 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome to my favorite books of 2020. In 2020 I read 107 books which is the most I have read since 2016 when I read 110. 110. So what I'm going to do is I didn't pull out all of these books. This is the second time I'm shooting this video and I already put up all the books. There was a corruption, not a corruption issue. Let me stop lying. I deleted it when I wanted to do the isn't nasty because there wasn't enough space. Yeah, I'm stupid. I thought I had already saved it and backed it up on my computer and I had not. But anyways, so this is the second time we're doing this. All the books are put up. I don't have the time to actually pull them all down. So you're going to get pictures up here, up here, all over the place. Just pictures. Just a plethora. That's a funny word, isn't it? Plethora. Plethora. I like that one. Plethora. All right. So we're going to start off with my favorite publishers of the year. Both. Well, one is not new at all. One is brand new and the other one is new to me. I've just started collecting their books, which is Grindhouse Press. Amazing. They're run by CV Hunt and Anderson Prunty. Terrific quality books, at least the newer stuff. I haven't gone too far back to the beginning. I'm still collecting their stuff and then I plan on binge reading all of them. They're all super short. I think they're all less than 200 pages. Could be wrong about that. But my new favorite publisher is Off Limits Press. Two of their books are on. In fact, both of the books that they, I think both of the books, yeah, both of the books they released this year are on this list for my top books of 2020. Both of these publishers are doing fantastic work. If you go to their websites, I will link them down there in the doobly-doo. That's Off Limits and Grindhouse. Check out their stuff. Absolutely fantastic quality. The covers are to die for. Real quick, before we jump into this list, I want to announce my new favorite author of the year or favorite new author for 2020. I believe that she has other books that released before, but she's new to me. So that's what we're going off of. Hailey Piper is an absolutely fantastic, fantastic author. The word choice, the just of writing, man, absolutely amazing. And while a lot of these books on this list are going to be big pub, it should be known that Hailey Piper is, you know, small press. Most recent thing that she published was The Warm and His Kings. And it should be on bookstore shelves. It should be out in the world. It should be everywhere. But of course, you got to build up your career or whatever. But I see nothing but amazing things happening for this author. If you have not checked out Hailey Piper, I plan on reading the rest of her work this year. If you have not checked her out, please, please go check her out. Finally, on to the list. So this list is not in any order whatsoever. I do have a favorite book of the year, but we will talk about that at the end, of course. So the first book I want to talk about, and we're going to be very, very short here. I will link to all my reviews. I've done video reviews for all of these down. I'll link them all down there in the doobly-doo. The first one I want to talk about is actually two books. I guess one came out this year and the other one's not able to mention because I just read it this year. But The Luminous Dead, which came out, I think last year, the year before, maybe even longer back, I'm not quite sure. And A Yellow Jezemine by Caitlyn Starling. Both these books are absolutely fantastic. If I were to choose one, I think I would choose Yellow Jezemine for my favorite of the two. But I think that's only because it's such a perfect succinct experience. Not that The Luminous Dead went on too long, which some people have claimed that to be the case. I think The Luminous Dead was a perfect length. But as far as a quick succinct experience and a far better take on this subgenre than another popular book that came out this year. Ooh, shots fired. Far, far better experience around the same concept. Yellow Jezemine is the winner for me. Next up we have The Need by Helen Phillips. This book has stayed with me, man. I've read this early, early in the year. I will post a link to my Twitter thread, to all the books that I read. You can go through if you don't want to go over to my Goodreads, whatever. It doesn't matter. The Need shocked me. It came out of nowhere for me. I didn't expect to love it as much as I did. I thought it was just going to be another typical domestic thriller kind of thing. Because I don't read too many descriptions, especially if I can't figure out the cover. If the cover is explicitly like urban fantasy, then I'll read the description to find out whether or not I'm looking at angels and demons and vampires and werewolves and stuff like that. That's when I'll read. But if the cover is ambiguous, I go in with the same mindset because I don't want to be led by what might be on the cover. Because a lot of abstract covers have absolutely nothing to do with the story themselves. But The Need, I need to read more of Helen Phillips. It's an absolutely fantastic book. A terrific audiobook also. In fact, I suggest I would recommend the audiobook over the actual text just because of the performance. The performance is great also. But the book is phenomenal by