Books of 2020: Best Non-Fiction

In a grand year for reading, my grandest books were non-fiction.  After briefly wrestling with whether I should confine myself to one or two recommendations, I have decided to share in the bounty I enjoyed so much.  Really, I just couldn't bring myself to choose.  I do end with my most engaging and memorable book of the year, but if I hadn't read that one this year, others would have easily earned that title.

Best Memoir*

Maybe you Should Talk to Someone; A Therapist, Her Therapist, and our Lives Revealed, Lori Gottlieb, 2019

As of mid-May, this was the best book I'd read this year.  Therapist Lori Gottliieb has written a most interesting book, weaving together her own story of needing and finding her own good therapist, and the stories of her patients (her term), focusing on four in particular.  A skilled writer, she has crafted a work that touches multiple genres *while creating its own.  She takes the reader on a ride, the joyous and sad parts equally moving.  She doesn't take herself too seriously, and parts of this book really made me laugh.  I appreciated the several surprises and turns in the stories and found myself savoring the book, turning to another book partway through to extend my time with this one.  That other book didn't pull me to reading nearly as much as this one.  As someone who has had several rounds of therapy, I appreciated the confessional peeks behind the curtain.  She's especially effective when revealing herself on both sides of the therapist-patient divide.  Maybe you Should Talk to Someone delighted and moved me deeply.

Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things; A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Coming Home, Amy Dickinson, 2017

Having enoyed Amy Dickinson as a panelist on NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me news quiz and
occasionally read her advice column, the idea of a book behind the advice column grabbed my attention.  This book had sat on my to-read list for a few years, however, before the pandemic hit.  At that last library book grab before they shut down, I focused on that list.  Still, it took me four months to get to this book.  Thank goodness the library doesn't want their materials back in any hurry at present.  

This wonderful book must also be described as a bait and switch.  The title implies that the author will focus on the advice column and show the reader the secret sauce.  Perhaps she reveals that indirectly, but a warning to other would-be readers: the advice column comes up vanishingly rarely in this memoir.  Dickinson advances a thesis about why she can give good advice: because her life has been anything but perfect.  Rather, she has survived through obstacles, crises, and her own mistakes.  She calls that survival the basis of a good advice column.  Instead of advice column inside scoop, the reader gets what the subtitle promises.  Dickinson and her siblings saw rocky patches in their childhood in small-town finger lakes New York.  She's terribly honest about decisions and actions she wishes she'd done differently in young adulthood (although her particular set of actions might differ from what that sentence may imply).  Her tiny hometown and her extended family's generational outsize influence there have played a big role in Dickinson's life and likewise take center stage here.  I found reading this book an intense experience - sometimes too intense.  I could read it during the day but not before bed sometimes because her real stresses come to the fore.  Dickinson writes clearly and engagingly, and I finished the book in large chunks outside.  The backyard lounge chair had to stand in for beach reading in a strange summer lacking a normal family vacation.

Best Personal Essay Collection

What's the difference between a memoir and a personal essay collection?  That may be in the eye of the beholder.  I want to say that the above two books stick closely to a theme and an arc, but that could also describe this collection.  In the below book, the chapters can stand on their own more easily than in the above two, so I'll use that to justify the category distinction.

At the Strangers' Gate, Adam Gopnik, 2018

When an author one has read for years here and there comes to town - in this case as part of a Moth Main Stage event - and tells a delightful story and is then waiting with no line at his book table after, one might go up and buy a book.  I'm glad I did that in 2018.  Gopnik had several books on his table in the lobby of Pittsburgh's Byham Theater.  I decided to ask him which one I should buy.  He picked up At the Strangers' Gate and said "people say this is my best book."  I didn't realize it was the book that was just published, the book that had a version of the story he'd told that night.

I really shouldn't go into all of this preamble.  I really should start with: this essay collection is sublime.  I have railed before about Barbara Kingsolver's self-consciously polished sentences.  Gopnik achieves something Kingsolver apparently cannot: un-self-consciously polished sentences.  Multiple sentences in this book stopped me dead in my tracks with their perfection.  Of course, gem-like sentences rule. The overall arc really matters, though, and Gopnik lays it out both systematically and meanderingly.  Or rather, when the reader detects meandering he is only failing to see the larger system the apparent diversion serves.  At the Stranger's Gate introduces Gopnik and his wife Martha Parker as a young Canadian couple arriving in a rough-around-the-edges megalopolis and traces the development of their bond with the city's places, people, and the higher ranks of its unique culture.  At the Stranger's Gate moved me with its romance and its nostalgia for a grittier New York that I encountered from nearby in New Jersey and Connecticut.  It also made me laugh.  Mostly, it made me appreciate the writer's craft - which Gopnik reduces to "choosing the right words and putting them in the right order" -  honed over decades.

