Blah’s Best Books Read in 2020

Just a summary for those who don’t want to read through all 51 reviews:

Top 3 Fiction:

1 ) Milkman - Anna Burns. As raw and powerful as it gets 

2 ) The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chobsky. Note perfect, powerful coming of age story that affected me as much or more than Catcher in the Rye. 

3 ) Boats on Land - Janice Pariat. Reading this book was like reliving my childhood with all its contradictions, it’s brutal violence and beauty, it’s dreams and myths and how it shaped me. 

Honourable Mention:

- Gilead - Marylynne Robinson 

- The Sympathiser : A Novel - Viet Thanh Nguyen. 

Top 3 Non-Fiction:

1 ) The Corner : A Year in the Life of an Inner City Neighbourhood - David Simon and Ed Burns. By the writers of The Wire, no book I’ve ever read has taught me as much about the extreme difficultly of life as an inner city Black person or affected me as much emotionally. 

2 ) Seven Brief Lessons on Physics - Carlo Rovelli. A book that makes you fall in love with Physics and makes you look at Physics almost as the most scientific branch of Philosophy 

3 ) Vietnam : An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975 - Max Hastings. Magisterial, balanced, definitive chronicle of the French and American wars in Vietnam 

Honourable Mention:

- A Beginners Guide to Japan : Observations and Provocations - Pico Iyer