THE BEST BOOKS I READ IN 2020 (aka books that made me Sad™ lol) 💔😭 My top 10 favorites of the year

  And it's so so so good. There'snothing wrong with this book. There's absolutely nothingwrong with this book, I have nothing to improve about it. Like it's amazing, period. [music] I have looked back on all ofthe books I read throughout 2020, and I have put together a list of my top 10 personal favoritebooks that I read this year. Before I get into that though, I do want to say thankyou to Ruffled Pages Apparel, they gave me this sweatshirt ofa book that looks like a vajayjay if you look really closely. So I'm gonna link their shop downbelow if you want to check out their stuff. I also want to thank today'ssponsor, which is Fetch Rewards. This is a very fitting sponsorfor today because as you know, I am a cheap bitch. All the books I've read thisyear were from the library because I'm always looking to save money. 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Fetch shoppers can now submit receiptsfrom all restaurants and retail stores, which is super helpful if you are already buying a shit ton ofstuff for Christmas gifts. So if you're interested, you can checkout the link in my description below. If you use the code CINDY, you can get 4000 points ifyou submit your first receipt. This is a limited time offer ifyou're already gonna be spending a bunch of money for the holidays,might as well take advantage of it. And yeah, that's pretty much it. Thanks again for sponsoring, andlet's dive into my favorite books of 2020. Since we're talking aboutmy favorite books of the year, I feel like it's only fitting that I do thatwhile I eat my favorite food of all time, which is poke bowls. This is a Hawaiian dish thatyou can customize with seafood. I could eat this shit every day. So I looked back on allthe books I read this year, and I put together mypersonal top 10 books of 2020. I might put out another videowhere I recommend books where I didn't necessarily love them, but I think other people might like thembecause we will have different tastes. But for this video, these aremy personal favorites of the year. I have ranked them in order and we're going to go from thebottom of the list to the top of the list where I talk about myvery favorite of all time. For number 10 I'm gonna go with the"The Nickel Boys" by Colson Whitehead. I read this in the beginning ofthe year, it was depressing as fuck. By the way, that'sgonna be an ongoing trend for like the majorityof the books on this list. This is a historical novel about twoblack boys who grew up in the 1960s. Oh my god, sorry, this shit is spicy. I have hemorrhoids right now, and I know I'm not supposedto eat spicy food but I can't stop. Speaking of burning assholes, that's what the two maincharacters have to deal with when they get sent to reformschool, because this is 1960s. They're in Florida, andthey're two black boys, they're not going to have a good time. It's called the Nickel Academyand it's where delinquents are sent to. It's just a place where people in authority figures beatthe shit out of young black boys. And it's awful. And it's based on actual schools thathave existed back then, to be honest, I think they still exist today. I decided to write down quotes of eachbook that I'm going to list in this video. And there was one quote Iliked from this book that says, "There are people who trick youand deliver emptiness with a smile, while others rob you of your self respect.You need to remember who you are." What I thought was interesting isthat the main character is precocious, and something that he thinks about alot is what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr says. He constantly thinks about quote, where Dr. King talks about stillloving people who are cruel to you. And the main guy isthinking that's kind of bullshit. Why would I love peoplewho treat me like crap. This is questioning of such an awful system that I think adds to the realism of whata kid is going through during that time. The reason why I'm putting thisat the bottom of my top 10 list specifically is because even though Ithink the author is a very skilled writer, I did find that his writing kind ofveers towards more journalistic instead of being moreemotional or showing the psyche and internal thoughts that maincharacter was going through. It's already kind of very matter of factly and I'm not really a fan of that because this is already basedon something that's real, right? So you could just look it upon Wikipedia or read a memoir. But if you're writing a fiction, I really want to be envelopedinside of these characters and learn more about like whatthey're going through on the inside. I would have liked moreof an internal narrative because I think that would have drivenhome that emotional experience of the book. At number nine I have placed"The Nightingale" by Kristin Hannah which is funny because my next video isgoing to be about my worst books of 2020, and her other book made it on the list. So she has the range really. The novelthat I did like from her on this list is "The Nightingale," which is ahistorical fiction based on World War II. It follows two sisters, one ofthem is an obedient housewife who has to say goodbye to her husband, when he goes off to the war, the other sister is the more rebellious one she ends up joining theresistance against the Nazis so that's pretty much like abadass bitch move on her part. The writing was so good. It was so descriptive and lovely. I buddy read this with a friendwho wasn't a fan of the writing, just because she feltlike it was overly detailed. But I really liked it. I was like, Yeah, tell me this specificwood tile that the character is stepping on. It is a very slow bookbut I didn't mind that because I just enjoyed the writing so much. I felt like I was being taken on theslow journey of impending doom, because this is World War II soobviously, shit