Notable Books of 2020: A Bakerâs Dozen of Fiction and Non-Fiction The memoirs, novels, and graphic novels that stood out most in the year of the pandemic. Books27/Dec/2020 Itâs the perfect time to read Proust. Thatâs what I thought at the beginning of the lockdown. At the end of the year, I havenât managed even the first page of his Remembrance of Things Past. It wasnât just Proust. The pandemic provided privileged time to read, but took away the focus. The Booker Prize winner, the presidential memoir, the final instalment of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy: all these and more gather dust on the to-be-read pile.