The Happy Place 5: Books that Kept Us Afloat in 2020
The Happy Place who? The Happy Place 5 what? Guess what y’all – it’s time for a new regular feature on the blog! The Happy Place 5 is going to be a monthly series where a few friends and I post 5 of our favorites books for a certain topic or theme. For example, you can see that this month’s topic is “Books that Kept Us Afloat in 2020.” The name came from a Discord group that I am a part of – we created the space to have a positive environment for a handful of close friends. All of us are bookworms, and many of us are bookstagrammers and bloggers, so we decided to start a blog post series together! I’ll link my friends blogs and posts for this month’s topic at the end of this post.
Okay, now that I’ve explained this new feature, let’s get to January’s topic! There’s no mincing words, 2020 was a shitshow for everyone. I naturally turned to books as an escape from the real world. There are definitely a handful that were really comforting for me during the year. So I’m going to share them with you, and hopefully they can do the same for you!
The House in the Cerulean Sea
I read this in the early spring of 2020, and oh man. It is the big warm hug that everyone needs. You can read my full review of it here if you like. This is the ULTIMATE found family book. There are cute magical children, each with their own unique powers and personality, and I want to adopt every single one of them. Watching the main character warm up to them and their adoptive father figure is just. SO PURE. Seriously, if you need love and happiness in your life, go get this book.
Sabriel
This is actually the only book on this list that is a reread! I actually included this book (well the whole series) in an earlier blog post about book that help me through tough times. And yeah, 2020 was a tough time haha. In that post I wrote this about the series as a whole: “This is one of my all time favorite series. Garth Nix is such an amazing author, and the world he created is wonderful. I’m not sure what it is about these books. I think the main characters – Sabriel and Lirael – remind me a lot of myself, so it’s nice to see people like me going on adventures and triumphing over evil.”
The audiobook is narrated by Tim Curry, and he does an INCREDIBLE job bringing the story and characters to life. It is my favorite audiobook ever. That is actually how I reread this book. Whenever I’m feeling at loose ends, feeling down, or just need to relax, I put on the Sabriel audiobook and it makes everything better.
I mean, as I have said before, “Necromancer ladies and creepy dead monsters and a sassy cat that isn’t actually a cat!” – what more do you want?
A Killing Frost
It’s no secret that Seanan McGuire is my queen. I mean, I literally wrote an entire blog post about how much I love her – and I wrote it in early December 2019. In particular, her October Daye series has completely and totally captured my heart. A Killing Frost is the most recent (and 14th!!) installment in that series.
In that love letter blog post I said this about the series: “This is a WONDERFUL series about the intersection of the fae and human world in Northern California. There are so many incredible characters that I love. I think it’s a perfect series for people who have been reading YA fae stories but want something that is not YA.”
That is just the very BASIC description of what this series is. There is diversity, a found family that absolutely slays me (in a good way), and deep, deep world building that blows my mind. It is everything I could ever want, and more.
I read books 7-14 last year, and it made my heart so damn full. This is absolutely one of my favorite series of all time.
Great Goddesses
For a change of pace, I read a handful of poetry books last year, and this one even made it to my top ten list (which you may have seen in my 2020 wrap up post). This collection is all about taking Greek mythology stories and writing poems about the different gods, goddesses, monsters, and etc. I think the main reason that I liked this it so much was that it just felt so hopeful. So much of Greek mythology shits on the women/goddess and the monsters, and these poems presented them in a different light, and give them agency and tells THEIR story, instead of the story of the men. Ugh, it’s just so wonderful.
The Left-Handed Booksellers of London
Garth Nix made it on this list TWICE!! He’s just that good haha. This book is his newest novel, and it was just such a fun adventure. Magical booksellers that protect the unsuspecting non-magical world from magical evils? I mean, yes. Gimme. This one didn’t hit me as hard as the other ones did in terms of emotion and etc but I loved it nonetheless. I think it’s just the perfect escapist read, and it’s not too dark. That all makes for a read that just gave me so much joy to read.
Here’s the list of my friends who are also participating, and their blog posts!
What are some books that kept you afloat in 2020?
I fully expected you to also List Cerulean Sea + October Daye haha
I meeeean, I’m predictable I guess hahaha
Oh, that’s a great list! Great Goddesses and the Booksellers are on my tbr and I really want to get The House when it’s out in paperback (which I think will be February … and while checking whether that’s right I realised I had already preordered it, haha). Sabriel I’ve read at least three times and I love it a lot (Mogget is my secret fave!), however I have never managed to continue the series even though I own the rest of the books. Guess I should try to pick them up soon! And you’ve been all talking so much about October Daye that I feel more and more inclined to check it out. However, I’m a little put off by how many books there are already. That’d be quite a commitment!
Hahaha I’m glad they’re all on your list!! And omg YES Mogget is the best. Not even my secret fav haha, just my fav. Ohhh I hope you try the sequels! Lirael in particular is amazing. It is long, but I promise it’s worth it. And the nice thing is there is no rush to catch up, you can just read at your own pace 🙂
The House in the Cerulean Sea was such a warm hug of a book and I’m really glad I read it last year too! For me, I’d say I really loved getting lost in Phèdre’s trilogy – the world-building and politics was very immersive, haha. I keep meaning to go back to the second series but I’m not sure I can focus well on epic fantasy right now. 😅
I’m so ashamed I haven’t quite finished the first book yet! But even being only partway in, I can totally understand what you mean. It is really immersive! But yeah, it requires a lot of focus hahah.
And there are so many names 😣😂
omg YES hahaha. it’s hard to keep track of everyone and everything
Ok, both you and Crini picked The House in the Cerulean Sea. Like I commented on her post, for the longest time I had no idea that it wasn’t The Cerulean. Oops. I think ’cause I kept seeing the title pop up on Twitter but since I wasn’t much on I didn’t see the cover. Either way, now I know I must pick it up too 😀
Hahaha that makes sense! I’m glad you’ll be checking it out soon 🙂