Best History

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of how our Government Segregated America, Richard Rothstein, 2017

The Color of Law appeared on many people’s "get woke" reading lists in 2020 and for good reason.  Rothstein’s 2017 book encompasses ten years of research and writing on the sadly systematic and pervasive de jure segregation of America in the 20th century.  The polite fiction with which many Americans console themselves is that our segregated neighborhoods and municipalities all result from de facto segregation.  It just happens; like sorts with like.  Rothstein lays out in devastating detail (but with surprising efficiency and clarity) how our segregation is de jure, legally recognized and enforced.  Multiple factors contribute including the racist orientation of the Fair Housing Administration, whose loans built and populated the suburbs, restrictive covenants, the placement of public housing and school catchment boundaries, the passive allowance (or active participation) of police in white mob violence when intact, employed African American families attempted the "sin" of moving into a white neighborhood.  Rothstein tells the stories of these families and individuals to demonstrate the impacts of the hydra that has fought at every opportunity against African Americans specifically living near white people specifically.  It’s hard to face all of these facts.  I had to as a reader, and we must as a nation.  I’m grateful for the succinct summation Rothstein offers.

Best Book on Life 

Breath; the New Science of a Lost Art, James Nestor, 2020

Since I don't love buying or owning books, I don't always get my hands on runaway bestsellers, but James Nestor's interview on Fresh Air piqued my curiosity.  When the library fulfilled my request rather quickly, I cleared the decks and figured out how many pages I'd have to read in a three-week lending period, figuring I would not be able to renew it.  That's a lot of mechanics before I get to: this book could change lives; it's changed mine.  Nestor combines modern science with ancient knowledge and myth about breathing to point out that post-industrial humanity has emerged to become - as a group - the most singularly poor breathers in the animal kingdom.  The book covers complicated material in a straightforward fashion, but it remains difficult to summarize.  Our post-industrialization soft food diet has rearranged our faces to make us breathe through our mouths more when we should be breathing through our noses.  Nestor traveled the world and submitted himself to both mild and radical breathing experiments to provide his personal account of a multitude of ideas and techniques about breathing.  He assembles a fascinating read by weaving together science journalism and his personal experience.  If there's one takeaway from the book, it's that we should all breathe through our noses as much as possible in order to get all of the benefits of that organ.  The nose moderates the temperature of our breath and cleans it.  There are more takeaways and more radical ideas about breathing to different ends.  In the end, it's a quick read that may have you contemplating taping your mouth shut when you go to sleep (like I do now) before you know it.

Honorable Mentions

But What if We're Wrong?  Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past, Chuck Klosterman, 2016

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Mark Comer, 2019

Sick in the Head; Conversations about Life and Comedy, Judd Apatow, 2016

Books of 2020: Best Fiction

Because I believe that warding each other off bad books is a public service, I have already done that for 2020.  That said, I know most people are looking for ideas to add to their list (or confirm items already in the "to read" category).  So, onto the good stuff!

Although I read more fiction than non-fiction this year, and generally liked what I read, one title stood out among all the others.  I consider that making it easy for those whose "to read" list is already overwhelmingly long.

A warning, though: there's a mother lode of non-fiction recommendations coming tomorrow.

Best Fiction

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, Deesha Philyaw, 2020

We've known Deesha Philyaw as an acquaintance for a long time.  We didn't know her when she was a few years ahead of us at college, but we met her when we attended the same church with her and her then husband and their young family.  Social media made us more aware of her work as a writer, and we started hearing about this book weeks before it came out.  I read one of the stories - How to Make Love to a Physicist - months before that, but I can't remember where.  Blah, blah, blah.  The short story collection gets released, gets long-listed for the National Book Award for fiction (!), gets short-listed soon after, and Paige and I can both see why.  (Paige read it before I did.)  Ultimately, it did not win the NBA, but still!  