itself. Next up is the, I think it's the owner, I think she's the owner-operator of Off Limits Press. I'm pretty, it's sole owner-operate. If I'm wrong, please, Samantha Colznick. If you watch this, please let me know down there in the doobly-doo or the comments section. If you're not familiar with the channel, doobly-doo is the comments section. But her, her novel True Crime from Grindhouse. So Samantha started Off Limits Press, but she published first with Grindhouse and I mentioned both of these publishers before. Anyways, True Crime is a shocking, brutal, ugly, ugly book. And it's, it, it fired on all cylinders for me because I love each and every one of those things. As far as my rule of three, it has to have the characters, the pacing and the dread, it has all of that. And then toward the middle of the book, that opening chapter is just phenomenal. The entire book's good. But toward the middle of it, it went in a different direction than I expected. I don't know if you want to call it, it is, no, that's a spoiler. I'm gonna leave that alone. But it kind of, it changes. I thought it was going to be this one type of story all the way through throughout. And it wasn't. And I absolutely loved it. Next up is a book that I actually started in 2019 and finished in 2020. And that's Ohio by Stephen and Markley. I don't know what to say about this book. You know, you see all the memes and the jokes, like this, this image or this book, this whatever lives in my head, rent-free, lives rent-free in my head. This book that I've used to be sitting around doing absolutely nothing that has to do with this book and it will pop into my head. Because the characters are so well-defined, the happenstance, the things that happen in the book, they feel so real. This almost reads like non-fiction in novel form, kind of like almost like a, what, not true crime, I already talked about that, cold blood, that kind of thing. But it's not really murder mystery. In fact, much of the plot is hidden throughout the book. I mean, you know what eventually, you know pretty, about halfway through the book. And it's a chunk of a book over 500 pages. About halfway through it becomes clear that there's a little bit more here than just a mosaic novel with character pieces and whatnot. It is one cohesive story. I thought it was absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately, I can't find any other fiction by Stephen and Markley. And I know he wrote the, you know, by this book or whatever it's called, how I got this book published, so on and so forth. I'm not interested in it. As an author myself, I know, I've been doing this long enough, I know how to sell books. And it's probably one of those things where, you know, it's like a joke or something to that effect. But I don't know, it just doesn't interest me. If you want to try to talk me into it, feel free to do so down there in the doobly-doo. But Ohio was exceptional. Next up we have Uzumaki by Junji Ito. I'm so, so angry at myself that I started with Uzumaki and I waited so long to start it. Those two things pissed me off. I really wish I would have started with Tomi, because I didn't care too much for that one. I gave about three stars. It's fine. None wrong with it. Inconsistent throughout though. I think that's why I don't like it. There's no consistency to it. And it's just kind of repetitive after a certain point. It's so, so long, like 700 pages of repetition. Same thing over and over and over again. And then you have, what is it, Gyu? Gyu, I like that one a lot more than I like Tomi, four stars. But Uzumaki is a masterpiece. I could find absolutely nothing wrong with it. It has horror, humor, characters, everything I look for. It had in there and the apps and the artwork is consistent and utterly phenomenal. Here's another book that I started in 2020 and I didn't, no, sorry, 2019 and didn't end up finishing until 2020. And that is Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha, uh, yeah, Samantha Hunt. Sorry, I was talking about CV Hunt earlier and I got to get these hunts right. All right, so this book haunted me. I'd read it a little bit at a time. The writing is absolutely perfect. There's this, there's the dread throughout the whole thing. But you're also not 100% sure what all is. I don't want to say real, but if if certain things are actually happening, and I really, I really dig that by the end of it, you notice more of what, you know, what is going on in the narrative. But there are a lot of people that miss it. I've read some reviews from people who absolutely hated it. In fact, the person, my friend Susan, who sent me this book, hated it, didn't understand the point of it. And I think that's what she said. But it, I loved it. Absolutely loved it. I don't know. I don't maybe, maybe this hit more home for me because I've written something like this before. So I was able to pick up on the breadcrumbs that the author was laying down. I don't know, man, who knows why some people catch things and other people don't. I don't think it has anything to do with intelligence. I don't even really think it has anything to do with paying attention, all that much either. I think it has more to do with life experience. You know, you, you have more experience with something. Therefore, you're a little more bias on that, you know, in that way. And maybe if you haven't experienced