Year-End Lists

Christopher Borrelli: The 10 Best Books of 2020, as published by The Chicago Tribune

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2019 • 2018]

• Mill Town

  Reckoning with What Remains
  Kerri Arsenault
• Stateway's Garden
  Jasmon Drain
• Begin Again

  James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own
  Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
• The Abstainer
  Ian McGuire
• Why Fish Don't Exist

  A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life
  Lulu Miller
• A Children's Bible
  Lydia Millet
• Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why
  Alexandra Petri
• Wagnerism

  Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music
  Alex Ross
• Superman Smashes the Klan
  Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru
• African American Poetry

  250 Years of Struggle & Song
  Kevin Young (editor)

Molly Young: The 10 Best Books of 2020, as published by New York Magazine’s Vulture

[see also 2019]

1. The Undocumented Americans
   Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
2. Fraternity
   Benjamin Nugent
3. Romance in Marseille
   Claude McKay
4. Piranesi
   Susanna Clarke
5. My Mother's House
   Francesca Momplaisir
6. The Great Offshore Grounds
   Vanessa Veselka
7. The Cult of Smart

   How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice
   Fredrik deBoer
8. Lakewood
   Megan Giddings
9. Interior Chinatown
   Charles Yu
10. The Shapeless Unease

    A Year of Not Sleeping
    Samantha Harvey

The Wall Street Journal: The 10 Best Books of 2020

[see also 2021 • 2019 • 2018]

• Abe

  Abraham Lincoln in His Times
  David S. Reynolds
• Actress
  Anne Enright
• A Dominant Character

  The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J. B. S. Haldane
  Samanth Subramanian
• Hidden Valley Road

  Inside the Mind of an American Family
  Robert Kolker
• Impostures
  al-Ḥarīrī
• Missionaries
  Phil Klay
• Owls of the Eastern Ice

  A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl
  Jonathan C. Slaght
• 1774

  The Long Year of Revolution
  Mary Beth Norton
• Transcendent Kingdom
  Yaa Gyasi
• What It Means to Be Human

  The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics
  O. Carter Snead

Literary Hub: Our 65 Favorite Books of 2020

[see also Our 38 Favorite Books of 2022 • Our 48 Favorite Books of 2021 • The 20 Best Novels of the 2010s • The 20 Best Works of Nonfiction of the 2010s • Favorite Books of 2018]

• Suppose a Sentence
  Brian Dillon
• Postcolonial Love Poem
  Natalie Diaz
• How to Make a Slave and Other Essays
  Jerald Walker
• The Historians
  Eavan Boland
• Follow Me To Ground
  Sue Rainsford
• Three Rings

  A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate
  Daniel Mendelsohn
• Theory of the Gimmick

  Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form
  Sianne Ngai
• Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick

  Stories from the Harlem Renaissance
  Zora Neale Hurston
• Red Comet

  The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
  Heather Clark
• A Children's Bible
  Lydia Millet
• Leave the World Behind
  Rumaan Alam
• Out of Mesopotamia
  Salar Abdoh
• Vesper Flights
  Helen Macdonald
• Mill Town

  Reckoning with What Remains
  Kerri Arsenault
• We Ride Upon Sticks
  Quan Barry
• The Book of Unconformities

  Speculations on Lost Time
  Hugh Raffles
• The Lightness
  Emily Temple
• Hamnet
  Maggie O'Farrell
• Luster
  Raven Leilani
• How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish
  Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert, editors
• Notes on a Silencing
  Lacy Crawford
• The Dead Are Arising

  The Life of Malcolm X
  Les Payne and Tamara Payne
• Hurricane Season
  Fernanda Melchor
• Trouble the Saints
  Alaya Dawn Johnson
• My Autobiography of Carson McCullers
  Jenn Shapland
• Animal Spirit
  Francesca Marciano
• Parakeet
  Marie-Helene Bertino
• In Memory Of

  Designing Contemporary Memorials
  Spencer Bailey
• Barn 8
  Deb Olin Unferth
• Wilmington's Lie

  The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
  David Zucchino
• The Constant Rabbit
  Jasper Fforde
• African American Poetry

