Jane Rawson

I’ve just been reading about how daft end-of-year lists are and yep, that’s fair, but here it is anyway: the books I enjoyed reading (and listening to) the most in 2020. They’re not the best, they’re just the ones I really, really liked. If your book isn’t on here, you can feel pretty confident it was in my list of books that I really liked, which was about 30 books long. I also left off some books I really, really liked but which everyone else also really, really liked because you already know about those. All links are to libraries where you can borrow these books – free to you, but the author and publisher still get paid. Enough disclaimers: the list.

First, books published in 2020.

Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke (UK)

OK, I’ve broken my first rule right off because this was a much-spoken-of book. But it’s also brilliant and strange and not at all like other books. I loved how much it operated entirely within its own world and rules – it felt like a whole new thing. I might go read it again right now…

A Treacherous Country by KM Kruimink (Australia)

I overlooked this book for ages – maybe because of the cover? – despite it clearly being made for me. Historical fiction set in Tasmania, but lightly surreal, gently funny and sweetly sad, with some very clever craft going on. It’s one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in years. I was bewitched.

Rise & Shine by Patrick Allington (Aust)

Like Piranesi, Rise & Shine creates a whole new world that seems undaunted by literary convention or what ‘the market’ wants. It feels like a book written for the joy of figuring out whether it’s possible to write that book. It also has some very good jokes.

Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth (US)

A novel about activism and animal rights and hope and struggle that has jokes and is partially narrated by a chicken: obviously, I’m in. If you like any of those things, you’ll probably like it too.

Summer by Ali Smith (UK)

I have loved each of the other three books of this quartet very, very much and so I’m delighted that Ali Smith tied them all together with, as usual, a bracing, funny, heartbreaking incredibly smart piece of art that hit me in the guts.

Not every book I read and enjoyed in 2020 was written in 2020: some of them came from as long ago as 2019! Incredible!

The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste (US/Ethiopia)

This book kept doing things I didn’t expect. It refused to work the way the books I read usually work and I loved that – I was unsettled, sometimes confused and, in the end, felt like my brain had expanded a few important notches. Also I learned some stuff about Ethiopian history and it was wildly interesting.

This is how you lose the time war by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (US)

Tiny and incredibly clever, this is a master-class in writing complicated sci-fi without using info dumps. How did they do it? How did I follow what was going on even though they never stopped to explain anything? If you think you hate sci-fi, please read this miniature love story – it is good for your brain and your heart.

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (New Zealand)

The best kind of murder mystery: set in space and populated largely by sarcastic necromancers. Gideon has death and darkness and very dry humour as well as a fiendishly complicated and fast-paced plot featuring the ‘girl-meets-girl, girl-hates-girl, girl-maybe-loves-girl-after-all-or-does-she?’ trope.

Sometimes I read books that are even older than that…

Darkling by Laura Beatty (2014/UK)

There are plenty of books that tell the braided stories of an author and a person from the old days who they’re writing about, but this one is especially good. Some deft and compelling experimentalism take the already engaging plot to a higher level.

The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard (1990/UK)

When you’re stuck in your house in a pandemic and the whole world feels like it’s falling apart, what better to (re)read than the story of a family stuck in their house in the country as WW2 approaches and the world feels like it’s falling apart. This is one of my favourite books ever; I’ve read it three times and if I live long enough I’ll read it again.

2020 was my year of the audiobook. I started commuting to work by car, which really cut into my reading time, so listening to books seemed like the obvious thing to do. I’ve discovered I enjoy listening to different kinds of books than the ones I enjoy reading – I listen to a lot more non-fiction and more ‘popular’ fiction – perhaps these books are easier to follow if you’re not always paying attention? These were my favourites this year.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells (2017/US)

Do you like fun? Then listen to this. Perhaps you could read it instead, but the dead-pan narrator of The Murderbot Diaries #1 was perfect.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (US & Potawatomi Nation/2013)

Everyone went wild for this book in 2020 and I’m not sure why it took that long (there must be an explanation). I read and think a lot about conservation and nature and this shifted my brain to a whole new place: thanks Robin! The author reads the book and her voice is lovely, warm and full of good humour.

Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi (Oman/2010, translated 2019)

Not non-fiction and not popular fiction but also not a book I would likely have read with my eyes. This is one of the few realist fiction books I adored this year, but it did take me to a whole other world – I knew nothing about Oman and it was such a trip to spend the many weeks it took to listen to this book in a completely different society and in a book structured like none I’d ever read. The ending is insanely good. Highly, highly recommended.