these things, or you haven't done these things, maybe those things alter, you know, the perception of the book. I don't know. Discuss down there in the doobly-doo, whatever. Moving on. Devil's Creek by Todd Kiesling. If you have been following me on Twitter, if you have been a fan of this channel, you know, I've been talking about this book for ages. And people gave me crap for calling it the horror event of the decade. But I stand and by that it is still the best strictly horror novel that I read from 2010 to 2020. That it's, it is that book for me because I had not read anything like it in so, so long. That was any good whatsoever. It is a small town horror experience on par with Salem's Lot. It is a chunk of a book. I've watched one review where it was like, oh my God, there's so many words. Dude, we're readers. If you don't like words, why are you here? Right? I mean, anyways, it's just, it's just funny. Also in that review, the dude went on to say, what did he say? That anyone who liked this was a shill for the author? I'll admit. I am a friend of Todd Kiesling's, but the last reconciliation, I only gave three stars. So, I mean, I loved Devil's Creek. And I know plenty of people that I trust that love Devil's Creek also. Going back to what I was saying before, it's, it's, you know, independent experience, individual experience. Just because you didn't like something doesn't mean it's bad for everybody. Just because you love something doesn't mean it's going to be great for everybody. And I love that about the community. But when you start taking shots at people going, I don't know, that's where I take a step back. Have I done in the past? Sure. But I've had a little more to back up than, oh, this person liked it. They must be lying. Next up, we have Brother Robert by Anya Anderson and Preston Lodderbach. Lodderbach. That's, that's one of those names that I made a disgusted noise, but I was always, I always tend to get it wrong. And the only reason I got Anya's name right is because it's literally the pronunciation is in the book. But Brother Robert is about Robert Johnson. It is written by his half sister, I believe, Anya Anderson. She, she told the story to Lodderbach and Lodderbach wrote it down. You can feel the voice, you can feel her voice here. And I think that's the most important. It's nonfiction, easily my favorite nonfiction of the year. I'm a huge Robert Johnson fan, huge fan of the blues, especially the Delta Blues. And you can feel her voice, you can feel, you know, the sorrow, the nostalgia, the wistfulness, you can feel all these things through her. And it's an absolutely amazing book that paints a completely different picture than the brawler, misogynistic, you know, jerk that most people know Robert Johnson as. He's tragically struck down in the prime of his career. But there's a lot of stuff in there that's controversial. I hate that not more people are reading the book, because I want to talk, I would love to talk to, you know, damn near anybody but a white person about some of the stuff that Anya mentions in the book, especially about religion. There's a part, in fact, if you want to talk down, I don't want to get heated down there, but if you want to talk about this down there in the doobly doo, there's a part where Anya Anderson says the worst thing to happen to black folks ever is religion, as far as oppression and all that stuff. And that struck me. I don't know, I'm not black, I don't have that experience, but I would love to hear from anyone who has an opinion on that line of the book or the book in general. I'd love to hear from you down there in the doobly doo. Go on. Thank you. The boatman's daughter. Andy, is it Andy or is it Andrew? Let's see here. Andy Davidson. I've been thinking about Andrew Piper and Andrew Cole and all these different Andes and Andrews, so I wasn't quite sure I had to double check. The boatman's daughter, you will hear this a lot this video, but the writing is phenomenal. I mean, phenomenal. I'd never read anything by Davidson. The prose, it's stripped down, but it's deep. It's that, what's it called, when it's deceptively simple, I guess is the best way to put it. The characters are hella quirky, not in a funny way, but I mean, you have a dwarf. You have, there was that, not shuttlefish. I can't remember what the boy's name is, Little Fish, something like that. All these characters, they all have their quirks in their own personalities, and it was amazing going through it. And this book is absolutely brutal. I love the brutality if the author gives me a reason to care about the characters, which Davidson did. Next up, we have Song, Birds and Stray Dogs by Megan Lucas. Not only is Megan Lucas a fantastic human being, she sent me a bunch of stuff. Like, I think I bought the book, I got, no, she just sent me a book for the book review, sorry, and put in like a placard and a bookmark. And we've been in contact since I read the book, absolutely phenomenal person, but, but that means nothing as far as the writing is concerned. The writing is, man, there's a there's a Jack Ketchum quality to it. There's a, and I should say that about true crime also, because it's, yeah, there's some Ketchum in there. There's some Ketchum, but oddly enough, I have a feeling like is Megan Lucas has been possessed by Kent Haruff, if you or how are you pronounced his name, H-A-R-U-F, the