  250 Years of Struggle & Song
  Kevin Young (editor)
• When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through
  Joy Harjo (editor)
• I Hold a Wolf by the Ears
  Laura van den Berg
• Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel
  Julian K. Jarboe
• The Nature of Desert Nature

  Meditations on the Nature of Deserts
  Gary Paul Nabhan (editor)
• The Cactus League
  Emily Nemens
• Death in Mud Lick

  A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic
  Eric Eyre
• These Women
  Ivy Pochoda
• What Happens at Night
  Peter Cameron
• She Come By It Natural

  Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs
  Sarah Smarsh
• Deacon King Kong
  James McBride
• The Vanishing Half
  Brit Bennett
• A Burning
  Megha Majumdar
• A Certain Clarity
  Lawrence Joseph
• Weather
  Jenny Offill
• The Unseen
  Roy Jacobsen
• The Ministry for the Future
  Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Law of Lines
  Hye-young Pyun
• The Nancy Reagan Collection
  Maxe Crandall
• The Harpy
  Megan Hunter
• You Will Never Be Forgotten
  Mary South
• How Much of These Hills Is Gold
  C Pam Zhang
• When No One Is Watching
  Alyssa Cole
• How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs

  The Syrian Congress of 1920 and the Destruction of its Historic Liberal-Islamic Alliance
  Elizabeth F. Thompson
• The Death of Vivek Oji
  Akwaeke Emezi
• The Park
  John Freeman
• What Can a Body Do?

  How We Meet the Built World
  Sara Hendren
• Quotients
  Tracy O'Neill
• These Violent Delights
  Micah Nemerever
• Crystal Clear

  Reflections on Extraordinary Talismans for Everyday Life
  Jaya Saxena
• Cleanness
  Garth Greenwell
• World of Wonders

  In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments
  Aimee Nezhukumatathil
• Earthlings
  Sayaka Murata
• Tales of Two Planets

  Stories of Climate Change and Inequality in a Divided World
  John Freeman (editor)

Publishers Weekly: 10 Best Books of 2020

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2019 • 2018 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014 • 2013 • 2012 • 2011]

• The Address Book

  What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power
  Deirdre Mask
• Bluebeard's First Wife
  Ha Seong-nan
• Caste

  The Origins of Our Discontents
  Isabel Wilkerson
• The Dragons, the Giant, the Women
  Wayétu Moore
• Homeland Elegies
  Ayad Akhtar
• The Last Great Road Bum
  Héctor Tobar
• The Price of Peace

  Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes
  Zachary D. Carter
• A Saint from Texas
  Edmund White
• Sisters
  Daisy Johnson
• Unworthy Republic

  The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory
  Claudio Saunt

Maureen Corrigan: 10 Top Books of 2020, as aired on NPR’s Fresh Air

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2019 • 2018 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2011]

• Leave the World Behind
  Rumaan Alam
• Deacon King Kong
  James McBride
• The Cold Millions
  Jess Walter
• The Pull of the Stars
  Emma Donoghue
• Interior Chinatown
  Charles Yu
• Writers & Lovers
  Lily King
• The Searcher
  Tana French
• Caste

  The Origins of Our Discontents
  Isabel Wilkerson
• We Keep the Dead Close

  A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence
  Becky Cooper
• Memorial Drive

  A Daughter's Memoir
  Natasha Trethewey

David Gutowski: Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2020, as posted to Largehearted Boy

• Born to Be Public
  Greg Mania
• A History of My Brief Body
  Billy-Ray Belcourt
• Miracle Country
  Kendra Atleework
• Pass with Care
  Cooper Lee Bombardier
• Riding with the Ghost
  Justin Taylor
• Tomboyland
  Melissa Faliveno

Real Simple: The Best Books of 2020

1. Rest and Be Thankful
   Emma Glass
2. Take It Back
   Kia Abdullah
3. To Be a Man
   Nicole Krauss
4. Survival of the Thickest
   Michelle Buteau
5. The Chicken Sisters
   KJ Dell'Antonia
6. The Office of Historical Corrections
   Danielle Evans
7. I'll Be Seeing You
   Elizabeth Berg
8. White Ivy
   Susie Yang
9. Cobble Hill
   Cecily von Ziegesar
10. Memorial
    Bryan Washington
11. Just Like You
    Nick Hornby
12. Once I Was You

