We’re rounding up the Best Books of 2020! Non-Fiction Category Manager Joel Naoum is on the blog today to share his favourite biographies of the year. Read on!
This year has been a rollercoaster and our favourite biographies capture the full gamut, from trials and tribulations to triumph. Barack Obama’s A Promised Land is the must read of 2020, reflecting on a life in and out of the public eye. Jimmy Barnes gave us more stories from life on the road in Killing Time, while centenarian Eddie Jaku had us spellbound with his memoir The Happiest Man on Earth. Fiona O’Loughlin and Glennon Doyle’s personal stories have resonated with us and readers everywhere, in Truths from an Unreliable Witness and Untamed. Electric Blue explores the complications of family life and crime from the host of podcast Loose Units, while Fourteen chronicles author Shannon Molloy’s coming of age and survival as a closeted boy in high school.
We hope these stories will stay with you long after turning the final page, as they have with us.
A Promised Land: The Presidential Memoirs Vol 1
by Barack Obama
Read our review here.
In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world.
Buy it here
Killing Time: Short stories from the long road home
by Jimmy Barnes
Watch Jimmy read from Killing Time here.
Outrageous, witty, warm and wise, Killing Time shares more than 40 yarns from an epic life – a dazzling collection of tall tales, out-takes and B-sides from one of Australia’s finest storytellers.
Buy it here
The Happiest Man on Earth
by Eddie Jaku
Read our review here.
Eddie Jaku always considered himself a German first, a Jew second. He was proud of his country. But all of that changed in November 1938, when he was beaten, arrested and taken to a concentration camp. Because he survived, Eddie made the vow to smile every day. He pays tribute to those who were lost by telling his story, sharing his wisdom and living his best possible life.
Buy it here
Untamed: Stop pleasing, start living
by Glennon Doyle
Part inspiration, part memoir, Untamed explores the joy and peace we discover when we stop striving to meet the expectations of the world, and instead dare to listen to and trust in the voice deep inside us.
Buy it here
Fourteen
by Shannon Molloy
Read a Q&A with Shannon here and listen to our podcast with him here.
Fourteen is this generation’s Holding the Man – a moving coming-of-age memoir about a young man’s search for identity and acceptance in the most unforgiving and hostile of places: high school.
Buy it here
Electric Blue
by Paul F. Verhoeven
Read a Q&A with Paul here.
Paul Verhoeven’s ex-cop dad, John, spent years embroiled in some of the seediest, scariest intrigue and escapades imaginable. Electric Blue spans the final years of John’s stint in the New South Wales Police Force, when he took up an offer to move into the grimy, analytical world of forensics.
Buy it here
Truths from an Unreliable Witness
by Fiona O’Loughlin
Listen to our podcast with Fiona here.
A fiercely honest and wryly funny memoir of melancholy, love, marriage, the loss of love and marriage, homelessness, of hotel rooms strewn with empty mini-bar bottles of vodka, of waking from a two-week coma, of putrid drug dens and using a jungle to confront yourself. It is about hitting rock bottom and then realising you are only halfway down.
Buy it here
Explore more of The Best Books of 2020 here!
REVIEW: A Promised Land by Barack Obama
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