author of Plain Song, what's some other ones? I don't know, I might have, I might have already packed up his stuff. We're moving new sets. We're getting a new set, a new set. Anyways, but I'm moving a lot of stuff, so things are hollowing out around here. Things are changing. I'm sure you'll notice in this video that things have changed, but with this one, man, this, there's a very down to earth storytelling here that is magical in so many things, even like a David Joy kind of way. There is a magical Southern feel to this book. So if you like Southern literature, I would definitely say read this one. But the characters, man, Chuck, just the characters alone, and I thought for sure I knew where this book was going. I thought for sure we were headed in one direction, and it's not that it's really a twist ending, it's just that so many of these stories end the same way, and this one just came out of nowhere and slapped me in the face. So Megan Lucas, fantastic job. Now we're going to get a little intellectual. No, I'm just kidding. The only reason why is it was it better than food or better than I can't remember the name of the channel. I think it's better than food. He read this book and he's like, there's a certain aesthetic to him. You know, there's the intellectual quality of it. He's also really funny. It's got a great personality, but there's definitely an intellectualism there. But it's, I'm going to have to read this one. No one 100,000 by Luigi Perendello. This book changed the way I looked at a lot of things. And there's a lot of things that it validated for me, how we are completely different people to everyone, even ourselves. Well, we are completely different to every single person that we meet, along with that person that we are inside that we think we are is not the person we are to any of those other people. That's why it's one, no one, and 100,000 because you know, you both exist and you don't exist in other people's minds. You even exist and don't exist in your own mind. And there's just so many quotes. I can sit here and go through the book. In fact, in the other video, I brought out some quotes. I wasn't going to dig out all these books again. So I apologize. I'll do better next time, I promise. But this book, I think it should be required reading in school. There's a lot of stuff in there that I think would help young adults with maybe not caring so much about how other people see them because that's not reality. But neither is the way you see yourself, really. We change and we morph and we become different people. We're a different person tomorrow than we were yesterday, that kind of thing. And I love that I love that message that, you know, we're not the same person from moment to moment as we are from person to person. And just because one person hates you for absolutely no reason, there's another person who might love you for absolutely no reason. And I love that concept. It brings me a lot of joy. Next up, Orem Shadow by Priya Sharma. Priya was so nice after I reviewed her book. She got in touch with me. I'm telling you this because I have to tell you upfront, she sent me a gorgeous package with a beautifully wrapped copy of her short story collection. She didn't even care if I read it or reviewed it. She just wanted me to have it because as a thank you for reading her other book. It's a very kind thing that she did. And if you watch this, Priya, thank you so much. I appreciate you. The Orem Shadow did a lot for me. I'm not huge in the fantasy genre. Either it is too epic or not epic enough. The middle ground in there is very, very hard to find a realistic magic. I love magical realism. So this book really, really hit me. And I really thought that it was going to be like a more, okay, it was a literary experience. Don't get me wrong. Beautiful writing. But I usually when you read a book like this, the ending doesn't land. Usually it's an ambiguous ending. Like was it or was it not? But in this one, Priya Sharma goes all in. She, she, what it not completes commits. She commits to the ending of this book. And anytime an author goes that big, because it's a very small story up until that point, anytime an author goes that big for an ending, man, I just got to throw respect their way. This one is damn near everybody in the community's Reddit. I'm not telling you anything new here. The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones. I've seen everything from one star reviews because Indians is in the title when Jones himself is a Native American, but that person is some kind of special. But anyways, at least look into the author, I don't know, but to five star reviews saying this, the best horror novel they've ever read. This book does everything right. