In this strange year of 2020, cut off from the library and not a great fan of reading on line, I devoted most of my reading time to books in my own collection. In fact, near the outset of the pandemic I decided to focus on books that on first (or even 2nd) reading I loved but that I hadn't re-read in at least ten years. Some good news: I was seldom disappointed in my re-reading adventure; almost all of the books that I remember as great held up the standard, though there were a few that I couldn't finish - either I had changed, or the times (sorry, White Noise and A Wild Sheep Chase). In the end, there were more than 15 novels that I re-read this year w/ no disappointment or disillusionment, for this blog I will bring it down to the Top Ten Books I Read in 2020. It would be kind of ridiculous to give a one-sentence summary of each of these, so I will direct curious readers and visitors who would like to know my thoughts on each of these books to the full version of this blog, which has a complete index by author. If you're visiting this blog by your phone, you need to scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click on "view web version" to see the complete archive. Here's my Top Ten:
The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866). Russian
Crossing to Safety, by Wallace Stegner (1987) American
Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather (1927) American
Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1985). Colombian
The Known World, by Edward P. Jones (2003) American
Light in August, by William Faulkner (1932) American
The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann (1924). German
Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf (1925). British
Rabbit at Rest, by John Updike (1990) American
Suite Française, by Irene Nemirovsky. Left unfinished 1942, published 2004. French
OK, so if you've read all of the above, here are some runners' up: The God of Small Things, Out Stealing Horses, The Prisoner (Proust), The Stranger (Camus), A Summons to Memphis, TheTrial (Kafka), plus one that I read for the first time this year, We, the Accused.
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