I really enjoy the succinct and intelligent way you talk about books. Also, I just realised that behind the teapot in your intro you have Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, which is one of my all-time favourite book series!
I love the no nonsense approach of your videos. I come here for the genuine content and not the flash and dramatic anticipation most other booktubers are more focused on. Thank you for doing what you do.
Kate Chopin is not an author I have really ever thought about reading, but your description of _The Awakening_ as what you hoped _Madame Bovary_ would be makes me want to read Chopin's novel.
It's very motivating that your favourite book was one you had left so long! I don't have a single favourite from last year but the final Robin Hobb trilogy was the most extraordinary reading experience, I also loved Persepolis and (as far as I've got in) Middlemarch. My goal this year is to not buy a book until I've read one. Happy reading year!
I watched this yesterday, immediately checked "Miss Austen" out from the library, and now I'm really in it and it is just lovely. I'm so glad you enjoyed Kate Chopin and Nella Larson, so talented! This is a great list of books.
What an exciting list! 😍 So pleased to see Homegoing here - such a fab book. Thank you for reminding me about And the Mountains Echoed! I loved A Thousand Splendid Suns a few year ago when I read it x
I enjoyed hearing about your favorite books of 2020. I re-read “The Great Gatsby,” my favorite book of all time. Hilary Mantel’s last two installments of her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, “Bring Up the Bodies” and “The Mirror and the Light” were number two and three for me. Number four was “Ethan Frome” by Edith Wharton. Number five was a complete dark horse-a 2012 novel by Amanda Coplin called “The Orchardist.” It’s so wonderful when a book you don’t have any expectations about totally blows you away.
Such interesting picks! The Colour Purple is the February read for my book club, I’m so excited that it was one of your favourites! I just found an audiobook of Miss Austen, I want to read it so bad after your video, haha! 👏🏻📖
Thanks for the great recommendations! I particularly like the look of Big Little Lies and Frog Music. I'm really glad you liked And The Mountains Echoed so much - I thought it was incredible when I read it. I would recommend Khaled Hosseini's Ten Thousand Splendid Suns, it's wonderful as well. My favourite books of the year include The Trouble With Goats and Sheep which reminded me of A Casual Vacancy because it's about various neighbours and how they unwittingly affect each other's lives, and it dives into the different characters heads with free indirect speech which I adore. Other favourite books of the year include Salt Creek and A History of Loneliness. A History of Loneliness was very easy to fly through, but also dealt with some difficult topics with such delicacy - I completely loved it!
I have The Trouble With Goats and Sheep on my shelves, so excited for that. I loved Salt Creek when I read it. Can't wait to get to A Thousand Splendid Suns sometime!
Great video - love how much you loved these books! My favourite book of last year was The Eighth Life which was huge but so readable & absorbing. Will have to read your fave book now as you were so enthusiastic about it & I loved Homegoing.
As soon as I saw this video I opened Goodreads ready to mark books I want to read 😂 So many amazing books here. I read The Color Purple for the first time last year as well and it will be in my favourites list too! 😊
The Colour Purple and Homegoing are some of my favourites ♥️ I have read two of Khaled Hosseini but not And The Mountains Echoed so I do need to get to it asap. Loved seeing your faves. My top 3 faves of last year were GWO , Cemetery Boys & The Death Of Vivek Oji ♥️
I added about half of these to my TBR for the year! Thank you for the way you describe why you love a book- I feel I can really tell if a book is for me based on your review.
I also read Nella Larsen's Passing for the first time last year along with another novella of hers, Quicksand, which was even stronger. I was struck by how urgent and of the moment they both seemed despite being 90+ years old. Cheers.
Hi Katie! Great selection of interesting books. I am currently reading Hester and I am loving it. I love Hester as a character. Even though Hester is young, she has a strong character. And the relationship with Catherine is hilarious, I must admit that I am on Hester's side☺️. I am not that far into it but I am really loving it. I have And the Mountains echoes but somehow I didn't picked it up yet and I don't know why since I enjoyed the other two books by this author. Thanks for sharing with us your favourite books. Of course I add most of them to my ridiculous Tbr 😂
Wow! I am so glad to discover a book tuber who reads other than fantasy. I am not against reading fantasy books. I do read them myself, because they get into action very fast, as compared to a YA, Romance or Classic where the main storyline takes few pages, sometimes several pages to build up. But I feel that my book reading variety was kinds drying out with only fantasy on my TBR and Read books recently. Thanks so much for recommending so many books. I will definitely try few of these, and see how I like them.
The Five and Their Eyes were Watching God (thanks for the rec!) are in my top 10 of the year. So many of these are ones you've piqued my interest in and I can't wait to get to them!
Once again, fantastic content! I must read _Miss Austen_, _Death & Mr. Pickwick_, _Frog Music_, _Hester_, & _The Mountains Echoed_. I don't think that I have ever disliked a book you have recommended. Thanks for the excellent video:)
I have been thinking of trying The Romance of a Shop. I’m so glad to hear that you ended up enjoying it! I have The Confessions of Frannie Langton on my shelves. It sounds absolutely intriguing. I completely agree with what you said about the ending in Passing. I had no idea that was the book I was reading. The ending blew me away. I recently picked up Miss Austen. I can’t wait to get to that one. I’m not sure if I can wait till July. :)
I absolutely loved Big Little Lies too! Definitely interested in reading The Glass Hotel. It sounds wonderful. I'm planning to read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet next month. I'm really looking forward to reading more science fiction this year.