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this book. I would, I would go, I would fight to not fight, but I would debate tooth and nail with someone who claims that there is something unneeded or unnecessary or wrong in this book. Because there is so much, it is, it's so good, man. It's one of those books where when someone tells me that they didn't enjoy it, I kind of looked at them like, hmm, and I don't tend to do that. You know, so it's a rare experience for me to, it's like Stephen King's Elevation. If you liked that one, I'm like, hmm, you, you're, you're sus. You know, and if people don't like The Only Good Indians, you're, you're sus too. Anyways, but it's not really a judgment like, you know, I don't like you. I hate you. You're stupid. No, nothing like that. It's like, why? I don't, I don't get it. It's kind of like Bachman's book, Normal People or whatever the hell it's called. If you don't like that book, how? Why? I don't understand. But those are the people that I want to talk to. Those are the people that I want to have a conversation with, or those people who have their own subjective opinion and realize that it's subjective and would like to talk about it, you know, respectfully. Why don't you, why don't you like this book? Because, not because everybody loves this book, but because I can't find any fault in it. So I'd love to hear why you found, what you found. But this, this, Jones hasn't written a bad book. He's written a lot. He's very prolific. He's not written a bad book. The more I think about it, he's like, you know, kind of like a sneaky, a ninja favorite of mine, because I rarely think about him, but I love everything he does. I don't know, man. Do you have anybody like that? If you do, let me know down there in the doobly-doo. But it's one of those things where nobody should be this good. I'm kidding, of course, but it's like, you look at this and you're like, well, me, okay, let me talk from my own personal experience. I've written some bad books, published some bad books, objectively bad books in my time, because we, you know, we all got to learn, unfortunately, I learned publicly. And I'm talking about like, filled with errors or formatting issues or anything like that. I'm talking about the content of the story should never have seen the light of day. But I look at something like that and you're like, how do you do it? How does Jones keep the quality so high all the time? And I'd love to sit down and pick his brain one day about the house of what he does. And I'm pretty sure all it's going to be is, I don't know, dude, I just sit down and write. Then I'll just be like, Imperfect Women by Araminta Hall. This book, man, there's a, there's two themes that there's a theme that I read multiple times this year. Imperfect Women and Lisa. What was that name? Lisa Jackson's The Invisible Girl. I think that's it. Man, I'm going to get shit from Atria if I got that wrong. But the Araminta Hall's book, it covered basically the same premise. I think I liked it more because I lean more toward Hall's writing because it's a deeper experience. Don't get me wrong. The other book was great. Fantastic. I loved it. But there was something even deeper than that here. And by the end of it, it was far less climactic, but it was a better all around feeling for me. Which I feel great about because I absolutely loved our kind of cruelty. It was a favorite the year that came out also. So if you have not read Araminta Hall and you like authors like Jillian Flynn or Caroline Kepnes or Amina Akhtar, if you like any of those authors, definitely check out Araminta Hall because she, I think, or Elizabeth McNeil also. I can't remember the name of her book right now, The Butterfly House or something like that. I can't remember. But absolutely fantastic, fantastic story. But the character work in Hall's Imperfect Women is off the charts. Every single person has a different personality and you feel like you know these people. Next up, our first book from one of the, well not the first one from the the first book I'm going to mention from Off Limits Press and that is Crossroads by Laurel Hightower. I need to say this up front. I now consider Laurel a friend of mine. We talk on Twitter all the time. She will be reading and blurbing one of my books also. I need to let you know that. But before any of that, before I got to know Laurel, whatsoever. And she's also going to be writing the forward for another book with a collab project that I did with Darren Kopoff. I hope I said your name right, man. Do you even watch these videos? I don't know if you do or not. Some friend, you are. Kidding, anyways. But she'll be writing a forward for that. So it should be known that we are friends. But this, I read both Whispers in the Dark and Crossroads before we were as talkative as we are now. Not like we hang out all the time online. But we do talk and we joke around online. We're on Twitter together. But anyway, the book deals with grief exceptionally well. The one thing that stood out for me is the subtlety of the character development for the son. Every single thing that this mother thinks about what she does, she compares it to something having to do with her son. And that hit me really, really hard because we got no character development for this 25 year old man who passed away in the book. And we got no character development whatsoever for him. But I felt like I knew him because throughout the whole book, the main character is going, my son used to do this. My son used to say this. This reminded me of my son. So many times this is done that you catch on to the theme. And I even spoken to Laurel. She said, I'm one of the only people who caught on to it, which is, I don't, I don't know how I don't know why not everybody is getting this. But it's there and it happens so often. But, but it's also kind of sneaky. So I guess I do understand where, you know, if people are missing it, it is sneaky because instead of saying, okay, this reminds me