The Best Books I Read in 2021
Though they didn’t necessarily first come out in 2021 (one is from 1929!), these are the books that captivated me over the past year.
The Maisie Dobbs books by Jacqueline Winspear, the Bess Crawford books by Charles Todd, and everything by Josephine Tey.
I’m lumping these three series together, because they’re all mysteries set in the early 1900s, from just before World War I to just after World War II. The Maisie Dobbs and Bess Crawford books are historical mysteries written after 2000, while Josephine Tey’s novels were contemporary to their time of publication in the late 1920s through the early 50s.
One thing I discovered during these past two pandemic years was that, while I didn’t really want to read about a world where everything was normal and everyone went about their lives without a whiff of crisis, I also craved some escapism from the particular brand of crisis we were all dealing with on a daily basis. The British experience of the war years hit just the right note for me. I could relate to the fatigue of it, the anxiety, and the feeling that normalcy was a thing of the past, but at least it was a different not-normal than what I was experiencing. Maisie Dobbs, in particular, was a delightful dive into someone else’s problems, solved with intelligence and perseverance by a character I genuinely loved spending time with.
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin
One of my goals in 2021 was to explore books by a more diverse group of authors because, let’s be honest, I read a lot of books by white women. I’m ashamed to say that, even with a specific effort to diversify, only 15% of the books I read last year were by authors of color. I know! It’s not acceptable, but believe it or not, it’s better than I did the year before, and I’m going to do even more in 2022.
One lesson I learned, though, was to search outside the insidious recommendation algorithms in the genres I already read. Most of N.K. Jemisin’s work is epic fantasy, which isn’t my favorite, but The City We Became was included in quite a few urban fantasy “best of” lists, and its modern take on Lovecraftian horror didn’t disappoint. In fact, it was so good that it inspired me to dive into the Jemisin’s other work despite my genre reticence.
The Scholomance books, by Naomi Novik
There are some authors who can convince me to read just about anything. Naomi Novik, for example, lured me into reading a nine-book series about Napoleon-era dragon battles, and I can think of very few things in the world I’m less interested in than dragons or the Napoleonic Wars. The Scholomance series thankfully fell into more compelling territory for me, with a twisted magic school setting. Despite being classed as young adult, this was no Harry Potter. For starters, the heroine is destined to destroy the world rather than to save it. Think of it as just a little bit of Harry Potter with a smattering of Hunger Games and a gigantic portion of Naomi Novik is brilliant and you should read everything she puts out.
Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke
I read this book shortly after my trip to see the Getty Villa’s collection of Greek and Roman statuary, so the haunting beauty of carved stone was in the forefront of my mind when I entered Susanna Clarke’s surreal world. “Hauntingly beautiful” would also be an accurate way of describing Piranesi, which is the sort of book that, once read, becomes a part of who you are and how you see the world. Truly unforgettable.
Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir
Six or seven years ago, I told a friend I didn’t read science fiction. He asked why (many of my friends have the annoying habit of demanding logic) and I said, logically enough to me, that I just didn’t like it. He said I should read Andy Weir’s The Martian anyway. I did and, as it turned out, I was wrong. I liked it very much.
Since then, I haven’t exactly leapt into the sci-fi deep end, but I’ve read a bit here and there, including all three of Weir’s full-length novels. They just keep getting better. Project Hail Mary is a mystery and a near-future science thriller in one. I know science fiction fans love Andy Weir for his nerdy, detail-driven, technical narratives, but I’m really in it for the smart, geeky, relatable characters. They remind me of my friends.
How to Take Smart Notes, by Sönke Ahrens
It’s still early days for me in my use of the note-taking system outlined by Sönke Ahrens in this 2017 book, but I can already see its impacts in the way I approach my nonfiction reading. The method he describes, called Zettelkasten (German for “note box”), is more about thinking and writing than reading and annotating. It’s a fundamental shift for me after an education filled with highlighters and margin notes, but I can almost feel the neurons firing as my new digital note box begins to grow.
You can see everything I read in 2021 here. Have you read any of these yet? What were your best reads of the year?
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