My Favorite Books of 2020

This year has been a hard year, for all of us, and for varying reasons. One of my escapes is reading. This year I ended up rereading a favorite series of mine at the beginning of the pandemic, and I picked up some new books after I went through my reread. So, for those of you looking for recommendations, here are the books I enjoyed the most this year.

My favorite bookstore

Running with Sherman, by Christopher McDougall - This is the latest book from the barefoot running guy. In this one, he writes about a donkey he rescued from a bad situation and rehabilitated through love, care, attention, and running. Did you know there are races where people run with their donkeys? You don't need to be a runner to enjoy this book. It's heart warming and will bring a smile to your face.

The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss - This is the first in a series about the monstrous daughters of mad scientists coming together to form a club and solve mysteries with their friends, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The books are witty and thought provoking, and it's so lovely to see a story about women coming together in friendship. This series was a delightful escape from the pandemic.

Devolution by Max Brooks - I listened to this one on audio. Quite a few wonderful actors lend their voices to the narration, including Nathan Fillion. This one ended up being a little too close to the pandemic for comfort, but the main character's complete and utter transformation had me riveted, as did the growing sense of horror.

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow - I listened to this one as well, and right around the time of the election. It was a fitting book for early November in that it dealt with the suffragist movement in addition to magic and witchcraft, friendship and love, and family. I found this book to be so powerful, so tender, and so well written that I despaired of ever writing anything as wonderful.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett - A patient recommended this book to me, and I picked it up the next time I went to the bookstore. It follows African-American twins growing up in 1950's Louisiana. One girl chooses to pass as white, marries a white man, and disappears from her family's life while the other marries a black man and lives in the same small town where she grew up. The book explores race, identity, family, and racial injustice, and although it's set in the 1950's through the 1990's, it is one hundred percent relevant to today's world.

And that series I read at the beginning of the pandemic? Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, beginning with Shards of Honor. I love the larger-than-life characters, the way Bujold has given them all such realistic quirks and flaws and yet made them so lovable, the vast scope and history to this world. I've read the first few books quite a few times, and the newer ones less often. It's been about twenty years since I first read the series (as it existed back then), so I've had ample opportunity to read them time and again. They're my comfort, my security blanket, my happy place.

I would love to hear about the books that helped you get through this year.

Dusting Off the Blog

 It's been about four years since I last blogged. There are a lot of reasons for the silence. My family and I moved to the Pacific Northwest. I went back to school to earn my Doctorate. My mom died. And there were a lot of other things filling up my time and taking my attention. But over the past few months, dealing with this pandemic, I've been readjusting my time. I've been on social media way too much. I feel much better when I'm not on it, but at the same time, I like seeing pictures of people's pets and kids and knowing that they're all doing all right, or maybe feeling the same sense of frustration and despair, or finding joy despite all we're going through. I guess, for me, starting this up again is my version of whistling in the dark.

Before, this blog was about a little bit of everything, from writing to running to whatever I thought people might find interesting. I'm going to continue in that vein, but most likely I'll focus on writing and the books I've read. I've learned a lot over the past four years, but there's still much to go, and it helps to put it all down. But for this particular entry, I'm going to do a book review. Or rather, a review of a series I just finished.

I read through The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club, a series by Theodora Goss, that follows several intrepid young women who all have one thing in common--they're all monsters, in a way. You may recognize some of the names of the members of the Athena Club--there's Mary Jekyll, Diana Hyde, Beatrice Rappaccini, Catherine Moreau, Justine Frankenstein, Lucinda Van Helsing, and Alice/Lydia Raymond. They're joined by Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in their adventures, as well as others along the way. The series combines some of the early fantastic works of fiction to create an atmosphere that is simultaneously delightful, lightly romantic, poignant, spooky, and mysterious. The Athena Club is like Scooby Doo meets Nancy Drew. It was pure, wonderful escapism for coping with the current Covid-19 pandemic, but it was deeper than that as it commented on feminism, science, eugenics, and what it means to be family.

The second book in the series is the largest, by far, and a bit intimidating to pick up. But it was the one I flew through the quickest. There are some slow moments in the overall series, but nothing that made me want to put the books down permanently, and the characters were all so compelling that I could probably spend a good amount of time just "watching" them do the mundane tasks of their day. That is, when they're not going on adventures.

It's good to be blogging again. I let my website go because I hadn't published anything new in a long while. But I have a short story coming out later this year, and I'm working furiously on a new novel that will be part of a duology. More on that later! For now, I hope you find a good book to sink into that will let you forget about the really world for a little while.