of that, this reminds me of everything has to do with her son. I thought that was absolutely brilliant. Next up is a double feature, The Grace of Kings and the Wall of Storms by Ken Liu, the first ever series fantasy series, epic fantasy series that I have absolutely loved. I gave both, both books five stars. They are fantastic reads. One of them is like 600 pages. The other one's 800 pages. I blew through them. I read them with T'lani, Tea Time Reads here on YouTube. I read them with T'lani and we, we, we just completely devoured these books. They're easily, easily hands down my favorite epic fantasy. I don't, I don't want to say a whole lot too much about it because I could literally sit here and make an entire video just based on these two books together. I could probably sit here and talk about it for an hour if, you know, because there's so much content to talk about it. But I am so excited for the Veiled Throne or whatever the third book's gonna be called. Right now on Goodreads it says the Veiled Throne. But yeah, I'm super hyped to finish up this trilogy. If it's a trilogy, if it's not, I'm hyped to just continue reading this man's writing because it is fabulous. Next up, we have a book that I, I suspected to like. I'm a, I'm a music lover. I'm a musician. I absolutely love movies like Almost Famous or Rockstar, that kind of thing. But which one's, which one is the, there was a Marky Mark one and there was a Tom Cruise one. It was Rockstar and then the other one was called Something Else. Y'all tell me which movie, who was in which movie? I can't remember who it was, but I like the Marky Mark one. I didn't like the Tom Cruise one. Anyways, I love stories like Almost Famous and stories about bands and whatnot. And this is one of those stories. It is written in an interview format, which I thought I was going to absolutely hate because I hate that. I hate epistolary, epistolary. I can't remember. People always, people always get me with that one. Hey, it's actually pronounced this way. I apologize. I mispronounce things all the time. I just put letters in that don't don't even exist in the word. But this one, every single character rang true. And a lot of this, you guys know me. I look for three things, character pacing and dread. And it with the I look more along the lines like dialogue for for something like this because there's no dread. But there was there was some dread because you knew something was going to go wrong. Todd Kiesling's final the final reconciliation. It had the same themes and everything. But I felt less of a love for those characters. And I felt for I felt like I understood those characters a lot less than Daisy Jones and the six. Had I read Kiesling's book before this one? It's what I'm talking about. It your own personal experience completely all I feel it completely alters your perception. You live, you learn. And you know, that's a saying for a reason. I think I would have loved Kiesling's book a lot more had I not read Daisy Jones and the and the six, you know, just a couple months beforehand. But Daisy Jones and the six is one of those books where I went in thinking I was going to hate it because I saw the way I opened up after I bought it. Actually, I got it through book the month club. I opened it up and I saw the interview format and I was like, Oh, crap. Okay, we're going to struggle. So I put it off and put it off and put it off. I ended up loving it. Who knew? Next up is a recent favorite. Black Top Wasteland by SA Cosby. My God Cosby. Holy shit. This is I'm not a huge crime reader. I have read probably 30 crime novels in my day and most of those by Lawrence Block. This is easily the best of them. I can't I'm completely flow mixed. Every scene that the book is propulsive. It has rocket jets on its back. It just flies. The last time I read a book, this insanely readable was John was John Connolly's the killing kind that that boat just it just disappeared. Like I was I was reading it and then it was over. It's the same way with this one. I was reading it and it was over. There's so much good stuff in here. And this is one of those books where I will find I I've been fighting with this for a while because a lot of like romance and crime fiction, that kind of thing that all the same thing because you're focusing on like one thing you're focusing on the romance or you're focusing on the crime and that that draws me out of it. I want you know flesh and blood characters. I want deep deep storytelling and I usually don't get it with those so I don't read those genres. I'm not saying there's no deep nothing deep to be had. It's just not for me. That's all I'm saying. This one I put off for a little while too because I was like I don't know. Then I listen I started listening to the audio book and then I started bouncing back and forth between the hardcover and the audio book. The audio book is amazing. From what Cosby says the interview with him at the end of the audio book is only on the audio book. So I suggest listening to the audio book just for that interview experience because after you get done reading it listening to that interview his passion is it's palpable man. It's tangible. You can feel it. You can feel the passion and the history everything that he drew from to write this book and I cannot wait for the next book that he has coming razor blade tears. If you don't know