Books I read in 2021

February 04, 2022

I read 58 books in 2021, which is fewer than last year but still nothing to sneeze at!

I didn’t do a lot of rereading this year, oddly. I usually love rereading books, but I guess this year my brain wanted to explore new literary territory (unlike 2020 when I did a lot of comfort reading). And once again, I read more books by women than by men, a goal I’ve had since a few years ago when I looked at my book list and realized the ratio was skewed heavily in the opposite direction.

Two changes to my reading habits this year:

I joined two book clubs! Both meet over Zoom. Some of the best books I read this year were book club choices — thanks, book club friends!
As a New Year’s resolution, I started teaching myself how to read Italian using a handful of self-paced learning materials. I got good enough to read two Harry Potter books in translation. If you’re learning a new language and remember a lot from that book series, I highly recommend reading the translated editions — remembering plot points is a great way to get context clues about words or sentence structures that you’d be unsure about otherwise.

The list

Bold = faves (doesn’t include rereads)
* = rereads

Book club choices

Beautiful World, Where Are You (Sally Rooney)
Detransition, Baby (Torrey Peters)
Disappearing Earth (Julia Phillips)
In Five Years (Rebecca Serle)
My Sister, the Serial Killer (Oyinkan Braithwhite)
Oak Flat (Lauren Redniss)
Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel)
The Beautiful Ones (Silvia Garcia)
The Giver of Stars (Jojo Moyes)

Graphic novels

British Ice (Owen D. Pomery)
El Deafo (Cece Bell)
Factory Summers (Guy Delisle)
Familiar Face (Michael Deforge)
The Secret Life (Theo Ellsworth, Jeff Vandermeer)
The Raven Girl (Audrey Niffenegger)
The Trojan Women: A Comic (Anne Carson)
Antigonick (Anne Carson)*
Year of the Rabbit (Tian Veasna)

Italian

Harry Potter e la Camera dei Segreti (J.K. Rowling, trans. Marina Astrologo)
Harry Potter e la Prigione di Azkaban (J.K. Rowling, trans. Beatrice Masini)
Short Stories in Italian for Beginners (Olly Richards)

Science fiction & fantasy

Big Fish (Daniel Wallace)
Borne (Jeff Vandermeer)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Philip K. Dick)
Johannes Cabal the Necromancer (Jonathan L. Howard)
Klara and the Sun (Kazuo Ishiguro)
Mad Ship (Robin Hobb)
Ship of Destiny (Robin Hobb)
Ship of Magic (Robin Hobb)

Romance

Act Your Age, Eve Brown (Talia Hibbert)
Get a Life, Chloe Brown (Talia Hibbert)
Take a Hint, Dani Brown (Talia Hibbert)
Just Last Night (Mhairi McFarlane)
Merry Inkmas (Talia Hibbert)
One Last Stop (Casey McQuiston)
One to Watch (Kate Stayman-London)
Someday at Christmas (Lizzie Byron)
The Duke Who Didn’t (Courtney Milan)
The Heart Principle (Helen Hoang)
The Soulmate Equation (Christina Lauren)
To Have and To Hoax (Martha Waters)
To Love and to Loathe (Martha Waters)
While We Were Dating (Jasmine Guillory)

YA

A Court of Thorns and Roses (Sarah J. Maas)
Ruin and Rising (Leigh Bardugo)
Shadow and Bone (Leigh Bardugo)
Siege and Storm (Leigh Bardugo)

Historical fiction

The Other Boleyn Girl (Phillippa Gregory)
The White Queen (Phillippa Gregory)

Other literary

And Now We Have Everything (Meaghan O’Connell)
Death on the Nile (Agatha Christie)
Luster (Raven Leilani)
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (John Berendt)
The Lying Life of Adults (Elena Ferrante)
The Rules of Civility (Amor Towles)
The Ten Thousand Doors of January (Alix E. Harrow)
The Vanishing Half (Brit Bennett)
When No One Is Watching (Alyssa Cole)

Previously: Books I read in 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009.