -tiny children's book but incredibly moving
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

Laurie, I’m always interested in what you read. I haven’t read The Brontes in years but may have to try Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I’ll have to look into these other books as well just not Jane Eyre. I read it three times in high school and college and it was enough for me.

Aubrey wrote: "The Book of Lamentations - Rosario Castellanos (panoramic view of an indigenous uprising in Mexico)
[book..."

I have to try this one. I read her play "The Eternal Feminine" last year. It's an unflinching slapdown of male chauvinism. I saw a very moving Mexican film based her life called "Los Adioses." (The Farewells) For some reason though the title for the subtitled version of the film is "The Eternal Feminine," though it has nothing to do with the play. Publicity people are confusing.

John_Dishwasher wrote: "I have to try this one. I read her play "T..."

Good to hear that you want to read more of her. I plan on snatching up anything of hers that I come across that isn't too outside my price range. In terms of publicity, Anglo translators easily compound the confusion sometimes.

I enjoyed many books this year, both classics and contemporary.

Favorite reads from before the 21st century:

Wittgenstein's Nephew by Thomas Bernhard

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Candide by Voltaire

A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen

Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- and just by a shade less The Idiot

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz

Brina wrote: "Laurie, I’m always interested in what you read. I haven’t read The Brontes in years but may have to try Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I’ll have to look into these other books as well just not Jane Eyre...."

Thanks, Brina. I had only read two Bronte books before this year, so I decided to tackle the remaining novels. Tenant was not a perfect novel but I still loved it, Agnes Grey and Villette were okay. I will read Shirley next year. Even though I didn't rate each Bronte novel as a new favorite, I am amazed by the talent of the three sisters. I have to wonder what they might have accomplished if they had lived longer.

I have to stop looking at this thread. Vesna, I have Street of Crocodiles for my book in translation square next year. From this thread, I’ve already “considered” between 5-10 books. And that’s just classics. I’m waiting for the 21st century books I haven’t read yet that others recommend.

Brina, I've just now realized I replied on your Bingo thread! I went there to see your list for the next year (it's impressive!) and 'lo and behold confused the threads :-)

Totally ok. One book leads to another. We are all here to discuss books anyway. And for those interested, do read Nicole Krauss.

The books that have lingered in my mind this year are:

East of Eden, John Steinbeck
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
Stoner, John Williams
A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
American Dirt, Jeanine Cummins
The Overstory, Richard Powers

Only three worth the mention;

The Idiot- Dostoevsky; I lived with this book for more than a year; I enjoyed the idea of being inside it. It’s not plotless but it was easy as a character lead novel, one much more so than Crime and Punishment or Brothers Karamazov, to go away to other books and come back. It’s a book of despicable characters so the palate cleansing helped me not to get dragged down by the corrosive tone. An experience.

Ashenden- W Somerset Maugham; short stories based around his experiences as a wartime intelligence officer; which allows him to come into contact with all sorts of flowery euro-types. This type of autobiographical-fiction has both the feel of a tall tale well told and a method of delivering a personal truth. As with Isherwood, the coopted objectivity of the English gent, works well with the authorial staple of the detached observer; walking a thin line between snobbish superiority and photographic capture of personality.

Prater Violet- Christopher Isherwood; He and WSM might seem of a piece; writing themselves into their stories but Isherwood has less of that snooty tone and he writes with more deprecation of himself. Even whilst declaring writers block he will write the most beautiful passage of how a colleague has a mastery of description and decoration.

My top 5 for 2020 were:

A Grain of Wheat - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
Warlight - Michael Ondaatje
Everything Under - Daisy Johnson
The Mere Wife - Maria Dahvana Headley

I'm going to also mention The Tax Inspector by Peter Carey as it was the only other book that I gave 5 stars so it seems unfair to leave it out.

My top 5:

Stoner, John Williams
2666, Roberto Bolaño
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
Swann's Way, Marcel Proust
Within a Budding Grove, Marcel Proust

Liesl wrote: "My top 5 for 2020 were:

A Grain of Wheat - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
Warlight - [author:Michael Ondaatj..."

Glad to see Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o on your list, Liesl. I refuse to take the Nobel committee seriously until he gets one for literature.

Piyangie wrote: "I normally don't DNF, but I struggled heavily through The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo and The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas. "

I didn't have a good time with Hunchback either, Piyangie, despite my adoration for Les Mis, and my last experience with Dumas was less than satisfactory. It happens sometimes.

One DNF this year - The Women of Copper Country. It bored me and time is too short!

I also barely started and stopped reading Middlemarch this year, but I don’t call that a DNF because I fully intend to pick it up and start over again with it when I can give it my full attention. I also wanted to read The Pickwick Papers but my eyes were just to big for my stomach. Neither of these are on my schedule at this point but I will eventually get to them. There were a few others I wanted to read that are carry-overs, which I am going to try to work in. All of these I would categorize as DNS - did not start!

I'm glad to hear that someone else DNF's Women of Copper Mountain. I also got bored.

I DNF that as well last year. Loved both Doc and Epitaph but this book moved way too slow and I’m generally a plot driven reader. Hopefully Russell’s next book is better.

"Hopefully Russell’s next book is better"

Agreed!

Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)
Deep River (Shusaku Endo)
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (Ernest Hemingway)
Transcendent Kingdom (Yaa Gyasi)
The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton)

Piyangie wrote: "My top five (in no particular order)

The Waves by Virginia Woolf
Inferno by Dante Alighieri (reread)
Emma by [author:Jane Aust..."

I was in the same boat, Piyangie. I struggled through "Hunchback" and didn't care for "The Man in the Iron Mask" as much as some of Dumas' others. I did love "The Blue Castle" though :)

Aubrey wrote: "Liesl wrote: "My top 5 for 2020 were:

A Grain of Wheat - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
Warlight - [author:M..."

I feel the same way Aubrey.

Terry wrote: "One DNF this year - The Women of Copper Country. It bored me and time is too short!

I also barely started and stopped reading Middlemarch this year, but I don’t call that a DNF because I fully int..."

That happened to me with Lonesome Dove; my eyes were bigger than my stomach.

Similar thing happened for me with Ulysses. I can try again in 2022.

Terris wrote: "Piyangie wrote: "My top five (in no particular order)

The Waves by Virginia Woolf
Inferno by Dante Alighieri (reread)
Emma by ..."

I'm happy to hear you loved The Blue Castle, Terris. It's a book that completely took me by surprise.

Cynda wrote: "Similar thing happened for me with Ulysses. I can try again in 2022."

That's the time I'm planning to try it too. :) I've not tried it before, but always thought (I don't know why) that I should read The Odyssey of Homer first. Another thing that put me off is the length and absence of chapters.

wrt DNF's I've had quite a good year (i.e. low number)
last year I DNF'd 10, and the year before 8
but this year it has only been 4:
Stoner - John Williams
Sister Carrie - Theodore Dreiser
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
At Swim-Two-Birds - Flann O'Brien
I don't think I'm getting more tolerant (far from it!),
and I don't think I'm getting better at choosing (I had every expectation of liking 3 of the above 4)
so this is probably just a blip
so here's to 15 DNF's in 2021...! ;o)