is about to go down. I'm putting this nearthe bottom of the list, because there's alreadyso many world war II books, and do I cry readingevery one of them? Yes. But does that mean that they're alldifferent and unique? Not necessarily. This book could have been a bit better if it had focused moreon the sister relationship. Because I think that wasthe unique point of the book, you got to see theviewpoints of two sisters who are completelydifferent from one another. So this is a nice way to show therole of women during World War II. In fact, there's actually a quotethat I really liked, where it says, "Men tell stories.Women get on with it. For us it was a shadow war. There were no paradesfor us when it was was over, no medals or mentions in history books. We did what we had to do duringthe war and when it was over, we picked up the piecesand started our lives over." Women have playedinvisible roles during the war, but they were monumental inmaking sure that there was peace and resolution at the end of the war. And you can see those roles from thepoint of view of the two main characters. But I feel like we didn't really get totake advantage of it as much as we could, specifically with howdisjointed their storylines were. A lot of the story didget diluted from romance that I don't think was welldeveloped enough for me to care. I would have gladly tradedaway any of the romances, if that meant we had morescreentime with the sisters. Whether that's just like thesisters thinking about each other, even though they have individual journeys, or having flashbacks and memoriesof what they've been through. I feel like that would have strengthenedthe whole theme and purpose of the story. At number eight, I am gonna put"Men We Reaped" by Jesmyn Ward. This is a very short nonfiction book, where the author reflects on five menthat she had lost throughout her life. She lost them through various thingslike drugs and accidents and suicide, just all of the fun little things thatdisproportionately come to people who live in poverty andparticularly to black men. So this whole book, she istrying to find these patterns and connections to whythis keeps on happening. She's able to connect their deathsand the meaning of their deaths to the history of racism and theeconomic struggles that they face. Which inadvertently iswhat causes drug addiction and a dissolution of family relationshipsand just instability in general. A quote that I really liked says, "We try to outpace the thing thatchased us, that said: You are nothing. We tried to ignore it, but sometimes we caughtourselves repeating what history said, mumbling along, brainwashed, I am nothing. We drank too much, smoke too much,we're abusive to ourselves, to each other. We were bewildered. There is a great darkness bearing downon our lives, and no one acknowledges it." It's so much deeper than just these individualcases or these individual circumstances. It plays into this systemic bigger story. When you get to the last partwhere she talks about her brother, you can feel the grief just pouring throughthe pages like, that shit was potent. I'm putting "Little Fires Everywhere"by Celeste Ng as number seven. This is a contemporary bookwhere the main character is a Karen. She's like a soccer mom thattakes care of these perfect kids and has the perfect husbandand has that perfect life. But all of that getsfucking ruined to shambles and exposed becausethere's another character that shows up to neighborhoodnamed Mia Warren. She is like the foil tothe Karen character. Because she's a single mom, she has more of like anomadic lifestyle where she and her daughter are alwaysmoving to a new place to place. Their two families end up havingtheir lives intersect with one another because the daughterbecomes really good friends with the white kids that Karen has. And then Karen kind of likehas a weird feeling about Mia because Mia essentially goes againsteverything that Karen believes in. Her name isn't actually Karen, by the way, but for the sake of thisstory, she basically is one. The plot begins when Karen's family friend tries to adopt this Chinese American baby who they found from an immigrant mother who had abandoned the baby whenshe was going through a really hard time. So then there ends upbeing like this custody battle, but the two main characters, the Karen and Mia Warrenare on opposite sides of what they believe should happen with the baby. And the main character getsreally into the custody case and feels threatened by it becausenow that Mia is involved in it, it's feeling personal. So Karen is just like, I knowthis bitch is hiding something, I'm gonna look up her purse and tryto investigate what she's really hiding. But in turn, she also hassome secrets of her own. So again, just suburbanfamily drama bullshit. I did not think I would like this book, because I don't know, I guess I just didn'tthink I would be into suburban drama. But I was really into it. I was sohooked while listen to the audiobook. I finished this in like two days. When I read a contemporarybook that tries to deal with race and racism as its themes, a lotof it is very overt in your face. And whenever I say Iwish it had more nuance, I'm talking about the level of nuancethat "Little Fires Everywhere" had. The book specifically, not the TV show. The TV show is very much in your face, but the book was verysubtle and low key about it. I really liked that, because Ithink that's how it is in real life. And the fact that it's so subtle, gives the readers room tointerpret the story for themselves, instead of being fed like a lesson. It's something that you haveto kind of like deal with like, who is right and who was wrong, and what makes a good motherwhat makes a bad mother. And I think the custodycase that plays into the story is such a good way of showcasingthe differences between two people. The specific custody case, despite not