Best Books Read in 2020!

These are my Top Reads for 2020

Fiction

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles is one of the most delightful books I have ever read.  This is a period story, set in early 20th century Moscow, about a aristocrat caught on the wrong side of the Bolshevik revolution.  Count Rostov, the hero, is placed under "house" arrest at Moscow's finest hotel, where he lives life for the best part of 30 years. Count Rostov makes the best of this, showing that joy can emerge from strange circumstances.  The story has history, humour, and a series of heartwarming relationships.  Amor Towles actually wrote this book living in the same hotel.  This is a true classic and will bring a smile to your face!

Pachinko is a multigenerational classic written by Min Jin Lee.  It traces the life of a illiterate girl born to poverty in Korea, tricked into a relationship, and escapes to Japan in the midst of WWII to seek a better life for her child.  It details the turmoil that the people of Korea were exposed to, and the discrimination and hardship that ethnic Koreans endured in post-war Japan.  This is a moving story about the determination and the will to survive.  It also unveils a little of racism in modern Japan.  

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides is one of those books that leaves you catching your breath at the very end.  The last ten pages are the most important. There is artistry involved in writing a high paced thriller in a short story format.  There is no wasted moment, and every bit of the book falls together at the very end, keeping you guessing who the villain in this "who done it" novel is.  Alex Michaelides is actually a Hollywood screenwriter and this is his debut book.  It is not surprising that he has a Hollywood flair for drama.  

Non-Fiction

Alexander Hamilton is a biography of the man written by Pulitzer Prize winning historian Ron Chernow.  This is also the book from which the script of the hit Broadway play "Hamilton" was composed from.  This is a long book of over 700 pages long, but reads like a novel.  It transports you to Nevis in the Carribean in the 1700s, and then tells the tale of the amazing life of Alexander Hamilton who was born out of wedlock.  Hamilton was an autodidact, a lawyer, a soldier, the first Secretary of the Treasury, a General of the Continental Army, and a leading proponent from the Federalist camp. I learnt so much from the book and felt inspired by Hamilton.  Chernow's writing is exceptionally readable.  

I loved Educated by Tara Westover.  This is an autobiography of Tara growing up as the youngest child in a strict Mormon family in Idaho, where the father's word - justified by religious beliefs - was the law.  The children were brought up to be suspicious of everyone.  They were forbidden to use modern medicine and the family had to make preparations to "defend" itself from the Federal Government.  Tara was supposedly homeschooled and had no formal education.  With the help of her other siblings and mother, she left home for the first time at the age of 17 to go to college.  She graduated from Brigham Young, and then studied at Harvard and Cambridge where she attained her Phd.   You come to admire Tara for the courage to question her understanding of the world, and the conviction to forge her own path.  Such rural families no doubt continue to exist in modern day America.  

Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker is a really fun but also life changing book to read.  It is quite obvious that lengthy periods of sleep is an evolutionary disadvantage since one can get eaten during sleep.  But yet ALL animals sleep. There must therefore be a very important function of sleep that trumps the possibility of getting eaten during those periods.  Walker puts forward some hypotheses and tests them in a series of sleep deprivation experiments.  The findings will make you do one thing very clearly - appreciate the importance and power of sleep in your daily routine.  I now sleep very well!

Do Enjoy!