My Top Reads of 2020
Note: This blog was originally published on another site on January 14, 2021
If 2020 was anything, it was a great year for reading. Confined to a studio apartment with two cats that gradually felt more and more like Wilson from Castaway, I managed 71 books for the year, including lots of random nonfiction titles and an assortment of fiction titles outside my usual genre preferences. Here are my top three favorites, fiction and nonfiction, in no particular hierarchy . . .
FICTION
(as a novelist, fiction always comes first):
Trip Wire - Lee Child
I’m late to the party on this 1999 gem, but Tripwire has aged like a fine wine. The third book in the iconic Jack Reacher series, this book is a beautiful tapestry of action, romance, mystery, and a villain so classic he belongs in a lineup with Darth Vader and The Joker (bold words, I know). What really made Tripwire a five-star experience for me, however, was the depth of emotion Child conveyed from the stories of the Vietnam helicopter pilots this story orbits around. He really captured my imagination and made me feel like I was there in the jungle amid heroes and criminals, struggling for life in an endless war.
And of course…it’s a Reacher novel. I mean, that says it all, right?
Low Tide - Dawn Lee McKenna
Again, I’m late to the party, but that won’t stop me from blowing through McKenna’s Forgotten Coast series if they are all as excellent as their debut title.
Low Tide is a coastal mystery/suspense novel set in the (aptly named) forgotten coast area of Florida’s panhandle, specifically the small town of Apalachicola. Having grown up near the coast myself and having visited Apalach many times, reading this book took me back in a way I didn’t think was possible on the page. Apalachicola isn’t a condo-lined, white-sand tourist hotspot. It’s a small fishing town with only one grocery story and a small assortment of old wooden shops. The people who live there are proud of their town and the old-coast feel it trades on, and McKenna perfectly captured the character of both. Add to that a protagonist who was believable, interesting, and easy to cheer for, and yeah. Low Tide was a cocktail of beautiful prose that almost made me forget it was thirty degrees outside.
A Clean Kill In Tokyo - Barry Eisler
I’m picking up on a theme from my favorite books of 2020—they all made me feel like I was some place else. Well, that theme certainly carries through Eisler’s outstanding novel, set in Tokyo and orbiting around Japanese American spy-turned-assassin, John Rain. I’ve never been to Tokyo, but after reading this book, I felt like I have. Eisler brought a complex depth of realism to the page laced with so much nuance about the Japanese culture and the governmental/social structure of the city, I was shocked to find that Eisler himself lives in America.
A Clean Kill in Tokyo isn’t like other thrillers of the genre (including mine). There isn’t a lot of action, and there are lengthy periods of introspection by the main character (the book is written in first person). All these departures from genre norms are absolutely excusable, however, because reading this book made me slow down and smell the Japanese roses for hours on end. This book will make you feel as though you’ve taken a vacation without ever boarding a plane.
NONFICTION
Even in my nonfiction selections, I have a strong bias toward story, which is why many of my favorites from last year were in the historical/biographical/autobiographical categories.
Greenlights - Matthew MCConaughey
Even if I can never spell his name, McConaughey is one of my all-time favorite actors. His gentle Texan approach to acting makes me feel that if Matthew was a car, his RPM meter would never rise above idle, and I like that.
Greenlights, McConaughey’s memoir that’s not a memoir, is as quirky and offbeat as you’d expect from a man who invented his own acting style and applied it to everything from romantic comedies to interstellar dramas (see what I did, there?). Full of inspiring anecdotes, funny stories, and one-liner advice that’s of the “take it or leave it” variety, I enjoyed every word of this book, perhaps even more so since I opted for the audio version, narrated by the author.
Alright, alright, alright.
Red November - W. Craig Reed
In this gripping tale of the cold war as fought by submariners on both sides of the Iron Curtain, W. Craig Reed proves once again that truth is often stranger than fiction. Detailing previously classified operations wherein U.S. and Soviet submariners performed integral parts of the war that never was, Reed details a level of technical and personal narrative that is absolutely thrilling.
My grandfather, who was both a Navy and an Air Force service member during the Cold War, has often told me stories of the times he thought the world was closest to nuclear destruction—most notably the Cuban Missile Crisis. Reed details those events, along with lesser-known tales of the world’s superpowers brought to the brink, all through the eyes of the silent fleet. If you enjoy history and can stomach the suspense, Reed’s book is a can’t miss experience.
EXTREME OWNERSHIP – JOCKO WILLINK, LEIF BABIN
Anybody who is familiar with ex-military motivational speakers will be familiar with Jocko Willink and his principals of extreme ownership. In this book Willink and Babin extract unique principals of leadership from their wartime experiences, many of which are both exhilarating and terrifying to read. With plenty of real-world application and a gruff, no-nonsense delivery, I found this book to be challenging and engaging to read. It won’t leave you with many personal excuses, and it definitely provides a glimpse into why Navy SEALs have become such iconic members of the Special Forces community.