My Top 10 Fiction and Non-Fiction Books for 2020

 

I normally read about 70 books a year, but this year only managed 60. (However I did half-read another 20 and bailed because they were either tedious or bad).

My top 10 fiction books read in 2020:

Lucy Ellmann, Ducks Newburyport

Jenny Offill, Weather

Sebastian Barry, A Thousand Moons

Gerald Murnane, A Season on Earth

Kate Grenville, A Room Made of Leaves

David Mitchell, Utopia Avenue

Elena Ferrante, The Lying Life of Adults

Jock Strong, The Burning Island

Steven Conte, The Tolstoy Estate

Raven Leilani, Luster

Out of these the top 3 are:

                     

My top 10 non-fiction books read in 2020:

Jack Fairweather, The Volunteer

Tom Holland, Dominion

Jess Hill, See What You Made Me Do

Kishore Mahbubani, Has China Won

Stephanie Kelton, The Deficit Myth

Melissa Davey, The Case of George Pell

Martin Amis, Inside Story

Zachary D Carter, The Price of Peace

Malcolm Knox, Truth is Trouble

Felicity Ruby & Peter Cronau (eds), A Secret Australia

Of these the top 3 are:

                                       

Raven Leilani, Luster.

 

- An astute, insightful novel with edgy, fresh prose that has heaps of muscle and grit. Its tone is jazzy and discordant. Reading it is like walking on hot coals, but it's exhilarating. 

- There is a maturity to Leilani's 23 year old narrator, Edie, and she posseses a fierce intelligence. She's African American and due to a difficult upbringing she’s frustrated and needy, and tolerates the physical, sexual violence and seemingly playful asphyxiation by a controlling older white man Eric. Their sexual relationship is a danse macabre.  

- Eric lives with his wife Rebecca in an upper middle class part of Jersey City. Rather strangely Edie is invited to stay in their house for a while to help them navigate the problematic terrain of parenting their adopted daughter Akila, a black, surly, difficult 13 year old. It’s an empty, meaningless lifestyle in the house, and there is little communication. Edie and Eric steal away for frequent, yet unsatisfying sex. Rebecca is aware of it.

- The family have their domestic rhythms, ordinary and vacuous. The newcomer Edie, as it turns out, is a rather enthusiastic painter and amateur photographer. She paints mundane stuff like Rebecca’s boots and her half-eaten Granny Smiths. She is obsessed with self portraits too, which always ‘fail’. One time she secretly photographs Eric and Rebecca’s lovemaking, peering into their bedroom: ‘the soundless rutting of husband and wife’. She plays computer games with Akila. Apart from helping her with her black hairstyles there is not much depth to their relationship.

- They all dress up for the annual Comic Con, like it’s a religious feast day. Contemporary pop culture rituals and music dominate their lives, if lives they genuinely are.

- Towards the end of her stay Edie finally sees Eric for what he is. ’I let myself be awed by his middling command of the wine list’. And she paints Rebecca, her best effort yet, their relationship having developed into something much more meaningful. 

- Racism is a subterranean hum throughout this novel and it is powerful. It's there in all the interactions.

Felicity Ruby & Peter Cronau (eds), A Secret Australia: Revealed by the Wikileaks Exposes

 

- I love reading books that make me angry. I guess it's a sign that I still possess a conscience, a brain, a strong sense of justice, and a measure of integrity. That's what being alive means.

- This book, published by the wonderful Monash University Publishing, is an exceptionally good and well-informed collection of pieces written by respected contributors who really know what they are talking about - lawyers, academics, journalists, psychologists and former politicians. 

- The fact that Julian Assange is rotting in Belmarsh prison in London and facing extradition to the US for an undoubtedly lengthy incarceration is utterly shameful. 

- Psychologist Dr Lissa Johnson’s contribution is powerful, but so are many of the others.

- As Emeritus Professor Jenny Hocking says:

'Exceptional, illuminating, and deeply disturbing. With commanding breadth this superb collection highlights the dangers to democracy of proliferating information control and official secrecy, exploring the powerful transformative work of Julian Assange and Wikileaks in exposing dark secrets as an exemplar of Australian investigative journalism. His persecution is our shame'.

Movies seen in 2020

 

-Little Women: magnificent! Directed by Greta Gerwig at a rather frenetic pace in the first half, and then it slows down and becomes more powerful and less girly in the second. Saoirse Ronan is superb, dominating every scene. A very powerful performance. 

