I really struggled with my ten best list this year. I usually strive for a balance among types of books, but this weird year I ended up reading a lot of memoirs. Somewhat reluctantly, I ended up with five on my ten best list and it could have been the whole list at that, as I liked some I excluded every bit as much as the ones that are here. Similarly, while I included only one book about the movie industry, I read several others equally as good. Other than the memoirs, the rest are comprised of two novels, one history, one biography and one book of short stories. I’ll note that two of the memoirs also fall into history, more or less, and one of those is a manga as well.
In no particular order:
- Naples '44: A World War II Diary of Occupied Italy by Norman Lewis
- Notes on a Silencingby Lacy Crawford
- God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine by Victoria Sweet
- Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
- Showa, 1926-1939: A History of Japan by Shigeru Mizuki
- Without Lying Down: Screenwriter Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood by Cari Beauchamp
- Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower
- The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope
- A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark
- Fools: Stories by Joan Silber
I realized when looking over my 2020 list that I omitted a book club find in my earlier post. Not a selection but a discovery via nomination,
Never Done: A History of American Housework by Susan Strasser was a four-star read for me.