Hi guys, it is time for my best books of the year Just a quick aside - little self-promotion time: I am actually putting this on my main channel because I know that a lot of people maybe if they aren't super duper into reading they might not know about or check out my book channel but I do actually have a completely separate book channel called cari can read. I post once a week (I try)and so if you are interested in 2021 maybe reading some more you don't know where to get started, we have a lot of fun over on cari can read so go ahead and check it out, but if you're just a casual reader and you just are kind of looking for the next book, I hope that this leads you in the right direction and that being said let's jump on in. I read so much this year, I honestly think this is the year that I have read the most in my entire life because even when I was kind of like my peak bookworm self when I was a kid, I don't think I read at the rate that I that I did this year. Especially with quarantine, I spent almost all of summer in my rocking chair that I'm looking at right now, reading hundreds of pages a day. I read so many excellent, wonderful, honestly life-changing books (subtly life-changing) so it was quite difficult for me to narrow it down and I don't think if you ask me in like a week or two - I'm not going to be completely happy with this list but as it stands January 3rd? 4th? Whatever it is. This is the list that I came up with and I can confidently say that these are my favorite books of 2020. That being said, let's start. So I would say all of this started in April 2020 when my life changed. I am gonna be real quick about this book because I've talked about it so much but of course I'm talking about Six of Crows and its sequel Crooked Kingdom by my queen Leigh Bardugo. This is a young adult/new adult fantasy that is kind of a heist novel where we have six misfits that go off to steal something to make a bunch of money so that they can go live their lives free from the gangs that they're in or all the other situations that they're put in and there is a bit of magic thrown in there but like I've said before, it wasn't like an over-the-top fantasy - we didn't have fairies floating in or like dragons or something like that. The characters, I love them all so much, the story is great, the banter is wonderful. It is going to become a Netflix series this year in April I believe and I'm really excited for it. This was just the book that made me dive so deep into YA Fantasy. It's the reason why I read so many books this year and I just can't thank it enough. It's the reason why I started booktube, it's the reason why I started talking to Cindy who is now my ultimate online girl crush. Life-changing things. So if you're looking for a book that you hope will really grab your attention and I don't know, will make you just happy! That's the book that really did it for me so Six of Crows. I can't promise this is the last time you're gonna hear about it because I know I'm gonna talk about it again but thank you Leigh Bardugo for literally changing my life in April of 2020. Switching it up, my next book is actually Everything I Never Told You and I believe this is one of the first books that I read in 2020. It is rather dark, it is definitely more of an adult book and it follows our main girl who we learned from the very first page has died. And the book basically goes forward in time so the family dealing with searching for her and it also goes backwards in time so we learn about her brothers and sisters but it goes so far back that we actually see her parents as kind of young adults as well and I just thought it was so beautifully written because, I don't know, it it was really interesting how much it focused on the parents' upbringing and how that really really shapes the way that they parent and the way that their children behave. I just thought it was very moving, obviously very sad but I just thought it was beautifully done and I went into it not knowing what to expect and I tried to start reading Little Fires Everywhere and I didn't really like it so I had kind of pushed away the rest of her writing but this really just caught me by surprise and I really thought it was beautiful so if you're looking for more of a drama talking a lot about family and emotions and the way that we choose to live our lives and how other people have such an effect on how we are as people, it was really beautiful so I definitely recommend Everything I Never Told You. Okay next up we're just gonna continue with the like sad and the heart-wrenching. I finally read Human Acts by Han Kang. Again, I have talked about this before so I'll be quick but it basically talks about the Gwangju uprising in the 1980s where hundreds if not thousands of people were killed by troops sent in by the dictator here in Korea in the 80s. And this is something that's really important because to this day it's still for some reason a hot topic where some people claim that it didn't really happen, all these people are lying, or it wasn't the Korean government that did it, it was, you know, North Korea. Whatever. It is still a very important topic to know about but the way that Han Kang wrote it was so hard to read but it was really really powerful. She basically focused on a group of kids, like middle school kids, who were held up in this particular part of the city and they were helping deal with the unclaimed dead bodies and it switches a bunch of points of views one of which is wild to read. I mean it's just a really difficult book to read and and I think she did it so incredibly well. You learn about this historical event in a way that you don't normally do it. I think I said it before but usually when you see films about this particular