being related to the twomain characters, was such a good way in showing where theredifferent values are, and why they have different valuesbecause of the way that they grew up. I do think the weaknesswith the story is that we spent a lot of time with Karen's kids. And I thought it was gonna like lead upto somewhere or build up to something. But ultimately, Idon't really think it did. There's something that happensin the ending it involves the kids, and I think it would havebeen way more impactful if they had been developed more and weactually like cared about their story more. But because it wasn't it was like ehhhh... Like really I only cared aboutwhat was going on between Karen and Mia Warren because that shit was juicy. A quote that I reallyliked from the book says, "One had followed therules, and one had not. But the problem with ruleswas that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things.When, in fact, most of the time they were simply ways, none ofthem quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for surewhat side of the line you stood on." At number six is the mostfun book I read this year, which is, "One to Watch." This is a contemporary rom com that isbased on the bachelorette reality TV show. The main character is a plus size, beauty/fashion blogger whogets invited to be the next bachelorette. If you are already a personwho watches trashy reality TV, you would be into this book becauseit has very similar like plot twists, and turns and drama that you wouldlike from binging a reality TV show except it's like in book format. And what's cool is that this time, you get to see like thebehind the scenes stuff of what the characters are actually thinking,not what just is portrayed on the show. Beyond the reality show shenanigans, there's also this ongoing journeyof the main character finding self love and acceptance, which she thought she had but a lot of her insecurities werereally challenged throughout the book. And by the way, if you dealwith any body image issues, you probably shouldn't read thebook because it can be very triggering. A lot of awful thingshappen to the main character. But it was such anaccurate depiction of the way that our culture treats fat people,especially someone who is in the public eye. Because what's interestingabout this main character who gets put on the show is that you get snippets of all these blogposts or internet forum discussions of people talking abouther and picking her apart. And I think that's so realistic tothe way that we politicize fat bodies, instead of just letting them exist. Just by her being on the show, it was seen as like a political act and so many people had everythingto say about it and argue about it over. You really have to roll with the punches that the main character goes through before she goes on this journey ofaccepting herself and loving herself. If that's not your thing, like if you just want to readabout fat people being happy and not be reminded of howshitty society is, don't read this book. But if you're okay with that,then this book is very, very juicy. It's like painfully, like, realisticwith how some of them treat her, but it also gets prettyjuicy in terms of the plot, and that's what I was in there for. What I like most about this book is that it wasn't about her loving a man despite the whole premise ofthe reality show that she's on. It was ultimately about herlearning how to love herself, which is the hardest thing that you can do. A quote I really liked was whenthe main character tells this guy who has been treating hervery poorly, and she says, "Some part of me stillfeels like I should be grateful for any attention you show me, even if it's nothing close tothe way I want to be loved." And I think that's super true to anygirl out there with low self esteem and doesn't know her worth yet. You know, it hits home. The reason why it's not higher is because I disagree with some of the actions that the main character didin the third act of the book. To give her credit though I did likethe way that this third act ended up compared to how I've seen other thirdacts developed in other romance books. I feel like in the third actthat the main character is always groveling to get their love back. As if they can't livewithout the other person. And what I liked about thisbook was that she did not do that. I didn't agree with her actions, but I will respect her for likeowning up to it and being like, hey, it is what it is, I onlygot myself and that's okay. In fifth place, we have"The Vanishing Half." This is a historical novel thatfollows multiple generations of people. But it starts off withthese two twin sisters. And the weird thing about this town is like they're super intodiluting their blackness. So they're black, but theyreally really try to have light skin. Like as light as possible. They're like we got to dilutethis shit. It's the colorism for me. But you have to see likethe impacts of what happens with these two sisters where one ofthem decides to move back to the town, she had that daughter with a darkskinned man so the daughter is like super, super dark skinned. The other twin sister tries tolive her life as a white person, because she's white passing. So she marries a white dude, she has a very light skinned daughterwho doesn't even know that she's black. And she doesn't talk about her past at all. So their two daughters end up having theirstorylines intersect with one another. And it's cool to just seelike these worlds collide and the way that theyperceive their identity because of the way that their mothers or they themselves hadchosen to approach their life. One of my favorite quotes says, "She hadn't realized how long ittakes to become somebody else, or how lonely it can be livingin a world not meant for you." That pretty much sums up thewoman who tried to be white. That lady was a whole 'nother level. Like her internalizedracism