about it I suggest you run out and pre-order it or whatever you can do about it right now. Okay so now we're going to talk about The Worm and His Kings by Haley Piper. I've already mentioned Haley at the beginning of this video but I want to talk a little bit. I just want to throw this in there. This is easily top five this year. If I had to number any of these it'd be top five. Piper is one of those authors. She makes me jealous if I'm completely honest. Absolutely jealousy just dripping off of me. The writing here is oh man it's like Clive Barker but get rid of all the stuff you don't need. You know like I know that's funny but it's short form Clive Barker is Haley Piper. That's what you're dealing with here and when you start reading The Worm and His Kings you will understand real quick what I mean by that. I've had plenty of people messing with me going holy shit Piper is you know like now I'm not Piper has her own voice but it is the it is the visceral visual descriptions that Piper has that is the word choice absolute perfection and Barker has that kind of word choice because he writes everything by hand first. I know from from personal experience you know handwriting you know writing your stuff out beforehand and then having to type it up later you get a you get a better product at the end. I always have everybody who says wow this book so much so much better than this other book of years usually it's one of the books that I hand wrote because you have to take your time you got to slow down you got to think and if you're like me you hate wasting paper so every single word counts. The only problem with that is I lose momentum so if it's a really really long book or an experience I know is going to take me a couple weeks then of course I'm just going to type it out but most of I write all my short stories long hand and then I transfer them over but yeah Piper hey Piper you just what can I say you're fucking amazing. Next up is a book I still have out because I'm actually rereading it which is Ring Shout by P. Jelly Clark right yeah got it right okay scratch your throat scratch your throat okay the book's amazing it's a lot of fun that I usually don't like urban fantasy but this is like urban historical fantasy alternate history kind of thing where the Ku Klux Klan members are actual demons so I think the only people that I would be like hey don't read this book is it you know if you're a racist slime ball that'd be the only person because you know your buddies are the bad guys but the KKK actual demons the Ku Klux is what the demons are called the ending here man it's kind of like Orm Shadow in this regard you're dealing with an absolutely fantastic fantastic ending it's just just crazy insane imagery but it's not surreal you know everything that's going on there's a battle there's oh there's a villain you just want to sit there and absolutely hate because he's vile but he's also very nice he's almost like handsome jack if you play Borderlands too he's also like handsome jack you know he's absolutely vile but he also has that charm about him um and people are gonna like wasting where'd you find that charm it's just the way it's like the southern hospitality kind of thing oh hey darling how you doing kind of thing but that it's just dripping with menace you know I love it I love that kind of villain I love to see them get their comeuppance and it's just this book is fantastic if you haven't read it you need to go out there but I think everybody in the community has either read it or is going to read it so I'm not pushing any y'all in either direction now we have a brand new author to me my friend Amina Akhtar who I mentioned earlier um that she wrote the book Fashion Victim uh introduced me to this author uh and said you absolutely have to read this book so I I can't remember the back and forth but the publisher ended up sending me a review copy and I adored it man I loved it there's a lot of stuff in the book the writing is top-notch Lions has a knack for character development in a very short time frame you have a lot of characters here I think it's six or seven and every single one of those characters were developed within the first two chapters that is insane it takes you know other authors entire books to get how much character development that lions got in those first two I'd even say a lot of it is just in the first chapter because by chapter two things are starting to go bad already from what I remember um but then there there's I think it's at the end of chapter two there's a there's a scene that completely changed the way I looked at the book and I was like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa what it's like wait a second it was almost like psycho man it was like wait no that's supposed to be the main character hold up back up what are we talking about here anyways so yeah uh the knight will find us absolutely amazing and he's a new to me I'll be reading everything Matthew Lyons writes from here on and finally uh this book if you've read it you know anybody who's read it knows exactly what I'm going to say so I would just link to my review of it down there in the doobly-doo I'm going to link to all of them down there but Betty by Tiffany McDaniels is hands down the best novel I have read this year it is now in my top five best books of all time it is I don't know it's tied right