time period it's a lot of, I don't - like the person runs up and stands in front of a tank and like these big sweeping heroic things, but you don't hear about the kind of tiny things that happen that are just as powerful and just as sad and this really focused on that. A very very important book I think and if you want to hear more about it I will link a book video that I did where I talk about it but yeah definitely a very powerful read if you're interested in Korean history. Just absolutely breathtaking, heartbreaking, and one of my favorites of 2020. Okay I'm gonna try to be calm about this book because I've hyped it up so much. It is This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. So it is written by these two different authors and it is - actually, I learned a new word today - it is a "epistolary?" It's an epistolary novel - don't think I said that right. But that word means that it takes the form of letters, which it does. So this book basically follows these two female soldiers I guess you would call them, I don't - agents? And they work for opposing agencies. One is called the agency and the other is called the... shoot it's something to do with like greenery? Forest? The garden? I should have looked that up, I forget. Anyway, they're on two opposing sides of this time war and so what their job is, is they time travel up and down the timeline and they change certain things so that the timeline they want to happen happens. So they'll go back and like poke somebody and he falls off a cliff and someone sees and they write a poem about it and that poem inspires this and then that inspires this and there's a revolution and you know, the butterfly effect kind of thing. They are top of their game, number one mvp player for each side, so they see each other as enemies, kind of like arch-nemesis and so they kind of start taunting each other with letters even though they are definitely not supposed to be communicating. And we read those letters. What unfolds is what starts off as kind of like this friendly rivalry and it evolves into a love story. This is a book that you either love it or hate it because you don't get a whole lot of world building, you really have to just kind of go with the flow with a lot of things. It is written in such a strange poetic way that most things are metaphors and you just again you kind of have to roll with it but for me I thought it was absolutely beautiful and I wanted to know more. I think i said it in another video but it felt like I got this tiny little taste of this beautiful love story and I just wanted the whole thing. So it's a book that I think about a lot because I'm like "man what happened in between all those letters? What happened after?" I just want more of it. I would really appreciate it if we got more but I also do not want a sequel. It's very short so if you're looking to start off the year with something that is really different, really poetic, and just kind of makes your brain see really beautiful things honestly I would highly recommend it. Again, it's like a love it or hate it thing - I will not feel offended if you don't like it, I get it. But for me, I read it in one sitting at my favorite flower cafe - I can picture it, I was sitting outside with my tea and I just gobbled it up and it was beautiful, beautiful! So yeah This is How You Lose the Time War. The next book was quite difficult to pick because as you know I have just fallen deeply into the ya fantasy world I was big into it in middle school and then high school and college came and I didn't really read a whole lot to be honest so I missed - there's like this huge chunk of time that so many amazing books came out and I'm just playing catch up so I'm gonna make a video on my book channel maybe next week that talks about the ridiculous amount of ya fantasy books that I read this year so you can look forward to that but I wanted to pick another one that wasn't Six of Crows to talk about and for some reason the series I'm going to mention - I don't know why it has such a hold on me. I read so many great series as you know if you watch my book channel I've talked about a lot of them and I cannot tell you why this one hit me so hard because I would argue that it's not - it's not better than many of the books that I read but for some reason it's just one that I can't stop thinking about and it's kind of a guilty pleasure book akin to A Court of Thorns and Roses I would say, because the story has some parts where you're just kind of like -____- but it also had me laughing out loud and screaming at the page and crying so we're gonna talk about it. And I don't think a lot of you have read it so it is the Black Witch series by Laurie Forest and the reason I don't think a lot of you guys have read this book is because when it came out, actually I think even before it came out, there were book reviewers that got to read it first and this one particular book reviewer wrote a - I forget, I feel like it was 9000 words - it was like a book-length review of this book, talking about how racist it was, how homophobic it was and all this stuff and so people didn't buy the book. People just canceled it without - they just read the review and they didn't read the book and so in case you were one of those people who is like ~oh my god is Cari recommending a racist book?