Top 56 Good Read Best Books of All Time (56 books)
Top 56 Good Read Best Books of All Time (56 books)
This year we were fascinated by stories from literary icons, debut novelists, and more.
2020 came and went quickly, but thankfully the publishing industry kept pace with the passage of time with a slew of the year's most anticipated titles. Check back here for the best new books out this year - and add them to your 2021 reading list if you haven't delved into them yet.
The Lying Life of Adults
Revealed via a surprise announcement in September 2019,, the reclusive writer's newest title leaves the characters of the Neapolitan novels behind to tell a new story in the same setting. Plays on Ferrante's favorite themes: beauty versus ugliness and Class Mobility and The Lying Life of Adults Becoming an Adult tells the story of a rich and rebellious teenager in a divided Naples.
See Also: 10 Relaxing Good Read Before Bed | My Think Big Life
Rodham
From Prep to American Wife, Curtis Sittenfeld has made a name for himself as WASP America's foremost chronicler of contemporary fiction. Now she's turning her literary lens away from a wry observation and into the realm of a particularly topical what-if: What would have happened if Hillary Rodham had never agreed to marry Bill Clinton?
Transcendent Kingdom: A Novel
From the author of Homegoingdebut novel, the breakthrough about the two very different legacies of an Asante woman living in 18th-century Ghana, comes a contemporary tale of a Ghanaian family in Alabama struggling to understand loss .
The Glass Hotel: A Novel
Fans of the genre-defying post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven, rejoice: Emily St. John Mandel is back with a new novel that weaves otherworldly elements through the storyline of a modern financial thriller.
My Dark Vanessa: A Novel
When a fellow student comes out with allegations of sexual misconduct against Vanessa's high school English teacher, Jacob, Vanessa must grapple with a troubling question: whether her own teenage relationship with Jacob was as good as she'd told herself . 17 years. In the #MeToo era, Russell's blistering, deeply awkward and utterly essential debut reaches required reading status.
The Death of Vivek Oji: A Novel
With Freshwater and Pet under their belt, Akwaeke Emezi has cemented their reputation as a leading new voice in both YA and adult literary fiction in less than two years. They're not slowing down anytime soon either: in their second adult novel, due out this summer, Emezi describes the experience of grief and transcendence of a Nigerian family.
Real Life: A Novel
of a Black, Queer Writer and Former Biochemical Ph.D. candidate living in a Midwestern college town comes up with a scorching debut about ... a black, queer biochemical Ph.D. candidate living in a college town in the Midwest. When Wallace has an unexpected encounter with a supposedly straight white classmate amid a time of mounting hostility in his community, he is forced to face long-hidden wounds. Whether in spite of or because of Taylor's proximity to his subject, the result is a novel of quiet, surprising power.
Wow, no, thanks .: Essays
Since publication Meaty in 2013, Irby's essays have been compulsory to read about the millennium condition. In her latest collection, the writer - now nearly 40 and living a Pinterest version of the American dream in a small Midwestern town - turns her addictive wacky humor into topics like `` lesbian bed death '' and the difficulty of making adult friendships.
Death in Her Hands: A Novel
Dark and sharp as ever, the author of Eileen and My Year of Rest and Relaxation returns with a story about a small-town woman who may or may not have discovered evidence of a murder. The problem: she can't find out if anyone was actually murdered.
It's Not All Downhill From Here: A Novel
How Stella Got Her Groove Back grows up in the author's latest title, a story of what it takes to chase joy after an unexpected loss. Sixty-eight-year-old Loretha Curry lives a full life, but when the unthinkable - and unforeseeable - happens, Loretha must turn to her friends for help heal old wounds and learn to thrive.
The Vanishing Half: A Novel
When Vignes' twin sisters grew up, they were inseparable. But now, as adults, they've taken two paths: one who lives with her black daughter in the same community she has known all her life; the other transitions as white and lives among lovers who have no idea where she came from. Propulsive and compassionate, Bennett's follow-up to The Mothers is not to be missed.
Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
Long, a pillar of Black Twitter, Mikki Kendall is perhaps best known for her creation of the viral hashtags #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, #FastTailedGirls and #FoodGentrification. With HOOD FEMINISM, Kendall brings her current and powerful critique of contemporary feminism from the world wide web to the print page.