now with the Goldfinch by Donald Tartt for my favorite novel of all time at number two my number one is still it by Stephen King I just I can't quit you you know um Betty I don't know that I will I've reread it 18 times I finally stopped after 18 times I read the Goldfinch a total of six times before I stopped I think I got everything I needed to get out of it by that time I don't know though if I am going to be rereading Betty this book absolutely destroyed me there is some there is some animal abuse there is some there's there's some incest stuff that rape that kind of thing it is a very very dark book but there is some light it's in in fact it it is I know it how arbitrary it is to say you know 2020 2020 was hell 2020 is either it can't be any worse you know that there's no line there there's nothing that rebooted or changed come 2021 it's still it's still it's it's it's an invisible line it doesn't matter what's over because time is a construct but I would say that bet that Betty by Tiffany McDaniels McDaniel I can't remember which one if there's an s or not but I would say that that book encapsulates 2020 perfectly you have all these wonderful moments being utterly crushed by huge massive issues and bad times so yeah I say it's it's a perfect novel to come out in 2020 for sure and I know it took this was the first book that Tiffany McDaniels wrote the summer that melted everything was actually the second but it was the first one she published she couldn't find a publisher for this one for so long and I have no idea why I don't I don't understand that this book has it it's devastated every single person who's read it I think the only negative reviews that I've read had the only reason they mentioned how negative it is is because of the the annual abuse and it is it is hard to read it's very hard to read so if you get to the point with the kittens I would say probably skip ahead to the next chapter because it is not something that is just you know a one-off thing where you know this happened and then moving on it is an entire chapter of yeah the only thing that affected me this much was uh Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door I think deeply affected me to the point where I I didn't want to read the book anymore and I got to thinking about it like is this why don't I want to pick it up again and it's because I was so insanely triggered and I don't I'm not saying that flippantly now there's a difference between offense and and being triggered and I was I was I was triggered you know I I've had some experience with you know cats dying around me not in that form but if you've read Life After Dane you know my experience because that's what happened to one of my cats when actually several cats when I was younger um but anyways I don't I don't want to get too dark here at the end but I think Betty is a it's one of those things that you know just kind of mirrors the year that it came out and it is a product of its of its times but it's not because it was written so so long before now that uh it almost like the office press you know prescient omniscient I don't know predictive profit prophecy I don't know what what what's the word let me know down there in the doobly that's everything I have for my best of 2020 if you have uh I would say if you have videos tag me over on twitter because I'm not checking spam anymore spam has just turned into like uh 18 co dot xxx or whatever that that's all my spam is only checking anymore because it's usually hundreds of those um and also youtube has made it harder to find the spam folder which I like because then I don't like ooh what's all the what's this 104 spam comments and of course there's real people mixed up in there too but um I mean I can't do anything about it I can't wade through a hundred you know hundreds of messages trying to find you know the the actual comments if you want to tag me in your in your video for your best of 2020 do so on twitter it's uh at Edward Lorne it's LORN um if you if you want to just type out your list I know a lot of you just like to do that just type out your list down there in the doobly do let's have a discussion about some of our favorite books I do respond a lot faster over on twitter or if you are commenting after the first week that the video is up I probably won't see you because I stopped checking the comments for the videos after a week I just can't I have so many videos now I cannot I can't respond to everybody I'm sorry but we'll talk about that more later so until next time actually let me stop there I hope this year as arbitrary as it sounds I hope I'm using the right word because I'm another um I hope you I hope this year is better for you um I know nothing is going to change just because the number the construct is changed uh one year you know we've cycled the earth you know we've circled yeah we've circled the earth whatever we've circled the the the sun uh a full a full time you know it means absolutely nothing but I do hope that 2021 is as good for you as it has been for me and I wish you nothing absolutely nothing but the best whether you like me dislike me whether you dislike me you're not here right now but I just wish you the best I wish you all the success and happiness in the world but until next time I have any you've been you this has been my best books of 2020 I'll talk to you guys later bye bye