Deesha writes polished little gems of intimate, revelatory stories, each with at least one African American woman at the center of it.  She shows immense creativity; each story's setting, characters, and plot are distinct.  She peoples a universe, a spectrum of experience, opportunity, aspiration, and perspective that is common among story collections but feels like more of an accomplishment for what one might naively suppose would be a narrow scope of "church lady" characters.  Many of these stories are steamy - secret lives and all.  She does not hold back.   The writing is clear as a bell.  It was a pleasure to read, and we're so happy and proud to know Deesha even a little bit.

Honorable Mentions:

Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wien, 2012

Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson, 2019

Books of 2020: Stay-Aways

Say what you will about 2020.  It's all true.  Also, though, 2020 proved a great year for reading.  (Well, not for magazine reading.  Not commuting has put me woefully behind despite some good summer memories of lounging outside with a magazine.)  A grand year for books!  I read 28 books in 2020, which pales in comparison to some fast readers but is the most I've read in a year since I started tracking in 2000.

And good news: Only 21% of those books fall into my Not Recommended category.  That's down from a three-year moving average of 25%. 

And yet, I like to start with the bad news in my annual rundown.  Friends don't let friends read bad books!

Worst of the Year: Fiction 

(nb: I actually have no non-fiction worst pick this year.  Some non-fiction that I read for special interest reasons turned out not to be recommendable to others, but I don't hold that against those books enough to blog about it.)

Golden Hill, Francis Spufford, 2016 

What does one do when one's spouse loves a book and recommends it?  What if said spouse has been reliable before?  What if the cover has promisingly-interesting art?  These are the easy questions.  One reads the book.  What does one do if, having started it, one kinda hates the book?  One persists.  See above.  What if after hundreds of pages, one still hates it?  If one is a completist reader like yours truly, one finished the book.  Then, then one contemplates whether the last x pages can redeem the 299-x pages that preceded them.  I will not reveal the value of x, but if you get to page 50 and hate this book, just stop.  Spufford teases and teases and teases and usually doesn't just not pay off what he has teased; he zags hard into passages that make one read through one's splayed fingers.  In summary, if tedium interrupted by violence and off-putting licentiousness turns you on, by all means, read this steaming pile of poo.  Otherwise, give it a wide berth.

The Awkward Age, Francesca Segal, 2017

You know how the resolution on a high definition TV can be too good?  Although it might make  sense when watching sports or a Marvel movie, that level of pixel perfect detail can overwhelm a sitcom viewer.  I felt that same uncanny, uncomfortable feeling when reading The Awkward Age.  At first, Segal's ability to render characters in startling reality lured me in.  Small descriptions conveyed masses of information.  Her characters' interactions blended the immediate and the layers of relational matter that set up the moment.  The title may refer to the teenagers in the novel, but I suspect that Segal was being more sly than that.  The divorced and widowed middle-aged people evince their own awkwardness, to say nothing of the divorced grandparents who are still each other's boon companions.  After a plot turn that I maybe should have seen coming but did not, the novel got to be anything but the escape I wanted from this pandemic- and violence- and deceit-wracked year.  People of all ages behaving badly in vivid detail repelled my interest and failed to help with sleep.  Segal's writing, hauntingly specific as it is, definitely impresses.  The plot threw me for more than one loop,and I definitely wanted to see where things ended.  Sadly, despite her strengths, including dropping breathtaking turns of phrase into the narrative here and there, Segal has constructed a novel out of people from whom I desperately wanted to look away and a story from which I wanted to get away.

Dishonorable Mention:

Slade House, David Mitchell, 2015

The April/May 2013 Cook's Country: The Best of All Time

When people ask me to name the greatest issue of Cook's Country magazine ever published, I have one answer: April/May 2013.  Yup, the one with the Chocolate Sugar Cookies on the cover.  Need I say more?

I shall. It has the most recipes that quicken the heart and please the crowd.  One could almost stop at the cover and know all one needs to know.  But that one would be a fool.

There will be those who will say that the charter issue with the Green Apples on the cover (and one has to specify because Cook's Country issued at least three undated issues to try to lure people away from - on the one hand - the black-and-white actuarial frigidity of its cousin Cook's Illustrated - and on the other hand - from the thick and glossy supermarket degradation of Cooking Light), but that is a tent pole issue, held up merely by the transcendent weeknight classic Creamy Shells with Peas and Bacon.  Easy Tortilla Casserole may be easy, but it ain't that great to eat.  I digress.  How does one get children to eat peas?  Hide them inside shells, and cover those shells with ricotta cheese and fleck the whole assemblage with crispy bacon bits.  So props to that recipe.