    A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America
    Maria Hinojosa
13. The Talented Miss Farwell
    Emily Gray Tedrowe
14. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
    V.E. Schwab
15. Dear Child
    Romy Hausmann
16. The Smallest Lights in the Universe
    Sara Seager
17. A Knock at Midnight

    A Story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom
    Brittany K. Barnett
18. Transcendent Kingdom
    Yaa Gyasi
19. Anxious People
    Fredrik Backman
20. The Exiles
    Christina Baker Kline
21. What You Wish For
    Katherine Center
22. Fast Girls

    A Novel of the 1936 Women's Olympic Team
    Elise Hooper
23. Notes on a Silencing
    Lacy Crawford
24. The Golden Cage
    Camilla Läckberg
25. Mother Land
    Leah Franqui
26. You Exist Too Much
    Zaina Arafat
27. The Last Flight
    Julie Clark
28. Friends and Strangers
    J. Courtney Sullivan
29. Empty
    Susan Burton
30. All My Mother's Lovers
    Ilana Masad
31. Big Summer
    Jennifer Weiner
32. The Book of V.
    Anna Solomon
33. Like Crazy

    Life with My Mother and Her Invisible Friends
    Dan Mathews
34. Rodham
    Curtis Sittenfeld
35. The Book of Longings
    Sue Monk Kidd
36. A Hundred Suns
    Karin Tanabe
37. This Is Big

    How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World
    Marisa Meltzer
38. Pretty Things
    Janelle Brown
39. Valentine
    Elizabeth Wetmore
40. The Herd
    Andrea Bartz
41. The Mountains Sing
    Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
42. House Lessons

    Renovating a Life
    Erica Bauermeister
43. The Glass Hotel
    Emily St. John Mandel
44. Separation Anxiety
    Laura Zigman
45. Oona Out of Order
    Margarita Montimore
46. The Authenticity Project
    Clare Pooley
47. You Never Forget Your First

    A Biography of George Washington
    Alexis Coe
48. When Time Stopped

    A Memoir of My Father's War and What Remains
    Ariana Neumann
49. Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes
    Kathleen West
50. A Long Petal of the Sea
    Isabel Allende
51. Friendship

    The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life's Fundamental
    Lydia Denworth
52. Recipe for a Perfect Wife
    Karma Brown
53. Such a Fun Age
    Kiley Reid
54. Topics of Conversation
    Miranda Popkey
55. Followers
    Megan Angelo
56. Dear Edward
    Ann Napolitano
57. Why We Can't Sleep

    Women's New Midlife Crisis
    Ada Calhoun
58. Long Bright River
    Liz Moore
59. American Dirt
    Jeanine Cummins

The New Yorker: The Best Books We Read in 2020

[see also The Best Books of 2023 • The Best Fiction and Poetry of 2022 • The Best Nonfiction of 2022]

• Cleanness
  Garth Greenwell
• Stranger Faces
  Namwali Serpell
• Want
  Lynn Steger Strong
• On Anger
  Agnes Callard [editor]
• Mexican Gothic
  Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Blindness
  José Saramago
• Children of Ash and Elm

  A History of the Vikings
  Neil Price
• Rodham
  Curtis Sittenfeld
• The Art of Doing Science and Engineering

  Learning to Learn
  Richard W. Hamming
• Balzac's Lives
  Peter Brooks
• The Year of the French
  Thomas Flanagan
• So Long, See You Tomorrow
  William Maxwell
• Corregidora
  Gayl Jones
• Something New Under the Sun

  An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World
  J.R. McNeill
• The Known World
  Edward P. Jones

Library Journal: Best Literary Fiction of 2020

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2019 • 2017 • 2016 • 2012 • 2011]

• Homeland Elegies
  Ayad Akhtar
• Leave the World Behind
  Rumaan Alam
• Little Family
  Ishmael Beah
• The Index of Self-Destructive Acts
  Christopher Beha
• Transcendent Kingdom
  Yaa Gyasi
• Apeirogon
  Colum McCann
• Migrations
  Charlotte McConaghy
• A Burning
  Megha Majumdar
• The New American
  Micheline Aharonian Marcom
• Hamnet
  Maggie O'Farrell