In 2021: Year Two of Pandemic Reading, I sought out books for comfort; ones I could cozy up with and escape my actual world for a while. Typically, I try to balance fun books with serious or challenging books, but in 2021? Not so much. I quit three books that were boring. No one should bother with poorly written or mediocre books, especially in an ongoing, life-altering pandemic (unless “mediocre” is in the title. I am a third of the way through Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo).
In 2021 I read 76 books compared to 83 in 2020 and 68 in 2019. When we moved this past summer, I found my original notebook with my 1996-2009 Books Read list. My all-time high was 97 books in 2000 (I was off in my guess last year). 2000 started with The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald and ended with Mona Lisa Overdrive by Orson Scott Card.
Here are some of my 2021 favorite reads in no particular order:
Favorite Rom Com & Romances
Incense and Sensibility (#3 in the Rajes series) – Sonali Dev
It Happened One Summer – Tessa Bailey
Just Like Heaven – Julia Quinn
Favorite Fantasy/Sci Fi/Alternate Realities
The Bird King – G. Willow Wilson
The Changeling – Victor Lavalle
The Ghost Bride – Yangsze Choo
Favorite Reads for Becoming an Anti-Racist
The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together – Heather McGhee
Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankel
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents – Isabel Wilkerson
Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance – Edgar Villanueva
Favorite Fiction
Hamnet – Maggie O’Farrell
Plain Bad Heroines – emily m. danforth
The Cold Millions – Jess Walter
Transatlantic – Colum McCann
Goodbye, Mr. Chips – James Hilton
The Parable of the Sower – Octavia Butler
Anxious People – Fredrik Bachman
Favorite Memoir/Nonfiction
Amateur: A Reckoning with Gender, Identity, and Masculinity – Thomas Page McBee
The Angel and the Assassin: The Tiny Brain Cell That Changed the Course of Medicine – Donna Jackson Nakazawa
When She Comes Back – Ronit Plank
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty – Patrick Radden Keefe
The Secret to Superhuman Strength – Alison Bechdel
Favorite Reads about Women, Sex, and Bodies
Come As You Are – Emily Nagoski
What Fresh Hell is this? – Heather Corinna
In 2022, I have thus far read Recipe for Persuasion (#2 in the Rajes series) and am halfway through Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall. Both feature plucky protagonists who are on reality TV baking/cooking shows, so I seem to be easing into the new year (with a craving for pastries).
What are your faves from the last year?