Best Books of 2020.

I am always looking for a good book to read.  At the end of each year, writers and reviewers list their top 10 or 20 books.  I also like to compare the books I have read with the top 10 or 20 lists. This year I found my favorite book of fiction on most lists.  That book was "Deacon King Kong" by James McBride.

It tells the story of an old church deacon known as Sportcoat who shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and, in front of everybody, shoots the project’s drug dealer at point-blank range.

The reasons for the shooting and the resulting consequences are the heart of Deacon King Kong. James McBride brings to life the people affected by the shooting: the victim, the African-American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the white neighbors, the local cops assigned to investigate, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood’s Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself.

Some of my other favorite books that made several lists include the following:

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?

Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.

In 1580’s England, during the Black Plague a young Latin tutor falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman in this “exceptional historical novel” 
Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.

 The First Week of 2021 After The Year That Was Like No Other.

2020 was a unique year.  It had 29 days in February, 300 days in March, and 5 years in April.  In 2020, the corona virus took over the world, and the world slowed down and came to a stop in some places.  In some sectors the world raced to meet the onslaught of Covid-19.  People died, more than 370,000 in the United States. The complete and abject failure of the President was on display for the world to see.  However, his failure to even try to control the spread of this disease cost people their lives, and for that he can’t be forgiven.  

The election in November restored some hope for the country because this corrupt, racist, lying administration was defeated.  However, this hope was tempered by the failure of the Democrats to take back the Senate from the Republican stronghold. Trump and his allies in Congress and the right-wing media started a campaign before the November election to say if he lost the election, then the election was rigged.  Once he lost the election, he unleashed a no-holds-barred effort to discredit the election results and to have them changed.  After 70 court challenges and recounts in different states (3 in Georgia alone) the results remained the same.  What could a narcissistic president do now to remain in power?

The two Senate seats from Georgia were still in play.  The State of Georgia has a law that requires candidate to receive 50.1% vote to win an election. This would insure that minority candidates couldn’t win in a 3 way race by splitting the vote and capturing the seat with less than 50% of the vote. Through the Herculean efforts of Stacy Abrams to register black voters and to get them to the polls, the State of Georgia voted for the Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden.  The question yet to be answered was:  could Stacey Abrams and others get the voters in Georgia to elect a Black Minister, Raphael Warnock, and a Jew, John Ossff to represent them in the US Senate.

While Trump was raising money to fund his effort to destroy the most secure election in the history of the United States, other money was pouring in to Georgia to influence the voters in this election.  The Democrats had two qualified and honest men running for these seats, the Republicans on the other hand had two people who used insider information to buy and sell stock to stuff their bank accounts. Both President-Elect Biden and loser Trump visited Georgia to campaign on behalf of their candidates.  Trump talked about how the election was stolen from him and to wait for January 6 when it would show he won.

Everyone was eager to ring in the New Year 2021.  Just like all the holidays in 2020, we rang in the New Year within our “family” pod.  A vaccine for the virus was approved in December 2020, and health care workers started to be vaccinated. Yes, a new strain of the virus was discovered in England, but a new President offered a new opportunity for handling the response to the virus in a fact based and efficient manner.  There was a glimmer of hope that we might get back to a sense of normalcy.   We knew the Georgia Senate election was on Tuesday, January 5, and the Congress would accept the electoral results of the state on Wednesday, January 6.  Welcome the year 2021.

The elections results from Georgia were not final until the Wednesday morning when Congress would accept the Presidential electoral results. Just as many of us were cheering the unbelievable feat of having a Southern “red” state elect two Democratic senators, the news broke that the Trump supporters, the white supremacy groups, the

proud boys and other right wing radicals stormed the  halls of the Capitol.  The Capitola had not been invaded since the War of 1812. No need to ask how this could happen now.  It happened because Trump called upon his followers to do it, this was his January 6 surprise.  It happened because the Republicans in Congress supported false claims about the election results; it happened because people are racist and believe right wing media lies.  I happened for these and so many other reasons.

So ends the first week of 2021, the year we were all waiting for.