Love Big Little Lies too. As an Aussie though half the appeal was that it was a satire with a very Aussie tone- it’s basically satirising a particular suburb in Sydney and the different types who live there. I liked the TV show too but didn’t love that the humour was completely removed- The Slap from what I understood got even more torn apart when they adapted it for US tv even though the original TV show was well received as was the book even though people either love or hate the premise. A big part of that one was the Greek-Australian community generation gap (the author is from that background) and attitudes around hitting kids.
@@madis4913 I started watching the TV series and, you're right, it just wasn't quite the same. I thought it had lost a lot of its charm. I gave up about half way through!
My favorite books for 2020 are Race of the Century by Julie Fenster and Ten Days to D-Day by David Stafford. If you have seen the movie "The Great Race" it is a comedy loosely based on an auto race that really happened in 1908. The book is fact based but has lots of anecdotes involving the drivers, the people they encountered.
I started The Count of Monte Cristo a few years ago and got bogged down by its wordiness, and I love Dickens. I plan on giving him another go this year by reading a chapter a day. Fortunately the chapters aren’t very long.
Have you already read Alexandre Dumas' The Women's War? It's one of his historical novels about the lives of two female rulers in Medieval France, and their war against each other. I've only just heard about it and it sounds so fascinating!
This is the year I read The Count of Monte Cristo. I have both the audio and the print. Thank for the motivation. So many lovely, lovely books on this video. Great job.
Great job, Katie! This is always my favorite video you do each year. Please consider doing another one of your next twenty too! You have great taste and I'd be very interested in your runner-ups! So glad you loved Count so much too; I just knew you would. I can promise you if you do try History of Tom Jones, it's v different from Count but you'd love it just as much!! It's a nice long one that was way before its time and even though it was written in the 18th century, it doesn't feel dated at all. Kenneth Danzinger's narration is available on Audible and is perfect. You'll laugh and even cry but mostly it's wonderfully satirical. Not sure if you've ever read Fielding but you'd love him. Love your channel so much! Happy 2021 reading 😀
Ah! I wonder if Catherine in Hester is based on a historical figure--I seem to have heard about a woman Victorian banker in the not-too-distand past...sounds so good!
The movie for Breakfast at Tiffany’s is excellent. Audrey Hepburn is amazing in it. And The Count of Monte Cristo is one of my favorite books of all time. It’s so engrossing.
Hi I got into classics very recently after I saw your last year victober video. I read Jane Eyer and I absolutely loved it. Then I started reading The Christmas Carol and I couldn't finished it. It was a difficult reading for me as I am not a native English speaker. I was wondering if you could tell me which book to read next so that I would finish it rather than putting it aside. Please let me know what are the comparably easy books among following. Wuthering Heights The woodlanders Little Women Shirley Tale of two cities Mansfield Park
So, Dickens is quite dense, I can see his books might be harder. Of your list, Little Women, Mansfield Park and Shirley I think should be fairly accessible. I also recommend Pride and Prejudice and other Jane Austen, and also Elizabeth Gaskell is a great author and not too dense. I wouldn't necessarily recommend Wuthering Heights, it's a bit confusing and convoluted even for Native English speakers, though I love it!
@@katiejlumsden Thank you very much for your reply. I will first try the books you recommended. I should have asked this questions before I bought all the books. Thank you again!!!!
I’ve read Frannie Langton & Frog Music I’d love to see the list of 40 books you had to whittle down. Can we have a video of honourable mentions? Home going is on my kindle TBR. Transcendent Kingdom was very good.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s - a great read. Some say it is a portrait of Capote’s mother. Agree, it in not a romance between narrator and Holly. The movie changes the plot and creates a Hollywood romance.
I was thinking The other day, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns are excellent books, so why has nobody raved about And Then The Mountains Echoed? Just when I'm starting to think it's not as good and I should skip it, you go and make it 1 of 210. Excellent video! Very glad to see Romance of the Shop on your list... because I'm waiting for that book in the post.
You have talked about so many books that I loved last year. Ok I will push that khaled hosseni book to my March Tbr. My favourite two books of last year were the familiars and the thirteenth tale 😊
I am yet trying to read our mullual friend i am trying to understand the joebakeitys of it perhaps want to have an isloated place to read (:,l'll try my beatys(:
It really is a wonderful little novel, which has been eclipsed by the superb film starring Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard. Even in the 1960s, American audiences could not be expected to attend in great numbers a film featuring a openly gay hero, assuming there would be an actor willing to play the role. Capote's other classic, In Cold Blood, is much much different.
🧐 Hmmm, now I am curious as to which fiction and non-fiction books were the absolute worst of the 200+ that you read. I am mystified as to how you managed to complete over 200 books 📚 work, and move house 🏡 while additionally filming 🎥 and posting videos 💻.
Yeah, I don't know what happened in 2020 - a lot of books and a lot of things . . . Sometimes I find I read more when I'm busy because especially if I'm busy it's the only way I can relax. I'd say my least favourite books of 2020 were The Vorrh, The Castle of Otranto, Madame Bovary and A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain.
To be disappointed with Madame Bovary is unfortunate. However, Flaubert's obsession with creating prose poetry is hard to translate (bc he uses words in the second, third, and obscure senses). In my first encounter with MB, I benefited from the incomparable lectures of the American writer/teacher Ray Carver, who explained how GF wanted to create a bourgeois tragedy according to an Aristotelian definition. My second time with it, I read it in a series with Anna Karenina, Ulysses, and Lady Chatterley's Lover, and then it made more sense.
It really was not for me. I did wonder if it was just the translation but I buddyread it with several other booktubers reading different translations and I must admit none of us liked it!
I moved Little Dorrit up my TBR based on your Dickens vid and loved it. Thanks. Here's my best of 2020 vid: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xarcxx0GPJ8.html
