|
Still taking this in chunks, Books Published in 2020.
This was very much a mixed bag for me. A few I liked very much, most especially Notes on a Silencing, a memoir of a student’s rape while at St. Paul’s and how it was suppressed, and The Betrayal of the Duchess: The Scandal That Unmade the Bourbon Monarchy and Made France Modern, a biography of the Duchesse de Berry. But overall, I read a lot of stinkers published this year; my overall rating at GR was only 2.5 stars, compared to 3.3 stars for all the books I read. I think at least in part it reflected the rotten year, as I postponed some of the more challenging books and read the junk; I still haven’t got to The Mirror & the Light, just as one example.
Just the same, I think I’ll be less likely to pursue new books next year. An additional factor is the library one, where current books have to be read immediately because they’ll expire. That said, two books I’m greatly looking forward to are the new offerings from George Saunders (who’s made my ten-best list twice, I think) and Joan Silber, a new discovery this year and who’ll be on my ten-best list for 2020.
|