Fairest: A Memoir
With her debut title, award-winning journalist Talusan puts her talents into memoirs to chart her path from childhood in a rural Philippine village to adult life as a white trans woman in American academia. The result is an exciting meditation on race, gender and identity.
Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation
Where were you when Petersen's viral article on millennial burnout first appeared in BuzzFeed in January 2019? If the memory lingers, I was finishing my third 12-hour workday of the week, praying that when I got home I could keep my eyes open long enough to finish my law degree. Needless to say, the piece struck a chord with me - and so many others that now, less than a year later, many of us are waiting with bated breath for the release later this year of Petersen's book-long exploration of the same subject. Whether you are looking for solutions or just want to be seen, Can't Even is not to be missed.
The Resisters: A Novel
In the near-future semi-submerged AutoAmerica, a young girl's supernatural baseball prowess allows her to climb from the underclass of a highly divided dystopian society to the higher echelons of her elite, even if her mother is a challenge. to the foundations of the world they know. Cautious and warm, witty and disturbing, Jen's fifth novel portrays an evolution of American society that feels increasingly plausible.
Drifts
The author of 2012's acclaimed Heroines returns with a quietly poignant account of the self-imposed isolation of an unnamed writer. Desperate to complete her overdue novel, the narrator haunts her neighborhood's street shops in search of inspiration, but as winter approaches, her progress is interrupted by a series of disturbing disturbances.
The Hunger Games. Harry Potter. The Percy Jackson Books. Wherever you first encountered it, it's a story we all know by heart: in a time of darkness, a child is chosen as the world's last great hope for salvation. When that child grows up, one must take ownership of their powers, fulfill the prophecy, and save the world. But what happens to the Chosen One after the threat is overcome? Veronica Roth - the author of a small franchise you may know by the name of Divergent -aims to answer this question in her adult debut, which follows five former teenage heroes who understand the trauma they were left with after saving the world.
I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories
Although she has earned praise for her two recent novels -Find Me, her first full story from 2015, and The Third Hotel from 2018 - the short story seems to be most Laura van den Berg natural medium. For proof, look no further than I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, the writer's latest collection of melancholy adult fairy tales.
Just Like You: A Novel
If you've devoured the Zoe Kravitz-led serial High Fidelity and are desperate for your next big binge, you're in luck: Nick Hornby, author of the Hulu show's source material, has another indisputable story of love and heartbreak in September. In Just Like You,
not-yet-divorced 42-year-old Lucy is fooled when she realizes that 22-year-old Joseph - the man she hired to look after her children - might be her perfect match.
Perfect Melodies
From her Gawker days in the early years to her current Twitter presence, Emily Gould has made a name for herself as the foremost Internet chronicler of the Millennium. Now, with the release of her second novel, founder of now-defunct indie publisher Emily Books is looking back to the 21st century and drawing a line through the decades-long series of small choices that make us who we are. . Laura, the protagonist of Gould, arrives in New York in the early 2000s to pursue the ambition of songwriting, but her plan is turned upside down when she gets pregnant. Fifteen years later, Laura's teenage daughter, Marie, begins to question the dreams her mother left behind.
The Disaster Tourist: A Novel
What better time to pick up an eco-thriller than at a cataclysmic world event? In her first novel, translated into English, acclaimed South Korean writer Yun Ko-Eun follows her protagonist - an employee of a travel agency specializing in disaster tourism - on a visit to Mui, a remote island that threatens to be off the grid. her business. of destinations. There, she faces the decision to remain loyal to her employer or to help Mui's main vacation resort devise a disaster big enough to save the island's economy.
It Is Wood, It Is Stone: A Novel
Debut novelist Gabriella Burnham knocks it out of the park with a sharp, gnarled novel about colorism and class in the heart of São Paulo. Adrift after moving from America to Brazil for the work of her husband Dennis, Linda develops a fraught relationship with the couple's maid, Marta, whose roots at Linda and Dennis's home run deeper than either American can imagine .
from Empire of Wild
Cherie Dimaline, author Métis, follows her breakthrough YA bestseller, 2017 The Marrow Thieves, with a thrilling riff about the Métis story of a creature bordering on a werewolf, the rougarou. While looking for her long-lost husband, Joan meets the Reverend Eugene Wolff, a charismatic pastor who bears a striking resemblance to Joan's missing love. Convinced that the pastor is really her husband Victor, Joan takes on the formidable task of reawakening Wolff to who he really is.
