2020 A-list
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA BOOKSELLERS SHARE SOME OF THEIR FAVORITE TITLES OF THE YEAR
Bookstore owner Linda ShermanNurick laughed at the impossibility of the request: Pick just one or two great books to recommend from an entire year of reading? “There are a lot of really, really good books out,” said Sherman-Nurick, owner of Cellar Door Books in Riverside. “In part because people write when things are not good, and so people have been just producing incredible stuff. Because they needed to.
“There have been so many powerful books,” she continued, ticking off her favorite kids book (“Efrén Divided,” by Ernesto Cisneros) and young adult title (“Punching the Air,” by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam) before ending up in a no-win situation trying to pick only one adult fiction title.
Her first instinct was “The Once and Future Witches,” by Alix E. Harrow, but then, no, there’s that other one she really, really loved … .
So many excellent books come out each year that it helps to get input from the experts. So, as we did last year and the year before that, we reached out to local independent booksellers around Southern California to find out what their favorite reads were this year (even if some weren’t published this year — or this century).
Here’s what they said:
LOS ANGELES COUNTY ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,’ by Ocean Vuong
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “That’s just a breathtaking work. Just an incredible immigrant story, coming-of-age story, told in the form of a letter from a son to a mother.”
‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being,’ by Milan Kundera
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “One of those books that I’d put off for a long time. Really enjoyed this philosophical novel about a complicated love.”
RECOMMENDED BY >> Brad Johnson, owner, The Book Shop, 134 N. Citrus Ave., Covina. 626-967-1888, johnsonrarebooks.com
‘Memorial,’ by Bryan Washington
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “Washington is a terrifically talented young writer. ‘Memorial’ is the story of two men, lovers at crossroads. They work, mostly, but aren’t a perfect fit. To read their story (told first from Ben’s point of view, and later, Mike’s) is to remember what it was like to love someone that you can’t quite make it work with, and the reader’s sympathies change as the story unfolds. This book has the bonus of featuring Mitsuko, one of the great mother/mothers-in-law of modern fiction.”
‘How Much of These Hills Is Gold,’ by C. Pam Zhang
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “This debut novel is an immigrant story and a Western and it elevates both forms. Zhang’s story is centered around two orphaned sisters, Sam and Lucy, navigating a land that is foreign to them, and finding a way to survive in the American West of the gold rush. Zhang’s novel was released into a world just beginning to wrestle with plague and a future that is uncertain and with no guarantees. Sam and Lucy then become a proxy for all of us, burying the dead, and clawing out a new way to live.”
RECOMMENDED BY>> Dan Graham, assistant promotional director, Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. 310- 659-3110, Booksoup.com
‘Braiding Sweetgrass,’ by Robin Wall Kimmerer
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “She grew up on a reservation and she ends up going to school for botany; however, she grew up learning indigenous knowledge of plants. It’s kind of her experience of learning what mainstream science believes about plants and what her community believes about plants. It’s just so beautifully written and you can tell her and her community have such an intimate relationship with their home.”
RECOMMENDED BY >> Emma Ayzenberg, sales clerk, Chevalier’s Books, 126 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles. 323- 465-1334, Chevaliersbooks.com
‘Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland,’ by Patrick Radden Keefe
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “Investigative journalism at its best, literary nonfiction, I thought it was fantastic.”
‘Dictionary of the Undoing,’ by John Freeman
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “This one is off to the side of a lot of other conversations that have happened this year, but it’s very relevant. It’s a book on civility and language of civility, and reclaiming it from the political, corporate, and media spheres. So the language of how we talk about ourselves as citizens, as fellow Americans. That sounds more dry than it is; it’s an extremely conversational series of essays. It’s fantastic.”
RECOMMENDED BY >> John Evans, owner, Diesel, a Bookstore, inside the Brentwood Country Mart, 225 26th St., Suite 33, Santa Monica. 310- 576-9960, dieselbookstore. com
‘The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X,’ by Les Payne
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “Great new book — just won the National Book Award. A really well-written book and a look at America’s recent past.”
‘Chenoo,’ by Joseph Bruchac
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “‘Chenoo’ is an excellent story about Native Americans in the Northeast. Really good introduction to the culture and beliefs set as a mystery detective thriller.”
RECOMMENDED BY >> James Fugate, coowner, Eso Won Books, 4327 Degnan Blvd., Los Angeles. 323-290-1048, Esowonbookstore.com
‘Underland: A Deep Time Journey,’ by Robert Macfarlane
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >>“Mr. Macfarlane is a mountaineer who in this book goes into the earth, and so the theme all the way through it is what is underneath the earth. He writes about caves, the catacombs of Paris and Rome, some caves in Eastern Europe used by partisans during World War II. A cave in Finland that’s a huge seed repository in case of calamity. He also goes into different mythologies of caves and a lot of the folklore.”
RECOMMENDED BY >> Gillian Cameron, sales clerk, Flintridge Bookstore, 858 Foothill Blvd., La Canada. 818-790-0717, flintridgebooks.com
‘The Trouble With Penguins,’ by Rebecca Jordan-Glum
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “My go-to picture book right now … a really fun story about a penguin who happens upon a person who is roasting marshmallows. The penguin learns how to roast marshmallows and they develop a friendship. And the penguin goes and tells all his friends, and the penguins all start fires and the ice collapses. It’s about sharing around one fire. You can get more joy out of that.”
‘New Kid,’ by Jerry Craft
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “It’s a graphic novel about a kid who is a light-skinned Black boy and he’s starting a new school. It’s about starting-a-new-school kind of troubles, but also him being different in all sorts of ways, quiet, but just trying to find space. It’s the first graphic novel to win a Newbery.”
RECOMMENDED BY >> Jessica Palacios, manager and buyer, Once Upon a Time, 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose. 818-248-9668, shoponceuponatime.com
‘Factotum,’ by Charles Bukowski
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “I have read a couple of his novels this year. ‘Factotum’ is part of the Henry Chinaski series of novels. It takes place during and immediately after the Second World War, and it’s set mostly in Los Angeles. It’s very core Bukowski, working, drinking, going to the horse track, living with his girlfriend.”
RECOMMENDED BY >> Colin Corrough, bookseller, Sandpiper Books, 4665 Torrance Blvd., Torrance. 310-371-2002, sandpiperbooks.net
‘The Vanishing Half,’ by Brit Bennett
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “A great novel about identical twins whose lives diverge after one decides to pass as White, while the other continues living as a Black woman. Bennett intertwines their stories and reveals the price each pays with insightful and effortless-seeming prose.”
‘Interior Chinatown,’ by Charles Yu
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “Yu’s protagonist is a Generic Asian Man extra in a procedural cop show called ‘Black and White’ yearning for the chance to rise to the level of Kung Fu Guy — the brightest future he can imagine for himself. His story, told in script form, is a brilliant satire of pop culture and a thought-provoking examination of the Asian American experience.”
RECOMMENDED BY >> Mary Williams, manager, Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles. 323-660-1175, skylightbooks. com
‘Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger: A Memoir,’ by Lisa Donovan
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “Lisa Donovan worked her way up the ranks in the restaurant pastry industry while being a single mom, and it certainly wasn’t easy. Her memoir is honest, heartfelt and funny, a portrait of a strong woman who worked hard for everything, I highly recommend it.”
RECOMMENDED BY>> Sherri Gallentine, head book buyer, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. 626-449-5320, vromansbookstore.com
ORANGE COUNTY
‘Bomber’s Moon,’ by Archer Mayor
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “His book last year, I thought it was great. They’re all good. He creates a town (set in the real-life Brattleboro, Vermont) that I wouldn’t mind living in, and the characters all seem so real. You lose yourself in it.”
RECOMMENDED BY >> Anne Saller, owner, Book Carnival, 348 S. Tustin St., Orange. 714-538-3210, annesbookcarnival.com
‘A Borrowing of Bones,’ by Paula Munier
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “It’s about a female military veteran who returned home suffering from PTSD. She brought her dog home with her, and she’s not trying to be a detective or do anything like that, but she’s doing a lot of hiking, and running in the mountains, and comes across a body and gets involved.”
‘Greenwood: A Novel of a Family Tree in a Dying Forest,’ by Michael Christie
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “It’s kind of a sweeping family story that has a lot of emphasis on nature. It’s a little like Richard Powers’ ‘The Overstory.’
‘Homeland Elegies,’ by Ayad Akhtar WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “Exceptionally entertaining, it’s very hard to tell that it’s a novel because it feels very autobiographical. The history of an immigrant family’s experience. It’s very well-written.”
RECOMMENDED BY >> Jane Hanauer, owner, Laguna Beach Books, 1200 S. Coast Highway, Laguna Beach. 949-494-4779, lagunabeachbooks.com
RIVERSIDE COUNTY ‘The Evening and the Morning,’ by Ken Follett
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “It’s a prequel to the book ‘The Pillars of the Earth,’ which was and continues to be a good-selling book. Ken Follett has got a way of pacing a story, even a historical epic, so that you always kind of hate to stop.”
RECOMMENDED BY >> Ron Chalmers, owner, Cameron Books, 2920 E. Florida Ave., No. 108, Hemet. 951-925-6477, facebook.com/ cameron-books
‘Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream,’ by Mychal Denzel Smith
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “I think this book is incredibly important, especially right now because what he’s talking about is the need for people to look very carefully at the idea of the American Dream and the mythos that has been created around that. The book is incredibly hopeful because what he’s really saying is that we need to look at the truth of what we’ve done, and when we look at that history, and much of that history is not pretty, only then can we attempt to achieve that dream.”
‘Deacon King Kong,’ by James McBride
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “This is probably one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. It is so good. And also, for me, I guess I feel like lately I’m trying to find books that reteach us how to reach out to community, because we’ve lost that, and we need to regain that in order to move forward.”
RECOMMENDEDBY>> Linda Sherman-Nurick, owner, Cellar Door Bookstore, 5225 Canyon Crest Drive, No. 30A, Riverside. 951-7877807, cellardoorbookstore.com
‘Eyes in the Sky: The Secret Rise of Gorgon Stare and How It Will Watch Us All,’ by Arthur Holland Michel
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “It’s about spy satellites, and how they don’t just spy on the enemy, they spy on us, too. It explains what spy satellites are, what power they have, and the fact that they might not be limited to looking at other countries. A really contemporary issue.”
RECOMMENDED BY >> Gene Berkman, owner, Renaissance Book Shop, 3772 Elizabeth St., Riverside. 951-369-8843, renbook.com
SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY ‘Maybe,’ by Kobi Yamada
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “Hands down my favorite book of the last 12 months. The art grabs you just on the cover, it’s absolutely stunning. The [picture book] is about the endless potential in all of us. So it’s about trying and failing and trying again and not giving up. It’s something I recommend for the age that it’s intended for which is 4-8 but also something I recommend for a baby shower gift as well.”
‘Free Lunch,’ by Rex Ogle
WHY YOU SHOULD READ IT >> “This one is for middle grades. The character is in the sixth grade, so he’s 12, and it’s about him being on the free lunch program and all the stigmas that come with that. And sort of even all the misconceptions that teachers might make. It’s a little bit of a gut punch but it is written for that age level and it does end with a little bit of a hopeful ending.”
RECOMMENDEDBY>> Erin Rivera, owner, The Frugal Frigate, A Children’s Bookstore, 9 N. Sixth St., Redlands. 909-793-0740, frugalfrigate.com