My Top Ten Books of 2020

 In no particular order, they are:

1) Travellers in the Third Reich, Julia Boyd

2) Surge, Jay Bernard

3) Second Sister, Chan Ho-Kei

4) The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, Eva Rice

5) Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire (Akala)

6)) Queenie, Candice Carty-Williams

7) On The Come Up, Angie Thomas

8) The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead

9) Saving Mona Lisa, Gerri Chanel

10) The Starless Sea, Erin Morgenstern

I hope you'll be able to check these out if you haven't already! 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Becky :)

My Books of 2020

I've been lucky enough to read a great amount of books this year. A lot have been reviews by request, and the rest either I've wanted to read for ages or recommendations I've had from Twitter and Instagram. In a first for me, there are more non-fiction books on the list for this year than all my previous years of reviewing put together.

As close to chronological order of my reading them, they are below:

 

1) The Other You, S. J. Monroe

2) The Widows' Club, Amanda Brooke

3) Carbon Game, Miles Montague

4) Travellers in the Third Reich, Julia Boyd

5) The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, Ken Liu

6) Surge, Jay Bernard (poetry)

7) The Treadstone Resurrection, Joshua Hood

8) Second Sister, Chan Ho-Kei

9) LOT Stories, Bryan Washington

10) Everything Is Going To Be K.O, Kaiya Stone

11) Vagabonds, Hao Jingfang (Translated into English by Ken Liu)

12) The Queen's Choice, Anne O'Brien

13) Before I die, Jenny Downham

14) The Amber Keeper, Freda Lightfoot

15) The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, Eva Rice

16) The Beekeeper of Aleppo, Cristy Lefteri

17) The Sideman, Caro Ramsay

18) The Beauty Chorus by Kate Lord Brown

19) Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race, Renni Eddo-Lodge

20) White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo

21) Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire, Akala

22) How To Be An Antiracist, Dr Ibram X. Kendi

23) Brit(Ish), Afua Hirsch

24) Girl, Woman, Other, Bernadine Evaristo

25) Queenie, Candice Carty-Williams

26) On This Day In History, Dan Snow

27) Life On The Refrigerator Door, Alice Kuipers

28) Christmas Cakes & Mistletoe Nights, Carole Matthews

29) Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal

30) Sepulchre, Kate Mosse

31) Skincare, Caroline Hirons

32) The Hen Who Believed She Could Fly, Sun-Mi Hwang

33) Another Time, W. H. Auden

34) On Writing, Stephen King

35) The Call Of The Wild, Jack London

36) The Happy Prince and Other Stories, Oscar Wilde

37) The Wizard of Oz, Frank L. Baum

38) Rip Van Winkle and Other Stories, Washington Irving

39) Alice In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

40) Through The Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

41) Normal People, Sally Rooney

42) The Railway Children, E. Nesbit

43) Robinson Crusoe, William Defoe

44) The Lost World, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

45) The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas

46) A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett

47) The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett

48) Hurting Distance, Sophie Hannah

49) On The Come Up, Angie Thomas

50) Playdate, Alex Dahl

51) The Englishman, David Gilman

52) The Puritan Princess, Miranda Malins

53) Set My Heart To Five, Simon Stephenson

54) CrimeDotCom, Geoff White

55) Son of Escobar, Roberto Sendoya Escobar

56) The Interpreter from Java, Alfred Birney

57) Even If We Break, Marieke Nijkamp

58) The Marriage of Innis Wilkson, Lauren H. Brandenburg

59) Psychiatrist In The Chair, Brendan Kelly and Muiris Houston

60) Number 10, C. J. Daugherty

61) Saving The World, Paola Diana

62) The Salt Path, Raynor Winn

63) My Sister’s Bones, Nuala Ellwood

64) The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead

65) A God In Every Stone, Kamila Shamsie

66) Black and British, David Olusaga

67) Saving Mona Lisa, Gerri Chanel

68) Last Flight To Stalingrad, Graham Hurley

69) The Starless Sea, Erin Morgenstern

70) Kiss Me At Christmas, Susan Mallery

 

 Lockdown and being on maternity leave has certainly helped with giving me lots of time to read! See the next blog post for my top ten. 

Review: Saving The World by Paola Diana

 This book almost breathes fire with how passionate it is. It’s a fantastic and fascinating exploration of gender equality that draws a line throughout history to show how the status of women has changed and somewhat progressed over time. However, as Paola explains, there is still a long way to go. 

The brevity of this book and its whistle stop tour of different facets of the status of women and feminism make it a perfect introduction and primer for those interest in feminism and its history. The author presents her research and her opinions clearly and passionately and, while I didn’t agree with all of her opinions, it certainly gave me food for thought about why I hold the positions I do and how I can progress in my learning in this area. 

One thing, however, seems for sure - if all women were respected and valued as powerful white men, the world would be in a much better position than it currently is.