-Joker: Hardly a profound or even terribly interesting film. Typical cinematic cliches (characters run onto the road in Manhattan and get hit by a car, tossed onto the bonnet, fall back onto the road, pick themselves up and run on). The Joker’s absurd laughing irritated me. He meets briefly the kid Bruce Wayne, the future Batman. A typical sad fuck, wronged by the rich, lied to by his mother, gets a gun, kills those who ‘wrong’ him, end of story. No depth. Disappointing. 

-1917: Powerful movie from Sam Mendes. Superbly produced. Haunting music. Represents the horror, randomness, ugliness and meaninglessness of war in its graphic, tense, but simply told story and its bleak landscapes. Celebrates heroism and courage but never overdoes it. What are limbs, flesh wounds after all? English in that way. There is a lovely  scene with a woman and a baby. The reality of life. Very satisfying ending.  A must see. 

-Bombshell: There are a few too many banalities in this, particularly the conversations, and the political and media observations. Very kind to the Murdochs and naive about the putrid ugliness of Fox News in general and how it’s infected the political discourse of the nation. The focus on the celebrities shut down any political critique. A few scenes where these empty right wing numbnuts were riffing with their colleagues and dumping on liberals would have ‘placed’ them. A documentary would have shown their truly ugly ‘views’ and crucified them. The screenplay was littered with the constant ‘fuck/shit’ vulgarities that are so common in American productions.  But it still managed to be reasonably enjoyable. Margot Robbie was excellent, Charlize Theron just beautiful, and Nicole Kidman ordinary. John Lithgow as Roger Ailes nailed it. Captured perfectly the grotesque toad that he was. Malcolm McDowell as Rupert Murdoch was pathetic. Terribly miscast, and he got the accent ludicrously wrong - a Pom trying to emulate Rupert’s ugly Australian-American mashup. 

-Knives Out: Easily one of the most tedious and annoying movie experiences I’ve had for many years. An ugly, loud and vulgar American family, played by second rate actors (Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Jamie Lee Curtis), gaping plot holes, far too long, cliched political discussions, and more. ‘Donut holes’? Plonking piano notes? This from the ridiculously miscast Daniel Craig whose southern American accent was laughable! Ugh! Agatha Christie movies at least have charm and seasoned British actors. Two stars.

-Seberg: Brilliant movie and Kirsten Stewart was superb. Far less of her usual tics and mannerisms were on display. The role of the FBI was disgusting as they intensely surveilled  her for ‘supporting’ the black liberation/Black Panther/Malcolm X movement, and leaked her private love life to the gossip media. They wrecked her marriage. The senior Agent (Vince Vaughan) was a vicious racist and domestic abuser. Some issues in the story were unresolved - who was Seberg’s daughter’s father (was it the ‘negro’ the tabloid media suggested)? And what happened to the sympathetic FBI agent who stole her file, gave it to her and tried to help her? 

-Parasite: I found it a bit lightweight most of the way through, a pastiche of standard farcical tropes. It changed character towards the end and became more dramatic, but there was never much socially critical depth to it. I expected more. And there were too many silly elements to it: the magic rock, the neighbourhood urinator, the lower class smell, the hidden cavern under the house. Three stars.

-Emma: Absolutely delightful rendering of Jane Austen’s classic. The two principals, Emma and Mr Knightley, played by Anya Taylor-Joy and Johnny Flynn, dance around each other with friendly but deepening affection, and the tensions build and all is happily resolved. Superbly done. A visual feast too. Fashion and set design celebrated by the director. The superb score is part composed by Isabelle Waller-Bridge, sister of Phoebe. Emma’s father is played by Bill Nighy who displays all his usual tics but he adds so much joy to the movie. Worth seeing for him alone! 

-The Children Act: Loved it. Emma Thompson was superb. Brought the required authority to the role. The boy was also good, exhibiting the necessary vulnerability. Was also careful not to overly demonise the Jehovah Witnesses’ beliefs. Stayed faithful to Ian McEwan’s novel (he wrote the screenplay). 

-Ford v Ferrari: very enjoyable and well acted, particularly by Christian Bale whose cockney accent is flawless. Won an Oscar for Best Editing. 

-Spenser: Typical Hollywood crime action movie. All cliches and nothing else. Enjoyable and completely unoriginal. 

-Charlie’s Angels: ridiculous, but the women are beautiful. 