A Clockwork Orange meets The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in Megan Giddings' deeply disturbing debut, a sci-fi thriller about the sacrifices a black woman must make to provide for her family. When Lena quits college to help pay her family's huge debts, she finds a job as a professional guinea pig in a series of mysterious medical investigations. But she soon discovers that the medical implications of the program could be greater than she can afford.
How Much Of These Hills Is Gold
C Pam Zhang's electrifying debut is a sweeping work of historical fiction - the kind of masterpiece that immediately establishes an author as a force to be reckoned with. Zhang's haunting Western adventure story follows Lucy and Sam, the orphans of Chinese immigrants, who flee their abandoned mining town to find new life in the waning days of the American gold rush.
These women
At a time when the true crime industrial complex is experiencing an unprecedented golden age, what does it look like to tell a story about the serial killer that revolves not around the killer's crimes, but the lives he destroyed? The answer might look something like These Women, Ivy Pochoda's novel about five very different women in LA's rapidly gentrifying West Adams neighborhood. When two murders are reported in their neighborhood, the women see that their lives are inextricably linked to the crimes and obsessions of one man.
Here for: or,
ELLE.com essay collection writer R. Eric Thomas's memoir / hybrid is subtitled How to Save Your Soul in AmericaHow to Save Your Soul in America, and nothing is more appropriate. From stories of his time as a gay black student at a rural white prep school to meditations on what it means to be 'normal' in Trump's America, Thomas' essays are a series of sometimes melancholic, always lavish studies of what it means. to live on the edge.
After her friend dumped her over her countless infidelities, the unnamed narrator of Zaina Arafat - a Palestinian DJ and aspiring writer living in Brooklyn - checks herself into addiction rehab for love addiction. While there, and as she tries to rebuild her life afterward, she is forced to rethink a litany of uncomfortable memories about the relationships and cultural forces that shaped her. Arafat's beautiful, deep-rooted coming-of-age story skillfully interweaves many unwieldy themes - a fraught mother-daughter relationship, the feeling of trapped between two cultures, the frenzy of romantic and sexual dependence - into an astonishingly elegant package.
Luster
In the breakthrough 2020 debut, a young black New Yorker named Edie begins dating a middle-aged white man in an open marriage. Before long she is broke, unemployed, homeless - and living in the suburbs with her lover, his wife, and their adopted black daughter. A tour de force about the simultaneous beauty and brutality of being young and alive in America, Luster
marks Raven Leilani as a uniquely new voice in American fiction.
The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories
If you are usually bored by short story collections, we can empathize - which is why you'll want to trust us when we say it's worth making an exception. From a black scholar in Washington, DC, who gets sucked into a historical mystery, to a white college student who goes viral after posing for a photo in a Confederate flag bikini, Danielle Evans' characters are so messy, compelling and deep human that you will not be able to turn away.
Night. Sleep. Death. the stars.
Despite all his mistakes, this year has given JCO fans a lot of reasons to choose Joyce again. In October we will see the publication of Cardiff, by the Sea, a collection of four unpublished short stories that Oates' own publisher described as' deeply disturbing '. As if that wasn't enough, the other novel of light, Night. Sleep. Death. The stars.A poignant exploration of race and family mourning - is now also on the shelves.
Plain Bad Heroines - by Emily M Danforth (Hardcover)
Eight years after the publication of the acclaimed YA novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post It, Emily M. Danforth's adult debut will finally hit shelves in October. A lavish modern Gothic story, Plain Bad Heroines is a tale of horror and sapphic love set over 100 years in a cursed girls' boarding school.
White Tears / Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrayed Women of Color
If you think you've conquered the modern canon of anti-racist literature just because you read Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility, think again. This fall, Ruby Hamad's indispensable book of culture criticism explains how feminism that is not intersectional, not only fails the WOC by leaving them behind, but actively wreaks irreparable damage.
Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Frontline of White Nationalism
To those who have never experienced it firsthand, the world of right-wing extremism may seem like an alien planet. However, as this blockbuster reveals, we exist closer to proud white supremacists than we ever suspected. In Sisters in Hate, Seyward Darby follows the lives of three women involved in modern white nationalism - one of whom has left the movement.
Memorial
Just when pals Benson and Mike wonder why they are still together, a family tragedy forces Benson into an unexpected situation with his roommate with Mike's mother Mitsuko, while Mike flies to Japan to say goodbye to his dying father. Generous and moving, Bryan Washington's debut novel has already achieved the impossible: legendary melancholic writer Ocean Vuong said, "This book has made me happy."
If you're in the mood for some feel-good escapism, Emily Henry's new novel might just be the ticket. After a family tragedy that destroys her optimistic worldview, novelist January Andrews retreats to her late father's lake house to try to write her way out of financial ruin. When she bumps into her nemesis at school, Gus - now an acclaimed author of literary fiction - strikes a deal: they will each write a novel in the other's genre, both will sell their books for a lot of money, and under no circumstances will they. to do. fall in love with each other.
The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes: A Novel
Readers looking to take a walk on the wild side should pick up Elissa R. Sloan's debut for an exciting tale of the dark side of celebrities. Fifteen years after pop supergroup Gloss broke up, former member Cassidy Holmes dies of suicide. Her three former band members have to pick up the pieces and wonder what they could have done differently.
When No One Is Watching: A Thriller
The dangers of gentrification become quite literal in romance veteran Alyssa Cole's indisputable new thriller. As Brooklynite Sydney Green takes a life-long deep dive into the history of her rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, she discovers that the forces behind her area's recent 'revitalization' may be even more sinister than she suspected.
The Comeback
A year after rising star Grace Turner mysteriously disappeared from Hollywood, she suddenly reappears on the scene, just in time to present a Lifetime Achievement Award to director Able Yorke - her longtime abuser. Ella Berman sets the stage in The Comeback, a compelling story about power and justice in a post # MeToo world.
The Talented Miss Farwell
From Elizabeth Holmes to Fyre Festival, there's just nothing quite as compelling as a juicy, nasty scam - making Emily Gray Tedrowe latest it a must-read. Treasurer Becky Farwell has a secret: she stars as a luxury art collector in New York and borrows money from the treasury to fund her habit of attending the auctions at Christie's. But as Becky chases bigger and bigger deals, her double life becomes increasingly insidious.
What Will You Go
In Sigrid Nunez 'sequel to her award-winning book The Friend, her female narrator describes a series of encounters with friends and strangers who all have one thing in common: they are desperate to talk about themselves. The result is a very compassionate book on death, modern life and the human connection.
Sleep Donation
This one is a bit of a cheat: The Swamplandia! The author's "new" novella was actually first published in 2014 as an ebook exclusive, but disappeared when the original publisher unfolded less than a year later. Karen Russell's, first available in paperback Sept. 29, Sleep Donation tells the story of a deadly insomnia epidemic, a mysterious company that enables 'sleep donations' to those in need, and a woman's quest to bring sleep back to the world at all costs.
Nights When Nothing Happened
In Simon Han's debut novel, released in November, five-year-old Annabel Cheng's struggle with sleepwalking causes a series of spider web fractures in her Texas suburb. The result is an in-depth portrait of a family's immigrant experience - and the toll the American Dream takes on those who pursue it.
Despite all the misery we've seen in 2020, this year has seen a few bright spots too - like the release of Margaret Atwood's first collection of poetry in more than a decade. Fittingly for these times, the book in question is a wry but plaintive meditation on love and loss (Atwood's partner of over 40 years, Graeme Gibson, passed away in 2019).
Daddy: Stories
Emma Cline burst the literary scene in 2016 with The Girls, ontoher smashing debut novel about an elderly woman who once belonged peripherally to a fictionalized version of the Manson family. Now, four years later, Cline is back with a collection of non-sparse stories about other types of girls and the men who float in and out of their lives.
may have heard the story by now: One day, while giving a speech about how she and her husband rebuilt their marriage after an infidelity, Glennon Doyle watched the ballroom with Abby Wambach and fell in love. In Doyle's amazing 2020 memoir, she talks about that experience, what came next, and how she gradually learned to commit to her own happiness.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent Inciting
Given the subject matter, it's fitting that this book was released just a few months after George Floyd's murder,Americans across the country in protest against anti-blackness. Drawing parallels between the racial divide in the US and other caste systems that have existed throughout history, Isabel Wilkson's latest iteration is a compelling, unshakable taxonomy of the unspoken social order that underpins all of American society.