ran so fucking deep. But it was reallyinteresting to read about, you know, in contrast to the other sister who learned to like embrace her blackness and really raised a strongbadass daughter that I fucking love. I'm putting this into nonetheless, because the first one third of the book kind of took a while for me to getinto just because it was extremely slow. But once we start to seethe generations diverged, and we start to see the daughter's livesand how they got impacted by the history, and then how they connect later on. That's when shit got juicy. I like seeing howdifferently people turned out and then how they can tryto see if they can improve and repair themselves oncethey learn the mistakes of the past. So it's kind of like an interestingsociological character study. This also relates to my next bookat number four, "My Dark Vanessa." Which is by far the mostdepressing book I have read this year. This is a story that exploresthe psychological dynamics of a girl who was groomed by her highschool English teacher when she was.. Oh, I don't remember what her age was. I don't even want to know. Fuck, she was 15. She was a 15 year old girl, and thiscreepy ass motherfucker right here, basically abused her andgroomed her and raped her. She's 15 he's 42. They develop this disgustingpredatory relationship and you follow two timelines in the book. You follow the earlier timelinewhen she was in high school, and then you follow present day whereI think she's like in her 30s or late 20s, or something like that. But the point is, she's an adult, and you see like consequences ofwhat happened to her psychologically. In her present day it takes place in 2017, which is actually around the same time when the Me Toomovement started rising up. And she's in this really complicated place, because there's actually news nowthat the teacher that had abused her, has been abusing other girls. This journalist reaches out toher and wants her to like speak up and share her stories so that theother girl stories can be more legitimate because unfortunately, whenstories of abuse happens, you need multiple people tofuckin step up to even be believed. But this puts her ina really tough position because she doesn'tsee herself as a victim. She has put so much of a barrierbetween like her true feelings and what happened, where shethinks like, well, it wasn't abused. It is so fucking sad and repulsive,because this shit is graphic. Like, it's not a good time. What I thought this book did really well was putting multiplelayers throughout the story because it wasn't just about thisindividual case of the main character being groomed by this nasty pedophile. He added other layers of how other factors had enabled this tohappen in the first place. It's not just the individual, butthe culture that they grow up on. There's a lot of pop culture references,since this takes place in the early 2000s. That really shows like how pervasive itis that society sexualizes young women. There are side characters whohave contributed to the complicity of the situation happening in thefirst place because it didn't get stopped. There are people that could have stoppedit, but they didn't for various reasons. I think there's also a lot ofcomplicated discussions with victimhood. Something that she thinksabout a lot is how victimhood is almost like encouraged for women. It's almost like when you're born a womanit's automatically something that you have. And then that plays into like acomplicated role when it comes to the Me Too Movement because thatgets co-opted by journalism and clickbait. There's this part where she is comingto terms with the fact that this was abuse, and she basically losther entire childhood to him. And she says, "I can't lose the thingI've held on to for so long. I just really need it to be a love story. I really, really need it to be that. Because if it isn't alove story, then what is it? It's my life. This has been my whole life." And I think that does such a good jobin showing how we minimize trauma, or we reframe the way that certainthings happen so that we can cope with it. Like if we don't realize it's a bad thing,then maybe it's not actually a bad thing. But the fact is, it's happened and it'sreally fucking you up like in present day, like this bitch is depressed. I listened to the audiobook, andI felt like I was stuck in her mind. So that was like double depression for me. Speaking of depression, at number three, I'm going to put "MaybeYou Should Talk To Someone." This is a memoir thatis written by a therapist. She goes through these anecdotesfrom her own experiences with therapy. And also some of her experiences with threedifferent clients that she saw regularly. She did change the details and the names of thepeople that she talked to so you wouldn't be able to identify them. The author just comes across as supergenuine and insightful in her writing. A lot of the insights that she wrote about were very applicable to myown mental health journey as well. One of those things being likehow we stay in a negative mindset, because it's easier to stay into that place than trying to break free intoa territory that you don't know, and trying to give hope tosomething that is not going to work out. It's so much easier to juststick to your own happiness, because at least when you're depressed,you know what you're signing up for. A quote I really liked says, "But part of getting to knowyourself is to unknow yourself to let go of the limiting storiesyou've told yourself about who you are so that you aren't trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you've beentelling yourself about your life." I don't think the book is perfect, becausesometimes it can feel pretty long winded. I personally didn't really care aboutthe author talking about her own therapy and her own personal story. That was like the least interesting part. But I was moved enough