-Jo Jo Rabbit: lovely, delightful movie. Enjoyed it immensely. The actors who played the three kids were exceptionally good, as was Scarlet Johansson, but the writer and director Taika Waititi is an embarrassingly bad actor! Music good too. Managed to give a comedic treatment to Nazi Germany without diminishing its seriousness. But, in the end, it’s definitely a YA movie. 

-The Invisible Man: Very enjoyable. Elizabeth Moss was superb. The story line a bit ordinary, including the ending. Not so much a horror movie, more of a thriller. 

-Birds of Prey: The worst excuse for a movie I’ve seen all year. Whatever possessed Margot Robbie to take this Marvel Harley Quinn role is beyond me. Her Brooklyn accent is simply appalling. Trash.

-Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears: Tedious in the extreme. Faux Indiana Jones. Should have stayed In Ballarat. Cliched colonial tropes and English mannerisms. Awful dialogue, bad editing. Bailed half way through. 

-The Gentlemen: typical Guy Ritchie London gangster movie. Very average. I can’t even remember how it ended and I only saw it last night! So dull and cliched. 

-Chappaquiddick: the story of Teddy Kennedy and the accidental drowning of the young female political aide. The direction is just bad. Deliberately makes the movie so slow and meandering that I wondered whether any of the characters, particularly Kennedy himself, was actually alive! 

-Becoming: Michelle Obama’s book tour. Nothing of real substance in it. Just a long, celebratory promo for the book. Rather tedious, sentimental and banal. I was expecting some backroom tensions re hotels, meals, schedules, disagreements with staff and the publishers, etc - the standard stuff of all book tours. But nothing at all. I wonder if the book is as boring! 

-Portrait of a Lady on Fire: wonderful. Beautiful production, marvellous and highly original story, lovely actresses. Hardly any men in the movie at all. They are irrelevant. 

-Trip to Greece: same old, same old and boring. 

-A Hidden Life: Terrence Malick film. Very frustrating on so many levels, particularly that the central character who is a conscientious objector to the Nazi regime when he’s conscripted to the Austrian army is sooo inarticulate. He barely utters a word to explain his position, even to his wife. The editing is also rather amateurish. But the Austrian scenery is magnificent and the photography as well.

-The Girl in the Spider’s Web: Amazing photography of Sweden and Stockholm in winter. But the story is rubbish and the action so cliched. Claire Foy is excellent however. 

-The Assistant: superb, slow and deliberative. Great acting by Julia Garner. Wonderful music. Subtle condemnation of male office dynamics. Harvey Weinstein the boss, never seen. Young sexually attractive women show  up and are invited into his office. The HR Director warns her off registering an official complaint. She either lives with it or leaves. The movie ends.

-Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona: Woody Allen at his best in 2008. Beautiful young actresses Scarlet Johansson, Rebecca Hall, and Penelope Cruz star. The story is nuanced, subtle and full of meaning as it examines the dynamics of love and attraction and marriage. The Deus Ex Machina ending is annoying though. 

-Greyhound: Bailed half way through. A  typical Hollywood, American Hero wartime movie. And guess what - Tom Hanks plays the hero captain of the Destroyer on a mission to assist the Allied forces across the Atlantic. And Hanks is always nice. Cliched, formula-driven, mediocre navy action movie we’ve all seen hundreds of times before. 

-Relic: Australian horror movie starring Robyn Nevin as a crazy, dementia suffering, grandma who lives alone in a big old house in the countryside, and is visited for a few days by her daughter and granddaughter. Strange things, like noises (jeez!), start up at night, and shadows of former residents float in and out. Hardly original, and Nevin is horribly miscast. Her strong, loud, dramatic actress voice does not echo the feeble, old, if authoritarian, woman she’s portraying. Nevin is a ‘stern mother’ cliche. Emily Mortimer as her daughter is well cast however. I bailed two thirds in. Maybe it improved, maybe it didn’t. I couldn’t care. 

-A Rainy Day in New York: Woody Allen’s latest and it was classic Woody. Young, attractive people in and out of love and relationships. Elle Fanning was  beautiful and superb. Timothee Chalamet wonderful; Rebecca Hall, mysteriously, had a bit part; the cocktail piano trio music was classic. A simple story but so Woody and delightful. I loved it.

-In Your Hands: very enjoyable French movie about a young boy from the wrong side of the tracks who is a classical piano genius. Sentimental but heartwarming. The music was superb. 

-Mulan: the high production values of this movie make for a hugely enjoyable feast for the eyes. Pretty standard stuff in all other ways. Although the story is rather interesting - pro female. 