Cleanness
Undoubtedly a sequel - spiritually, if not literally - to What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell's debut novel, Cleanness, follows a young, gay American man who teaches English in a Bulgarian high school about romantic entanglements and milestones of adulthood. With all the ingredients of an instant queer classic, Greenwell's moving new work walks with precision and ease the narrow line between novel and storytelling.
Leave the World Behind
When two families - a nuclear family looking for a respite from the city and the elderly couple who own the home - are forced together into a luxury vacation home on a remote corner of Long Island, class and racial tensions converge. Think Parasite for a pandemic-era audience.
Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir
When Natasha Trethewey was 19, her former stepfather murdered her mother, forcing Trethewey to deal with unfathomable grief and new maturity at the same time. In this indisputable memoir, the award-winning poet explores her mother's history alongside the story of her own life in the years leading up to that fatal tragedy.
White Ivy
The talented Mr. Ripley meets Crazy Rich Asians in Susie Yang's electrifying debut novel about a young woman desperate for the perfect life at any cost. When Ivy Lin runs into her wealthy high school crush's sister while out and about in Boston, she decides to do whatever it takes to reunite with her brother - forever.
The Majesties
Estella and Gwendolyn, sisters and scions of exorbitantly rich Chinese-Indonesian descent, grew up with a lack of nothing. Then Estella poisons her entire family. Comatose and clinging to life, Gwendolyn - the lone survivor of Estella's attack - follows her and Estella's steps in a desperate attempt to find out when their charmed life went off the rails.
Ring Shout
In the mesmerizing alternate reality of P. Djèlà Clark's new novel, it's 1915 and the Ku Klux Klan has a literal demonic influence on whites across America. It's up to Maryse Boudreaux and her band of resistance fighters to send the Klan straight back to hell - but will they succeed before the Klan's demons cause the end of the world?
All Adults Here
From the author of The Vacationers and Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures comes a family comedy of epic proportions. After witnessing the death of an acquaintance in a bus accident, the widow Astrid decides to tell her three children that she is in love with a woman. The reveal is the beginning of a Rube Goldberg-esque unraveling of insignificant fears, decades-old resentments and secret secrets across three generations of one family.
My Mother's House
It's a rare fictional work that draws comparisons to Toni Morrison at the height of her power, so it's all the more impressive that Francesca Momplaisir's debut novel has garnered so much acclaim. When Lucien emigrated to New York City with his family, he hopes for a fresh start and a way to provide support and shelter to other Haitian immigrants in the city. But it soon becomes clear that Lucien's old trauma has followed him into his new life - and everyone around him will soon be paying the price.
The Space Between Worlds
In this thrilling ride of a sci-fi debut, human civilization has finally unlocked the key to interdimensional travel between parallel universes, and Cara - whose alternate self continues to die in other dimensions - is considered the perfect candidate for a new one to test. technology. But she soon finds herself over her head when she stumbles upon a secret that threatens the very existence of the entire multiverse.
Like a Bird
When she is rejected by her parents after a violent assault, Taylia Chatterjee suddenly faces the unknown task of exploring the world all by herself - unless you consider the spirit of her Indian grandmother for company. Eighteen years in the making, Fariha RóisÃn's painfully beautiful first novel follows Taylia as she makes her way into a life and community of her own making.
If I Had Your Face
In Seoul, four women navigate overlapping lives through a cosmopolitan landscape defined by plastic surgery, social status and access to obscene wealth. Kyuri entertains wealthy businessmen in an underground bar; A talented artist, Miho enters into a rocky romance with the heir to a huge corporate dynasty; Ara spends her days yearning for a boy band superstar; and Wonna and her new husband are determined to have a baby they are not sure they can afford. A searing indictment of contemporary class differences and beauty standards, Frances Cha's debut novel is not to be missed.
No comments: