Best of 2020 for AdultsLike this list

34 items

• We Ride Upon Sticks

  Barry, Quan,

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  Kristen S: "A hilarious coming of age story about a 1980s high school field hockey team pledging their allegiance to the devil in order to become champions. Barry is able to create a rich backstory for each team member, giving them all equal love…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Vanishing Half

  Bennett, Brit,

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  Krystal: "I still haven't read The Mothers, but I surely will now. This book, her sophomore effort, was fantastic. I'm a character reader, and it does not disappoint in that area... or any area really. What works incredibly well here is the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Field Guide to Citizen Science

  How You Can Contribute to Scientific Research and Make a Difference

  Cavalier, Darlene

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  Dale: "This is the perfect pandemic book for families who want to get started on their citizen science journey."

• Love Lettering

  Clayborn, Kate,

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  Martha: "The premise of this – an Instagram-famous hand letterer puts a secret code in a wedding announcement for a couple she thinks will break up, and the mathematician groom sees the pattern and shows up at her door to ask her about it – is…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• When No One Is Watching

  A Thriller

  Cole, Alyssa

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  Maia: "Alyssa Cole never disappoints, so when she writes something billed as a thriller, I'm willing to follow where she leads even though thrillers give me nightmares. As expected, it was well-written, expertly plotted, and absolutely terrifying. I…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Dinner in French

  My Recipes by Way of France

  Clark, Melissa,

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  Susan B: "This is unfussy, approachable food - she takes classic French dishes and tweaks them for modern American palate and takes familiar American dishes and gives them that - how do you say? - je ne sais quoi."

• The Undocumented Americans

  Cornejo Villavicencio, Karla

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  Rachel W.: "The Undocumented Americans is an excellent piece of journalism that details the impact and influence undocumented Americans have on our society. Villavicencio focuses her book on the undocumented Americans we don’t often talk about—not…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• A Rogue of One's Own

  Dunmore, Evie,

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  Sarah: "I appreciate how Dunmore brings in timely political activism. It’s a great way to update and refresh the romance genre. Her strong, ambitious lead, Lady Lucie, is a suffragist intent on a plan to bring down the Married Women’s Property Act.…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Guest List

  Foley, Lucy,

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  Susan B: "Early in the pandemic, a member of staff dropped a galley of this in my mailbox on a Friday. I cracked it open Saturday morning, finished it Saturday evening, and by Sunday and passed it on to a neighbor. An Agatha Christie-esque tale of…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Crooked Hallelujah

  Ford, Kelli Jo,

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  Krystal: "Felt like this one was meant for me. Strong emphasis on people and place and the ties that bind. Loved the writing as well, straight forward with poetic tendencies. There is an unexpected turn at the end that I found really dark and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Transcendent Kingdom

  Gyasi, Yaa,

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  Maia: "Transcendent Kingdom is beautifully written and compulsively readable, told in the voice of Gifty, an ivy league graduate student investigating the neuroscience of reward-seeking behavior in mice. She explores the intersection of science and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Cool Town

  How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture

  Hale, Grace Elizabeth,

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  David F: "Grace Elizabeth Hale combines her first person experience (she lived in Athens while attending the Univ. Of Georgia) and her academic training as a historian (Ph.D. in history from Rutgers Univ.) to great effect in this history of the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Boyfriend Material

  Hall, Alexis J.,

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  Martha: "This is the smart, banter-y, swoony, laugh-out-loud funny romance I needed in this nightmare of a year. Reading this felt like watching a romcom – I can’t overstate how smart the writing and characterization (of both heroes, and of all…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Soul Full of Coal Dust

  A Fight for Breath and Justice in Appalachia

  Hamby, Chris

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  Krystal: "This is the best kind of investigative journalism- thorough and informative without losing human connection. Camby, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, begins in the late 60s when national attention was finally given to the dangerous…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

  Hendrix, Grady,

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  Robyn W: "The suburbs can be... murder! A group of friends living in a leafy, bucolic suburb in Charleston decide to set up their own book club concentrating on serial killers, as you do. An outsider, James Harris, arrives, and while he slips into…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• This Will Make It Taste Good: A New Path to Simple Cooking

  Howard, Vivian (Vivian S.), 1978-

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  Robyn W: "I was a big fan of Deep Run Roots, but not all of the recipes were easy to make in my tiny kitchen (my oven was never going to bake her tomato pie as well as she could). This book certainly hits the sweet spot of having great recipes you…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Wine Girl

  The Obstacles, Humiliations, and Triumphs of America's Youngest Sommelier

  James, Victoria

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  Becky W: "An interesting, yet heart breaking, memoir of a young woman breaking into the sommelier world. Victoria James has the intelligence and fortitude to climb the male-dominated restaurant wine business to become the country's youngest…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Sirens of Mars

  Searching for Life on Another World

  Johnson, Sarah Stewart,

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  Dale: "Beautifully written! Page turning non fiction is hard to come by. Allen Lane from NewScientist.com puts it like this, "The book is part memoir, part history, part education, and the three flow together so smoothly you might not even realise…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Tightrope

  Americans Reaching for Hope

  Kristof, Nicholas D., 1959-

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  Krystal: "I read a fair amount about the lives of poor and working class folks (including the disappearing middle class), out of a desire to better understand how we, as a country, got where we are, where we are going, what we can do about it, and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Red Pill

  Kunzru, Hari, 1969-

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  David F: "Kunzru has written a novel of our times. It is unclear until the very end exactly when the action is taking place, but we recognize the world as our own right away. The protagonist is a writer who is struggling with his work. He is married…Read moreRead more of this annotation