My favourite books of 2020!!!

So, at the beginning of 2020 I gave myself the goal to read 24 books this year – two a month.

I realise that’s not the most ridiculous task for someone who does want to be an author. Also, especially when there are people set themselves the goal to read a book a week. And, for me, I obviously enjoy reading, I wouldn’t have made this blog if I didn’t, but my want to read kind of comes in waves. Like, I’m not the quickest reader, because I’ve realised I have a habit where I’ll start to read and then if I’m not that interested in it, I’ll just start skimming. But if it’s a book I’m actually into, I will fully just spend hours a night and read a huge chunk in one sitting. Then sometimes I’ll finish a book, get the next one I want to read out, and then not touch it for weeks. 

Sometimes I just don’t want to read, and I feel like that’s okay, especially in the face of those book bloggers that are like, “Here are the 95 books I read this year, and if you’re not reading at least two books a week you’re garbage :)”. I just want to enjoy books…

Also, that paragraph went majorly off topic, I realise. So, I set myself the goal of 24 books this year. As of me writing this (December 29th) I’m on 37. I do think that big Miss 5-2 that kind of stopped the world probably helped inflate that number.

Anyway, here are my favourite books I’ve read in 2020. (As a disclaimer, I’m only including books that were new to me, not ones I re-read.)

Darius the Great. So, the “first” book I want to mention is actually two, but they’re in the same universe, and follow the same character. They are Darius the Great is not Okay and Darius the Great Deserves Better by Adib Khorram. I read them in June and September respectively and, I went into the first of the two thinking that it was going to be gay, as in, I thought that’s what it was going to be about. It wasn’t (spoilers), but I didn’t care. Like, I finished reading it, and I didn’t care that it wasn’t gay. That didn’t mean there weren’t parts of the book where I thought Darius was gay (or at least queer.) Still, Darius and his family go to Iran to visit his grandparents. The whole thing revolves around Darius, his mental health, and about how he doesn’t feel like he fits in anywhere. So, I ended up speed reading this over three nights if that gives you any indication on how I felt about this book. Very rarely do I find a book with a protagonist that I can relate so heavily to, but I saw a lot of myself in Darius as a character. I could see that I shared a lot of the characteristics he had when I was his age, and it was so affirming to see. I want to keep gushing about this book, but I’m worried this paragraph is already too long, so I’ll move on…

…to another Adib Khorram book. Darius the Great Deserves Better, the sequel to is not Okay. So, as I’ve started writing this, I remember I made an Instagram post about this book, and about how I liked it more than its prequel. This book follows Darius again (shocking, I know), but this time it’s after his time in Iran, he’s back in the US, and he has a boyfriend. He’s still dealing with a lot of the same mental problems, it’s just slightly in the future. Now I vaguely remember the caption of the post I made about this book was that I mentioned something along the lines of, “I don’t think there was ever a book that made me audibly say ‘no’ at it before this.” And I say that because, again, I saw parts of myself in Darius. The relationship that he was in a (depressingly) similar to my first, and the outcome of both of them were also similar.

Date Me, Bryson Keller by Kevin van Whye is another one. There’s definitely a theme to these books… Gay. So, the gig of this book is that Bryson Keller, one of the most popular students in the school has this bet where he has to date the first person to ask him out that week for the rest of the week. The catch is that it was never specified that it could only be the girls that could ask him out. Kai ends up asking him out, and Bryson ends up being his boyfriend for the week. You can pretty much tell what happens, even without me saying any more. But even with how predictable it was, that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Literally the opposite, in fact, because that affirmation I felt when what I thought was going to happen actually happened was so satisfying.

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas sent me to the absolute moon and back. I may be bald, but if I had hair, this book would have sent my wig flying. (I realise having hair growing and a wig are two different things, leave me be.) The gig of this one, Yadriel is trans, and his community is super traditional, so he goes through this ceremony to give him the power he should have gotten, in secret, with a friend. He ends up befriending a ghost, which we love, and he ends up basically playing detective to help this ghost and, to not spoil things, the book was much wilder than I anticipated it to be. I was expecting the plot to remain more based in the normal world, I shall just say. It was emotional, took me on a whole ass ride, and made me feel way more than I was expecting to.


(an accurate portrayal of me discussing Cemetery Boys)

How It All Blew Up by Arvin Ahmadi is the last book I want to include on this list. I’ll say the battle for my favourite (new) book of 2020 is between this and Darius the Great Deserves Better. So, I would have read How It All Blew Up in one sitting had I not needed to sleep to, you know, survive. I found out about this book from Twitter, like I do a lot of books I read. But it follows Amir who basically runs away from his family, and life, to live in Rome for a little while. You know, like we all do. But the story is told from interrogation rooms of an airport. And since the main character is named Amir, you can guess why he’s in there... But Amir explains why he ended up in Rome, and why his family ended up in a massive argument on the plane. I don’t really know what to say about this, it’s the story of, for lack of better phrasing, an unhappy young gay who found a life, and what he was looking, for with the help of some friends from another country. Bitch, it’s a good book, read it.

Well, it’s over. They were my favourite books of 2020, condensed into a barely legible train of thought because I got paranoid I was rattling on for too long. You’re welcome.

           I’m not planning on making a post about my least favourite books. I do have least favourites. I just felt like turning up and unnecessarily slandering books isn’t going to help anyone feel good. I’ll be back early next year. I accidentally wrote another post that was a vaguely sensical train of thought on the last book I read of the year.

            Okay, bye!

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