Footle and Grok

Messing about with empathy

My five-star books

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

I’ve been watching a lot of vlog brothers videos by Hank and John Green (it’s nice that they’re only four minutes long.) I knew of Hank first because of his science videos, but John Green is well known because he writes YA books that everyone reads.

Except me.

And that is what I find interesting. I don’t read the books he writes, but when John did a short video of eighteen books that he liked, I enjoyed learning about new books I would probably never read. He didn’t list them because I might like them. He listed them because he liked them.

I read a lot of books, but I don’t talk about most of them because they’re not books that I think would interest anyone else.

So I went through my Goodreads list and made a list of the books I gave five stars in 2020. This list only covers new books I read last year, not all the books I reread. They’re not listed in any order, but they’re all books I loved.

Fifteen books I loved in 2020:

  1. The Gift of the Magpie by Donna Andrews (I read every book in this series)
  2. Next to Last Stand by Craig Johnson (I never miss a Walt Longmire book)
  3. The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte (A marvelous dinosaur book)
  4. The Boy from the Woods by Harlen Coben (I hadn’t read this author in years)
  5. The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli (A Newberry Award winner that I’ve loved for years)
  6. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (A book I loved from a genre I never read)
  7. Emergency Skin by N. K. Jemisin (The best story I read in 2020)
  8. Running with Sherman by Christopher McDougall (I didn’t expect to love this book, but it was delightful)
  9. In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka (It’s a good thing this is short because I read it several times)
  10. 26 Marathons by Meb Keflezighi (I love running memoirs, and this was filled with unexpected insights)
  11. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin (This is one of the best children’s stories ever!)
  12. Broken Places Outer Spaces by Nnedi Okorafor (I read several TED books in 2020, and this one was the best)
  13. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats up the Marvel Universe by Ryan North (From the most fun and well-written graphic novel series ever)
  14. We Don’t Eat Our Classmates by Ryan T. Higgins (A funny and fun picture book [with a good lesson])
  15. Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss (A well-done book about how food companies make processed food that isn’t good for us [surprise!])

There it is. Fifteen books I loved reading.