-The Personal History of David Copperfield: comic treatment of the writer’s life, and deliberately casts POC in various roles. Pretty boring frankly. 

-On The Rocks: A very disappointing effort from Sophie Coppola this time. Even Bill Murray couldn’t make this enjoyable let alone deep and interesting. Very slight, full of standard cliches about men and marriages, and contains some scenes that add nothing whatsoever to the story. 

-The Burnt Orange Heresy: A very disappointing effort. Boring and meaningless. Elizabeth Debicki was good but the male actors bad. Constant smoking and pill popping was constantly annoying. The ending was confusing. 

-Palm Springs: Pathetic and ridiculous. What was the constant sucking from soda cans all about? Bailed half way through.

-Corpus Christi: A highly lauded movie but difficult to endure. Ugliness all around - the juvenile detention centre, the villagers, the violence. Depicts the sheer ugliness of human society, despite well intended actions by some to improve it. And it’s virtually impossible for individuals to escape it. Corpus Cesspit rather than Corpus Christi. 

-The Child in Time: a rather tepid drama about a four year old girl stolen from her father at a supermarket. The political subplot made no sense whatsoever and the ending was lame. An utterly pointless film based on one of Ian McEwan’s weakest novels. 

-The Translators: French drama about a bestselling author’s third book in a highly popular series. A whodunnit that develops into an extremely satisfactory story. Lots of twists. Excellent. 

-Rebecca: rather lame re-make of the classic novel.    

-Mank: Movies about drunks are always annoying. This is no different. Full of cliches and dramatic scenes that just register as overdone and historically untrue. Could have been a lot better if it focussed more on Orson Welles.

Martin Amis, Inside Story

 

- Amis calls his new book a 'novelised autobiography'. ‘The book is about a life, my own, so it won’t read like a novel - more like a collection of linked short stories, with essayistic detours’. 

- The ‘novel’ nomenclature simply serves to give him licence to roam freely over events and people in his life that meant something to him. Names are changed, people invented, events described that never happened. A constantly appearing girlfriend ‘Phoebe Phelps’, for example, is fiction, but is, as Amis disclosed in an interview earlier this year, based on a series of real relationships in his youth. So like many historical novels it's a mixture of fiction and fact. The central focus is the ideas canvassed, the insights offered, the erudition displayed, and the well-chosen quotes, liberally sprinkled. 

- I've been an enthusiastic fan of Amis for many years and have read all his 18 novels to date. So of course I loved this book. There are so many stories and conversations and endless name-dropping that contribute to a potent mixture all beautifully rendered with a lightness of touch. It’s a very gentle book. It treads lightly but it has weight. 

- You cannot but be impressed with the erudition, the intelligence and the literacy. In many ways it's a book about writers for writers. Saul Bellow and Philip Larkin are central, clearly being Amis's favourites. They were important and influential literary figures through the 20th century and good friends of Amis. Graham Green makes a few appearances, as does John Updike. Religion and belief is a constant question. He indulges in broad, sweeping critiques and writes with with confidence and authority. 

- Amis has always explored antisemitism and fascism is his writings over the years and he does it here. Bellow he lauds as the ‘first Jewish-American novelist’. There are other brief mentions: D.H. Lawrence, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, Clive James, Kurt Vonnegut, Philip Roth, Elmore Leonard. He also offers insights into Islamic terrorism and the rupture of 9/11.

- Dotted throughout is free-flowing miscellaneous advice on writing from a master of the craft. His damning of the frequent use of cliches for example is delightful. Disappointingly, there's no reflections on his own novels or their reviews, given that over the course of his career he’s received plenty of ordinary ones. What were his sales, his bestsellers, even his royalties? We get nothing on the business side of things. This part of the ‘inside story’ is absent. The focus is on personal relationships, wives, girlfriends, families, and the authorial craft. 

- The relationship between Amis (‘Mart’, or ‘little Keith’ as his best friend Christopher Hitchens called him) and the Trotskyist ‘Hitch’ is very affectionate and deep. And his telling of the sad story of Hitchens' slow and agonising death from esophageal cancer is profoundly moving.

- The novel is studded throughout with footnotes which add colourful detail and background to the events being described.

- Despite the fact that the book is supposed to be a 'novel' there is a magnificent index, one of the best you'll see. It's detailed and comprehensive, and provides the structure and storyline of the book. Worth dipping into.