Dear family and friends,
It is with immense pleasure that I tick the last thing off my to-do list for the year-that-must-not-be-named: the annual Year in Reading missive. If you got two of this, it means you’re signed up for two newsletters: instructions on what to do at the bottom!
I think it’s safe to say that we consumed stories—whether as books, movies, video games, or other formats—in unparalleled (dare I say unprecedented?) volumes this year. There was certainly an element of escapism to this for me: the comfort of leaving behind the worry about masks and hand sanitizer and when I’ll get to see my parents again.
Reading (and watching movies, and playing way too much ACNH/Hades) also provided me with the comfort of connection—that zing of recognition, of shared experience, when a friend or stranger would post about a book I’d read and I’d stop feeling, for just a moment, like our apartment is an island in a deserted city, miles and oceans away from everyone we know.
Ultimately, though, I found the most joy in stories that promised that monsters can be beaten. That life (uh) finds a way—and that we’ll find a way to continue passing tales of survival and love and excitement and joy and triumph to each other.
I’m hoping that khōréō, a magazine of speculative fiction by immigrant and diaspora writers, will spread a similar joy. As many of you know, I founded the magazine last summer and pulled together a truly fantastic team. Since then, we’ve completed one round of submissions and are putting the finishing touches on our first issue, set to launch February 15, 2021. I can’t wait to share these stories with you: ones that warmed my heart, made me cry, and reminded me of the magic of words.
To support a long future for the magazine, we launched our first Kickstarter today. We’re raising funds to support our first year of operations, including fiction, non-fiction, cover art, and audio recordings. If you have a few moments to spare, I’d appreciate you retweeting or sharing our announcement on Facebook to help spread the word. If you have a little more than that, any donations would be met with the most heartfelt gratitude.
Thank you, friends new and old, for your support. And, with no further ado, may I present to you: 2020 in Reading.
The Best Book for When You Want an Epic Adventure but Can’t Leave Home: Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
I can’t remember the last time I fell into a fantasy world as hard as I did into Roanhorse’s. Black Sun takes place in a world inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas; the novel—the first in a trilogy—only shows the tip of the world’s vastness, and it’s so richly imagined I still picture scenes from the novel as if I’d been there. We follow four characters (a reborn god, a captain, a priest, and a sailor) as a solar eclipse that will change the world approaches—and I really do mean that we follow them, because they’re all traveling in some way, shape, or form for most of the book. While the story might be considered mostly setup, with the climactic scene of this arc lasting a mere five pages from the total 450, I was never bored or impatient; I wanted to take every step with each character and feel the journey they were on. If you’re itching to go outside, pandemic be damned: stay inside, order a copy of this book online from an indie bookstore, and curl up with it for the day.
The Best Book for When You’re Missing Your Family: The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
The Ten Thousand Doors of January is another wonderfully imagined fantasy, this one set in a world full of free-standing doors that lead to other worlds. January is a young woman who stumbles on just one such door as a child, though she’s told she must have imagined it. When her father, who goes on adventures for long periods of time, is reported dead, she sets about trying to find the truth of the doors—and learns about her own history along the way. This is truly a comfort read and one I recommend to anyone, even if you don’t usually like fantasy: there’s something about portal fantasies and the ease with which one can slip between worlds that feels perfect for a pandemic, and the central arc of the story felt like a hug when I was missing my parents something awful.
The Best Book for When You’ve Messed Up and Want to Know It’ll Be Okay:Burning Roses by S.L. Huang
What if Little Red Riding Hood grew up to be a vigilante feared across the land? What if she then fell in love? And what if one day, when everything seemed perfect, her past caught up with her? Burning Roses is a retelling of a number of intersecting fairy tales, set in a world of magic and darkness. It’s a story about loving and failing and forgiving; it’s a story about friendship and family and finding a place for yourself. This was a delightful read and one of my last of the year; if I hadn’t been one book short of 50, I would have happily stopped at this one and let its last lines carry me through the New Year. The familiar characters and the length—this is another novella—also make it a perfect read for those who are having trouble focusing when *gestures* all this is going on.
The Best Book for When You Want to Be Creeped Out by Ghoulies and Ghosties: Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones
I’d never read Stephen Graham Jones before this year; after picking up The Only Good Indians, I knew I needed to read more of him. After reading Mapping the Interior, I knew I have to read anything he’s ever written. In Mapping, our twelve-year-old protagonist thinks he sees the ghost of his dead father crossing the living room as he sleepwalks one night. As he grows steadily more certain that he’s right, he learns that not everything is quite what it seems—to horrific consequences. Jones is an absolute master of atmosphere, creating characters and images that stick in your mind’s eye and crawl under your skin; I’m not sure I’ve read anyone quite like him. At 110 pages, this is a quick but haunting read.
The Best Book for When You Want Ghoulies and Ghosties but Not the Whole Creeped Out Thing: Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
Yadriel just wants to be a brujo—a guide for souls in the afterlife—like all the men in his community. But he needs to complete an initiation ceremony to rise to that rank, and his father won’t let him for one reason: Yadriel is trans. Naturally, Yadriel takes matters into his own hands and perform the ceremony himself, only to end up with the ghost of a very cute but very annoying teenage boy stuck with him. Cemetery Boys is an incredibly sweet story of family, identity, and acceptance. It’s the only YA on my list this year, and one I really strongly recommend to teens and adults alike.
The Best Book(s) for 2020, Hands Down: The Empress of Salt and Fortune and When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo
I know, I know, I’m choosing two here, but they’re set in the same universe and I promise that you’ll want to read them both. These novellas follow a cleric named Chih who belongs to an order that collects stories. They’re tender celebrations of the power of storytelling and its inevitable shortcomings, exploring the line between myth and history, fiction and fact. The themes are human and deeply intimate without veering into the maudlin, and somehow manage to be the most comforting books I read this year. Please, please pick them up. You won’t regret it.
Thank you so much for reading! I hope you find a book you’ll love. Please also share your favourites with me – my TBR can never be too long.
Logistics
As noted above, *this* newsletter goes out to two different mailing lists.
If you just want an annual book list, unsubscribe from this newsletter (link at bottom of message) and hear here: https://olareadsbooks.substack.com/.
If you want more content, this newsletter has ~weekly posts on reading and stories as well as the annual reading list: https://alexandrahill.substack.com/. Unsubscribe from the other email!
You can also quietly unsubscribe from both and I’ll never know, except for feeling a slight disturbance in the Force :)
And, finally, as a brief reminder:
Final stats:
Total books read: 50 (One fewer than 2019)
Author breakdown: When I began keeping track of these stats in 2014, the authors I read were 60% male, 83% white, and 60% American. I wanted to be more mindful of whose stories I read so that I don’t live in a reading bubble. For 2020, my statistics were:
71% non-cis-male (up from 61.4% last year). 82% when considering repeat authors (ahem, Martha Wells’ Murderbot Series); this was completely not on purpose, and it would’ve been higher except I got assigned a bunch of male authors in class…
53% authors of colour (up from 39% last year); 56% when considering repeat authors
31% non-US (down from 43% last year ); 28% when considering repeat authors (yikes. Gotta do better next year!)
The full list of titles is accessible at this link - I’m still migrating the galleries over to my author site, so it’s on my personal one. You can also access old book lists there!