My Top Books of 2021

Reading is so underrated. Does anyone my age read leisurely or for fun these days? It seems like it’s few and far between. Not knocking anyone who doesn’t read, don’t get me wrong. You do you. It’s only that it’s rare I find myself running into an avid reader.

Listen pals, reading is a heck of a time! And with the pandemic making 2021 a shitpot of shittiness, I took to the pages of literature to help me escape. I read a lot of books last year. This isn’t a ranking. But if you stumble upon this little blog post and find that some of these suggestions seem interesting to you, by all means, I suggest you go out and find them, and enjoy.

I read about 40 books and 10 graphic novels last year. This isn’t a ranking, but the ones that I enjoyed the most.

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

This was the book I started 2021 with and I absolutely fell in love with it. A little confusing for myself and some parts because of a lot of the Russian stuff. The characters were great and the hotel itself was treated like it’s own character. Almost like the Grand Budapest Hotel. A phenomenal read.

On a quiet June morning in 2009, August Epp sits alone in the hayloft of a barn, anxiously bent over his notebook. Soon eight women — ordinary grandmothers, mothers and teenagers — will climb the ladder into the loft, and the day’s true task will begin. This task will be both simple and subversive: August, like the women, is a traditional Mennonite, and he has been asked to record a secret conversation.
Thus begins this spellbinding novel from award-winning writer Miriam Toews. Gradually, as we hear the women’s vivid voices console, tease, admonish, regale and debate each other, we piece together the reason for the gathering: they have forty-eight hours to make a life-altering choice on behalf of all the women and children in the colony.

The first Miriam Toewvs book I’ve read. And after reading this one I went out and bought another 4 of hers. The intensity is dense through dialogue, which I love books that don’t need to spend so much time with meaningless descriptions. Having it focus on conversations between the characters, the book moved fast. But you find yourself wanting to take the time to really hear what all the characters are saying. I hoped it was a bit longer, but then again, I felt it would’ve been too similar to Handmades Tale which dragged on a bit. This was overall amazing.

Shakespeare meets Dashiell Hammett in this wildly entertaining murder mystery from New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore — an uproarious, hardboiled take on the Bard’s most performed play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, featuring Pocket, the hero of Fool and The Serpent of Venice, along with his sidekick, Drool, and pet monkey, Jeff.

I fucking love everything that Christopher Moore does. His books genuinely make me laugh while reading. I know there’s a lot of quotes from other authors on the back covers of books that say you’ll laugh out loud, it’s hilarious. Let’s not lie to each other, most of the time we chuckle twice out of the corner of our mouth. This author though, ya, I laugh. Keep in mind this is the third book in this series the main character Pocket, so I’d suggest also reading Fool and The Serpent of Venice. They’re fast reads too and really enjoyable.

In 2017, a routine network television investigation led to a story only whispered about: one of Hollywood’s most power­ful producers was a predator, protected by fear, wealth, and a conspiracy of silence. As Farrow drew closer to the truth, shadowy operatives, from high-priced lawyers to elite war-hardened spies, mounted a secret campaign of intimidation, threatening his career, following his every move, and weaponizing an account of abuse in his own family. This is the untold story of the exotic tactics of surveillance and intimidation deployed by wealthy and connected men to threaten journalists, evade accountability, and silence victims of abuse. And it’s the story of the women who risked everything to expose the truth and spark a global movement

Horrific to see how far evil can reach and an amazing journalists fight for the jarring truth about Harvey Weinstein. Didn’t want to put this book down because even though it’s all true it reads like a James Patterson book. I was shocked the sort of things talked about in this book actually exist. Well, the fucker Weinstein is in jail now and hopefully doesn’t get out.

In 1939, Gustav Kleinmann, a Jewish upholster from Vienna, and his sixteen-year-old son Fritz are arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Germany. Imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp, they miraculously survive the Nazis’ murderous brutality. Then Gustav learns he is being sent to Auschwitz — and certain death. For Fritz, letting his father go is unthinkable. Desperate to remain together, Fritz makes an incredible choice: he insists he must go too. To the Nazis, one death camp is the same as another, and so the boy is allowed to follow. Throughout the six years of horror they witness and immeasurable suffering they endure as victims of the camps, one constant keeps them alive: their love and hope for the future.

There are so many stories about the Holocaust. Mostly horrific, many inspiring and some that are unbelievable. I couldn’t turn away from this story. The bond between father and son is so special to me specifically, reading this book hit home of what would one do to protect the ones they love. One of my top reads.

They come for the trees. It’s 2038 and Jacinda (Jake) Greenwood is a storyteller and a liar, an overqualified tour guide babysitting ultra-rich-eco-tourists in one of the world’s last remaining forests. It’s 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, sprawled on his back after a workplace fall and facing the possibility of his own death. It’s 1974 and Willow Greenwood is just out of jail for one of her environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father’s once vast and rapacious timber empire. It’s 1934 and Everett Greenwood is a Depression-era drifter who saves an abandoned infant, only to find himself tangled up in the web of a crime, secrets, and betrayal that will cling to his family for decades. And throughout, there are trees: a steady, silent pulse thrumming beneath Christie’s effortless sentences, working as a guiding metaphor for withering, weathering, and survival.

My favourite book of the year! Was blown away how everything was woven together through the generations of this family. I was a little intimidated at first because I thought it was going to go hard on the foliage jibberjabber. Thankfully it was not the case. This is the one I would go pick up right away during the winter months. Definitely a book you pick up with a cup of coffee on a cold winters day out there.

Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world.

Us Against You is a declaration of love for all the big and small, bright and dark stories that form and colour our communities. Compelling and heartbreaking, it’s a roller-coaster ride of emotions and a showcase for “Fredrik Backman’s pitch-perfect dialogue and unparalleled understanding of human nature” (Shelf Awareness).

Reading these two books back to back was one of my favourite things about 2021. I love Backman’s stuff and this did not disappoint in the least. There’s very little focus on hockey if that’s what some may be worried about. So much depth in the characters and the shit they have to go through. I love books focusing on how actions of one, or many, impact a community as a whole. As I’m writing this I’m starting off 2022 by reading another Backman book called Anxious People, it’s just as good. This guy is one of my top go-to authors.

Well, there you have it! Some of my top reads of 2021. This was an easy list to put together since I was keeping track of what I was reading the whole year. Perhaps I’ll do the same for 2022. I have this habit of buying books all of the time so I’ve got three bookshelves with about 250 books in them. Going to have to make a dent soon enough with the more I read.