by the threepatient stories that she talked about, and felt emotionallyresonant enough through that, that it compelled me enoughto want to give it five stars. I still think it's a very strong book even if there are some partsthat are not as interesting, it's still a very solidreminder to be compassionate to other people and also to yourself. For number two, I'm goingto put a sci-fi novella called, "This Is How You Lose The Time War." Out of all the books I've read this yearthis is the best writing that I have read, like I was hooked into thisfrom the very, very beginning. The story follows two time travelerswho work as secret spy agents, and they are on twoopposing sides of the war. So their job is to travel through time and mess with various thingsin order for their side to win. Kind of like the butterfly effect. One day one of the agentsdecides to leave behind a letter that taunts the other agentthat they're going to win the war. And this begins this weirdpen pal relationship where they go through these differentcenturies and these different locations, and they leave notes behind for each other. But as they keep on writing to each other, they learn more about the other person, they open up more about themselves, and then romantic feelings start to develop. Let me read you a quote I really liked: "I love you. I love you. I love you. I'llwrite it in waves. In skies. In my heart. You'll never see, but youwill know. I'll be all the poets, I'll kill them all and takeeach one's place in turn, and every time loves written inall the strands it will be to you." I'm like damn bitch, you'rereally going to kill all the poets. You really are whipped. The writing is so creativeand abstract and lyrical. You're either gonna like it,or you're not gonna like it. Like you'll find it too confusing. The majority of peoplethat I read this book with did not understand what was going on. I saw a tweet wheresomeone said that this author just needs to pick a metaphoralready, which is valid, but I also didn't care enough becauseI just loved how descriptive it was. There's just so many creativelayers that the author put into it and I fell in love with the writing. Out of all the fiction books Iread it would be my top favorite. In terms of nonfiction, though, that goes to the book in first place, which is "Know My Name" by Chanel Miller. This is a memoir written by an Asianwoman who is actually where I'm from. She was the girl who had gotten rapedbehind a dumpster at a Stanford frat party. Her letter first becameviral a couple of years ago, she wrote I think it was like 12 pages that just described everything thatshe was going through as a victim. And that letter got posted on BuzzFeed and it became viral butnobody really knew her name because she chose to beanonymous as Emily Doe. It wasn't until recently thatshe finally revealed her identity. She decided to publish this book thatshe had been working on for two years. She talks about herexperience with sexual assault and she goes through her entire journey, with going through those trials and theslow ass justice system that we have. And the disappointingresults that we have where Brock Turner barely got any time in jail and the repercussions of what shefaced psychologically and on the internet, and all the ways that she dealtwith her trauma or didn't deal with it and how she healed from it as well. This is such a good book to showhow archaic the US justice system is, and how we have this culture thatprotects predators and shames victims. This is honestly, I think, the bestnonfiction book that I've read. She truly wrote her ass off. There were so many lines, where Ijust had to stop and I was like, holy shit. I talked about this in detailin my monthly wrap up, I read the quote and my otherwrap up so you can hear all the tidbits that I shared there, but one quote that Ididn't share that I will for this video was, "I survived because I remainedsoft, because I listened, because I wrote. Because I huddled close to my truth protected it like a tinyflame in a terrible storm. Hold up your head when thetears come, when you're a mocked, insulted, questioned, threatened, when they tell you you are nothingwhen your body is reduced to openings. The journey will belonger than you imagined, trauma will find you again and again. Do not become the ones who hurtyou. Stay tender with your power. Never fight to injure, fight to uplift.Fight because you know that in this life, you deserve safety, joy and freedom. Fight because it is yourlife. Not anyone else's. I did it and I am here. Lookingback, all the ones who doubted or hurt or nearly conquered me fadedaway, and I am the only one standing. So now the time has come.I dust myself and go on." Wait actually okay, one last quote and then I'll end the damn videobecause this is already getting too long. "Victims exists in a society to tell usour purpose is to be an inspiring story. But sometimes the best wecan do is tell you we're still here, and that should be enough. Denying darkness does notbring anyone closer to the light. When you hear a storyabout rape, all the graphic and unsettling details, resist theinstinct to turn away; instead loo closer, because beneath thegore and the police reports is a whole, beautiful person, lookingfor ways to be in the world again." Literally one of the bestbooks I've ever read. She has written everything so well. She has constructed herthoughts so beautifully. She's able to make connections to allthe complicated feelings that she has, and tie them into like thesemetaphors or these other anecdotes. And they just make so much sensein the way that she frames things. And it's so so so good. There'snothing wrong with this book. There's absolutely nothingwrong with this book. It's so fucking good. I have nothing to improveabout it, like it's amazing, period. Next time I'll see you I'll talkabout the worst books I read in 2020. . Goodbye.