Others pipe up then and say, "Good sir.  Prithee explain why thou dost not view October/November 2015 as the apex of Cook's Country's studied casual charm?"  To that argument, I must concede that any magazine issue that doth bequeath on the humble home chef recipes for both Wisconsin Butter Burgers and Bourbon Balls is a strong issue indeed.  And while those burgers do call forth the drool and those boozey squishies convey upon one most-favored-party-guest status when one shows up with a tray thereof, O/N '15 (as it is called when it is at home) has the same faults as many an NBA team - only two superstars.  If you start talking about the 2019-2020 Lakers, I shall retreat for the consumption of bourbon straight without the formalities of grinding up the vanilla wafers or even getting out the cocoa powder.  This issue, however, has a long tail of single-instance recipes for our household - corn meal drop biscuits = Alex Caruso.  Better than a punch in the gut, but that's damning with faint praise.  This paragraph brought to you by awkward transitions from the King James to...er...King James.

Overhearing that dismissal, a Jack-come-lately might bring up ol' deep bench itself, June/July 2012. Chicken Caesar Salad Wraps, Nebraska Beef Buns, Macaroni and Cheese Casserole. Dinners to keep a middle-class household going, no doubt, but we haven't made a single dessert out of that issue.  Also, these are solid Monopoly board orange and red recipes.  Not a Boardwalk (or even a North Carolina Avenue) among them.  On a desert island with a well-stocked grocery store and some sheet pans, this would be my runner up.

But thankfully, this is America, even now. 

America has given us A/M '13, featuring six recipes that we have recorded making a total of 21 times.  In truth, because we don't record our desserts as well as our entrees, we've probably made the cover star Chocolate Sugar Cookies more than the recorded nine times.  Anyway, it's quality over quantity here.

• These dark, flavorful cookies combine a delicately crispy sugar topping with a tender but toothsome crumb.  Are they better than a good chocolate chip cookie?  No.  I am no a madman. 
• I defy you to find a crowd that won't be thrilled by Sheet Pan Pizza for a Crowd.  It's been a beach house dinner staple since we discovered it; the dough can be frozen and toted in a cooler.  
• A growing family grow on casseroles like Chicken Noodle and the virtuous-sounding Broccoli Macaroni and Cheese.  
• Pulled BBQ Chicken didn't wow us, apparently, but it's good to have a recipe for everyone's third-favorite pulled meat.

    

Greatest Cook's Country Issues Ever

Recipe	Year	Issue	Instances
Chocolate sugar cookies	2013	Apr/May	9
Sheet pan pizza for a crowd	2013	Apr/May	4
Chicken Noodle Casserole	2013	Apr/May	3
Skillet Broccoli Macaroni & Cheese	2013	Apr/May	2
Slow Cooker Pulled Chicken	2013	Apr/May	2
Crock Pot Pulled BBQ Chicken	2013	Apr/May	1
Creamy Shells with Peas and Bacon	apples	Charter	19
Shanghai Chicken Salad	apples	Charter	2
Easy Tortilla Casserole	apples	Charter	1
Chicken Caesar Salad Wraps	2012	Jun/Jul	6
Easy Summer Vegetable Pasta	2012	Jun/Jul	5
Nebraska Beef Buns	2012	Jun/Jul	4
Macaroni & Cheese Casserole	2012	Jun/Jul	3
Beef & Bean Taquitos	2012	Jun/Jul	2
Creamy Cucumber Salad	2012	Jun/Jul	2
Wisconsin Butter Burgers	2015	Oct/Nov	14
Bourbon Balls	2015	Oct/Nov	8
Roasted Chicken Thighs with Creamed Shallots & Bacon	2015	Oct/Nov	2
Baked Mustard Chicken	2015	Oct/Nov	1
Corn Meal Drop Biscuits	2015	Oct/Nov	1
Penne with Butternut Squash & Browned Butter Sauce	2015	Oct/Nov	1
Pork & Ricotta Meatballs	2015	Oct/Nov	1