~ Hear me out. The book is about this one girl who is raised in a very conservative society. It is conservative religiously, it is undeniably racist, they believe that they are the superior race, and they have magic which is why it's called the black witch. She is raised on a farm away from magic, away from her family who are involved in politics whatever. She basically just knows the farm and her uncle and brothers and that is all. She's just kind of raised with this conservative society's outlook on life, you know like "all these other people are so dangerous, you know. You don't hang out with people." Clearly backwards thinking. And then she goes to university she has to deal with the fact that her roommate and her classmates are all these people that she was raised to think are like poisonous and like literally if they touch you you have to go to church to be blessed. Ridiculous stuff. But the thing that all the cultures have in common is they kind of all feel that way about each other. Everyone hates each other. Everyone has these ridiculous, really ridiculous, prejudices about each other. So the first book is honestly just her kind of getting over that. Opening her eyes to a bigger world and dealing with her prejudices and learning history from other lenses and stuff like that. So the theme is: discrimination is wrong and you need to learn from other perspectives in order to get over that. The rest of the story is of course there are evil players at play and she has to kind of with all of her friends save the world. And I honestly don't know how it ends because we still have two more books. I loved it. It had a bunch of yearning, if you're into that, like a lot of just heart-wrenching scenes. Like I said, kind of a guilty pleasure book. The third book wasn't excellent but I think because the series is five books long - the two first two books were really strong and the third one I feel like was just kind of a hump she needs to get over to write the next two books. I would just recommend if you are looking for a YA fantasy book that you haven't read yet, check it out! The Black Witch by Laurie Forest. And please encourage her to finish the fourth book because I need that book, Laurie, in 2021. And last but not least, this book actually came in the very last week of December and I read it actually because of readwithcindy's best books of 2020 list and I'm so glad that I did. I am not very interested in memoirs other than Patti Smith who, her memoirs don't feel like memoirs. And i also read When Breath Becomes Air which surprised me and I also did enjoy that but the book that I want to talk about that is on my favorites list of 2020 is Know My Name by Chanel Miller. And obviously trigger warning, this is about the Stanford r*pe case where what's his Brock what's his name Turner - he took advantage of Chanel Miller while she was passed out and luckily two students saw him and caught him. And she remained anonymous all throughout the trial, all throughout until this book came out - years. And this is just her story. From her waking up in a hospital not knowing what the hell is going on, not knowing why she is there, to going through the initial trial, going through the appeal, going through all this stuff - no one around her except for her immediate family knowing. It talks a lot about the PTSD, it talks about how, you know, she - it was, it was just a really really powerful book. If you've ever dealt with assault or trauma or anything like that, she put certain things into words that I couldn't express ever like I never thought that I'd be able to pinpoint it and I almost didn't even recognize certain things within myself that she said it and I was like yeah. It was just incredibly powerful It doesn't really focus on Brock that much, it was really - she was taking her time to talk about herself and it was just really really powerful and her writing is excellent. It was so engaging. Yeah, I just I honestly can't I can't recommend it enough. Know My Name by Chanel Miller. And just to end it on a lighter note in case any of you guys are scratching your head wondering where is it? Cari didn't mention this book? What's going on? Yes I will mention House on the Cerulean Sea - leave me alone! So I have talked about this book to death so I'm going to be real quick here - House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. I incredibly enjoyed this book. It is just a really short book about a man who works for the government and he has to go check up on this house of kids to make sure that everything's you know up to par - it's an orphanage and he's making sure that it's safe and all that stuff. However, the kids are all magical creatures and he is very scared of magic so it's just a hilarious heartwarming absolutely wonderful story and if you just want a quick read, something that can honestly like just get you into reading if you don't know what you're interested in, it's kind of got a little bit of everything so I would just highly recommend House in the Cerulean Sea, it's another one of my favorites of 2020 for sure. So anyway that is my list, I would love to hear what your favorites are, I feel like this year, like I said, I was kind of playing catch up so I've just read so much YA fantasy and I'm happy about that but I kind of want to dive back into all of my thrillers and everything like that so any recommendation you have for me, please let me know, I'd be so into it. I hope that in 2021 we all find some excellent books that we love, I hope that if you want to start reading again, definitely ask down below - like most of the books I've read - Six of Crows for example, are because of the insane people in my comment section that have excellent book taste. So really honestly guys like from the bottom of my heart thank you so much for all of your recommendations, literally from the bottom of my broken heart because some of you guys recommended books to me that have just shocked me to my core and changed me as a human being so thank you but also go easy on me this year. e!
the best books i read in 2020 (i can't pick favorites ㅠㅠ)
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May 16, 2021
