The Books I Read in 2021

A compilation from my BOOKS I READ series

Bookshelves. Source: DeepAI (copyright free)

Twenty-four books made it to my 2021 reading log. This figure is slightly above my annual pace — the reading log a likely motivator.

Of the twenty-four books I read, 14 were novels, three memoirs, and four non-fiction — two of these were collected essays. Most surprising was that 16 of the 24 were written by women. I read mostly recently published books. Eighteen books on the list were published in the 21st century, five in the 20th century, and one in the 19th century.

The most read author on the list was Shirley Hazzard with three books, and her novel, The Transit of Venus (log entry), was the only book I re-read to see how she does it. My non-fiction favorite was Spain in Our Hearts (log entry) by Adam Hochschild. The most enjoyable read was Isabel Allende’s A Long Petal of the Sea (log entry). Favorite essay or story collection was Mary Oliver’s Upstream (log entry).

The list is shown in reverse chronological order, showing the month in 2021 that I consumed the book. The links are to my reading-log posts, which include a short review. These are unlisted (hidden) posts. It’s the only way to keep them from crowding my Medium profile page.

1. Ghostbread by Sonja Livingston (2009) (Nov)
2. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1857) (Nov)
3. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi (2000) (Oct)
4. Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (2014) (Oct)
5. Wayward by Dana Spiotta (2021) (Oct)
6. The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (2018) (Oct)
7. The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard (2003) (Oct)
8. Upstream — Selected Essays (2016) by Mary Oliver (Sep)
9. The Shape of the Ruins (2015) by Juan Gabriel Vásquez (Aug)
10. The Overstory (2018) by Richard Powers (Jul)
11. Piranesi (2020) by Susanna Clarke (May)
12. Not For Nothing: Glimpses Into a Jersey Girlhood (2018) by Kathy Curto (May)
13. Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939 (2016) by Adam Hochschild (May)
14. Collected Stories I (1967) by Muriel Spark (Apr)
15. The Underground Railroad (2016) by Colson Whitehead (Apr)
16. Dissipatio: H.G. (The Vanishing) (1977) by Guido Morselli (Mar)
17. To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918 (2012) by Adam Hochschild (Mar)
18. A Long Petal of the Sea (2020) by Isabel Allende (Feb)
19. The Public Image (1968) by Muriel Spark (Feb)
20. The Transit of Venus (1980) by Shirley Hazzard (Feb)
21. In the Woods (2007) by Tana French (Jan)
22. We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think (2016) by Shirley Hazzard (Jan)
23. The Carrying (2018) by Ada Limón (Jan)
24. Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto (1978) by Gianni Rodari (Jan)