Favorite books of 2020!

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by ThatArtsyReaderGirl!

Hiiiii it’s my favorite post of the year! My favorite books!

Today’s post is also a Top Ten Tuesday post, but I’m doing it slightly out of order. Technically last week was the official ‘fave books’ topic, but I wanted to actually finish 2020 before picking, in case I had a last minute favorite! So we’re rolling with it.

I read 171 books this year and I have ten to talk about. My favorite books of 2020. These are ranked from ‘least favorite favorite’ to ‘most favorite favorite’:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen – This got a 4.5 from me, the only 4.5 on this list out of the twenty-something 4.5s I gave this year. This is the 4.5-iest and my fave out of the ones with the same ranking.

I’m so late on this bandwagon man. I don’t know why I never read this before. I buddy-read this with two irl friends, one of which had read it a million times already and was just amused at us other two as we read. It. Was. Great. I loved this book.

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green – I gotta tell ya, I was not expecting to love this as much as I did. I’m a sucker for the big dumb object trope I guess, and this book also went into a really interesting commentary on how sudden internet fame can affect a person. This book was my only 4.75 rating of the year.

I bought the sequel to this book right after it came out, and it’s on my 10 in 2021 list so I hope to get to it soon!

I Want to Eat Your Pancreas by Yoru Sumino – This is where the five stars start. This is the ‘lowest’ of the fives, but it’s still a five, and honestly I don’t give those out very easily.

This one-shot manga, contrary to its name, talks about a very serious topic. The main character finds a diary of a girl with terminal pancreatic disease, and it tells the story of him befriending her, all while she knows she’s going to die soon.

I cried.

Shaman’s Crossing by Robin Hobb – What’s a favorites list without a Hobb novel? This is the first book in the Soldier Son trilogy and I think my favorite of the three (I’m about six chapters away from the end of the last one, so unless it totally wows me, this is my fave). This is also the last series by Hobb that I have to read. After this, I need to find something to fill the void.

This series follows a young man as his life is thrown in a direction he did not expect, and deals with court politics and shamanic magic and it gets dark after a while. Robin Hobb really puts her characters through it. But this first book, I loved. And I hope I end up loving this last one as much as I did this one. I hope I hope I hope.

As per usual, I buddy read this with Zezee @Zezeewithbooks

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux – The second classic to make this list, and man I was not expecting to love this, but hey, I did. This isn’t the only gothic horror novel I read this year and because of it I think I’ve discovered a love for a new genre.

It’s so, well, horrifying and creepy and unsettling and I loved it.

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice – Gothic horror! Would you look at that!

I’ve been sleeping on this book for years – my buddy originally tried to get me to read it in high school fifteen years ago. I read half of it and got distracted. Shame on me!

I picked it up again this year and absolutely loved it. It’s so eerie and unsettling and compelling. I loved it!

If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio – Another unexpected favorite! Really, I loved this book. I still don’t own a copy though, I gotta pick one up.

This is a mystery thriller set at an acting university that focuses on Shakespearean plays. The tone this book has is awesome and the plot as it unfolded was so great. I couldn’t stop reading.

Out of all the books I’ve read this year, this is the one I think about the most.

Our Dining Table by Mita Ori – This is a fluffy one shot manga I picked up at the very beginning of 2020 that honestly I only bought on a whim. Definitely didn’t expect it to become one of my favorite manga of all time but there you go, I guess.

This is a romance between the two adults on the cover and is super stinking cute. It’s so wholesome and soft and lovely and if you need something to brighten your day, this is the manga for you.

Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko – This is my favorite novel of the year, hands down. This book was just so eerie and weird and confusing in the best way. The whole time in the book, I felt like I almost understood what was going on. And for some reason, the way the book was written, being confused made me want to read more not less.

Honestly I still don’t fully understand what I read. But. it. was. awesome.

Black Butler by Yana Toboso – Anyone who’s read even a few of my posts this year probably isn’t surprised by this. I read the entire 28 volumes of the series that were out when I first picked the series up this year. Since, vol 29 came out as well and I’m gonna read that too. So yes, this number one spot, my favorite of the year, is this entire series. I feel like pointing out individual volumes was pointless. All of them were between four and five stars, the vast majority of them 4.5 or 5. This series is awesome.

This is a wonder, funny, dark, twisty, comical story of a boy who sells his soul to a devil to get revenge on those who slaughtered his family. And then it’s so much more than that. It’s so great. It’s so well written, it’s so well paced, the characters are so well developed. I. love. it.

And that, that is it, ladies and gents. My favorite books of the year. 2020 was a shit year but for reading? It was great!

If you’ve read any of the above, lemme know!