The 7 new books that helped me escape this year
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I have a reader s confession to make: When quarantine was first announced, part of me was ⦠excited.
The mayor is telling me to stay inside and not interact with other people? It seemed like the
perfect scenario for getting through a healthy chunk of my massive to-read pile.
But the appeal sputtered out almost immediately. Any time I opened a book, I d get distracted. I had a hard time focusing, my mind racing back to vulnerable family members and the ever-rising number of deaths. Between chapters, I d doomscroll on my phone, only to realize with a jolt that an hour had gone by.
The Best Books Of 2020, According To Everyone
It s December, which means Best of 2020 lists are here. With so many lists out there, who has time to read all of them?
Turns out: We do. But because you probably don t, we rounded up all the Top 10 lists we could find, smashed em together in a big spreadsheet, and spit out overall Top 10 lists for the year s best books, albums, songs, TV shows, movies and video games. You re welcome.
10. Memorial Bryan Washington
Some prose tiptoes so quietly that you don t realize until halfway through a novel that it s dancing all over the room. That s how I feel about Bryan Washington s writing, which in Memorial is so tender that sliding some rice noodles into a pot reads like an act of deep intimacy. Memorial is a love story, or, rather, a post-love story, about a couple already on the brink: When Mike, who is Japanese American, finds out his estranged father is dying, he leaves Houston and Ben, his Black boyfriend to visit his
The former President s movie and television list also added a bit of spice. Instead of separating films and television, he grouped them together for the first. As many Americans have noticed, Obama pointed out that his viewing habits have changed and it s harder to distinguish between films and television currently.
“Like everyone else, we were stuck inside a lot this year, and with streaming further blurring the lines between theatrical movies and television features, I’ve expanded the list to include visual storytelling that I’ve enjoyed this year, regardless of format,” he tweeted.
In his joint television and film list, Obama gave a nod to the popular ESPN documentary,
Pantheon to publish new novel by Wole Soyinka; Cathy Park Hong on disinformation in immigrant communities December 21, 2020
Wole Soyinka. Photo: Penguin Random House
Pantheon has announced that it will publish a new book by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, his first novel in forty-eight years. Set in an “imaginary Nigeria,”
Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, which will be released on September 28, 2021, is “at once a savagely witty whodunit and a corrosively satirical examination of corruption, both personal and political.”
In an opinion piece at the
New York Times, poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong (author of, most recently,
Lastly, the former commander-in-chief shared an eclectic list of his favorite songs of the year, noting he had some valuable consultation from our family music guru, Sasha. The list ranges from Bruce Springsteen s Ghosts and Bob Dylan s Goodbye Jimmy Reed to Bad Bunny s La Difícil, Dua Lipa s Levitating remix with DaBaby, and that immortal bop, Megan Thee Stallion s Savage Remix featuring Beyoncé.
Interestingly, nothing by Drake made the list, despite the rapper having Obama s stamp of approval to play him in a biopic. Well, you can t win em all.
Obama s
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