My 2021 in Books
Well 2021 is ended and I read a few books* during it, so I thought it might be fun/interesting to get down a few thoughts on what my year in books was like. I had this idea almost three months ago, took some notes, and then didn’t really think much about it until the end of December. Since this post is time-sensitive and probably much more interesting for me than anyone else, I’m gonna let this be like half outline and half (what I think of as a) proper post. In fact, it’s possible I’m just doing this because it’s finally beginning to dawn on me that I shouldn’t use a free website to keep track of important (to me) information, such as the books I’ve read and want to read. Especially when that website’s main intention is to sell me books and/or sell my “data” to a third party. And yet if you click the clickable titles below, you will be transported directly to said website to read my little review and/or find more info about it (5 stars if you can guess what that website is before clicking!)
First, some firsts!
The first book I read of the year was Hammers on Bone. This was also the first book I’ve read by Cassandra Khaw and I plan on reading more of her soon. In fact, I recently brought home Food of the Gods from the SFPL and I might even read it before it’s due back. Maybe.
The classics I read in 2021 for the first time: Frankenstein and a Christmas Carol. My short stack of hot takes is that Frankenstein is more sad than it is scary, and a Christmas Carol is as spooky as it is inspiring.
First (adult) book in Spanish! Sure I’ve read plenty of kids’ books (to my kids!) en español, pero ese libro, “Cosas que te pasan si estás vivo,” fue el primero destinado a adultos! A pretty straightforward collection of an autobiographical comic strip by an Argentinian cartoonist. It is quite thrilling to have this door slowly open as I learn Spanish. To be able to spend some time with a Spanish- speaking artist living in Buenos Aires, without the need of a translator, is kinda cool. But feeling it all click is just short of exhilarating. Whole sentences I understand without effort. It’d almost be more accurate to say the sentences “are understood” because I’m not actively working out what specific words mean.
Diario de un solo
Laura y Dino
Am I a genius now?
I Gave up in a Healthy Way!
I gave up on reading any more Pinker books. I realized that he is the literary version of NPR, Hamilton, Obama, and neoliberalism in general. So I donated the physical copies of his books I owned and took that status quo bro off my tbr list.
After reading Leviathan Wakes I gave up on the Expanse series, but I am enamored with the TV show. I don’t know if the show is actually better or not but it feels like a richer, more lived-in society and I dig the changes they made. Plus my wife and I watch it together and it’s much more fun to share this story with her like this.
I gave up on the Beastars manga. I made it through volume 6 and, while I didn’t dislike it, I didn’t quite like it enough to read another 8 or 10 volumes of it. Plus, the covers were enticing to my kids and if I’m gonna let them see animals fucking, I want it to be narrated by David Attenborough. So, for those reasons, I’m out.
I gave up on reading the Wheel of Time series. Listen, I’ve got nothing against reading a 14-book-long story. But when even its biggest fans warn you about the stretch of books you need to “get through,” that’s a red flag featuring a conservative red dragon breathing communist fire. But I still tried. I read the first two chapters and quit. Then I tried to listen to it on audio instead. And that didn’t go any better. So I gave it two shots and then… I gave it up
I do love fantasy books though! And 2021 was the year I stopped trying to tell myself that I dislike the genre. I dig it! And sci-fi and magical realism (or whatever you call books shelved with the “regular” books but have some sort of unreal elements) too. But not quite as much as I love people skulking about castles making poor choices. And a quasi-historical time period with horses, and carts filled with straw rumbling down dirt roads. Or foolish kings and clever queens and a little bit of magic. Or just plain weird shit happening. It scratches an itch and I’m not gonna be ashamed to like what I like. A lot of it is junk, sure. (See the preceding item.) But there’s a lot of good stuff too, and I’m not gonna let any genre get defined by either its garbage or the people who think you can dismiss a whole heap of books by what amounts to a label publishers use to market books more efficiently.
So here they all are, in a somewhat particular order:
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell— a wonderful book that somehow escaped being relegated to the fantasy aisles in at least a few bookstores, I’ve noticed. I’m happy to see it living in the Literature section, but I dare(!) anyone who’s read it to explain how this story with Faries and Magic isn’t also a fantasy. I dare them I say!
Outlander— this is the closest I’ve gotten to hate reading my way through a book. And it’s too bad, because if it had ended 200 pages earlier with a particular decision I think I would have felt a lot differently— and better— about the whole thing.
Kings of the Wyld— It took the implicit bond between fantasy novels of a certain bent and hard rock music and made it explicit.
This year I started, continued, and finished The Age of Madness trilogy. Joe Abercrombie is easily my new favorite author. It’s probably the first time I’ve read an entire trilogy within a few months’ time since I discovered Octavia Butler and read the Xenogenesis series, collected in one volume called Lilith’s Brood. But more exciting than that, this is the first time I’ve ever been “caught up” with the last book of a trilogy along with the rest of the fandom. Not just fun and exciting, but for a lazy procrastinator who’s used to being late for most things, it was also something of an accomplishment
Speaking of Ms. Butler (who I don’t feel comfortable referring to as either “Octavia” or “Butler” so I’m taking a stylistic note from NPR), I stumbled upon a book of hers at the end of summer in the library that was just two stories collected in one volume.
I also read a Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler. I liked this but it was probably the most frustrating book I’ve read in the past few years. The author had access to many/all of Ms. Butler’s notes and journal entries, but we could only see what she wanted to share of the paths she chose to go down. It was like visiting a city I’d always wanted to see, but I was made to stay on a tour bus the whole time. Sure, the guide knows the city well and probably loves it even more than I do. But I want the bus to stop so I can get off and explore and the driver is deaf to my requests. Yet I’d definitely recommend it for any fan of Octavia E. Butler.
And in direct opposition to much of the above, we have:
The Anthologist, by Nicholson Baker. No magic. No fairies. Not even much of a story. Just a sad old man tooling around his house thinking about poems. Not for everyone, I suppose, but what book is? Baker knows how to find the big spaces inside of small moments and I dig his style.
Fargo Rock City A collection of essays about a genre of music I love(d) written by a straight dude who is about my age. So some of this really resonated with me and some left me a little cold. But it’s definitely a recommended read for a particular demographic.
The Overstory— I think the only “straight” fiction I read in 2021, though it shares a few of the hallmarks of fantasy that I love: A multi-generational story with a large cast and an epic scope. It even has moments where people feel like they are connected to the spirit world or at least something larger than themselves, in that trees are sometimes given something of an eldritch aspect
Audiobooks! There are a lot of interesting ideas that can come up in a conversation about audiobooks, like what it means for something to “count” as reading a book. But that’s a whole other subject and I don’t want to get sidetracked where I can avoid it. But wow, yeah, I did really take to them this year. And while I don’t think there were any titles this year that I solely listened to, I did make use of more than a few audiobooks to supplement my reading time.
Graphic Novels:
Childhood revisited
The Magician’s Nephew— Man I loved these books when I was a kid but they really do not hold up. I read the first one— what I consider to be the first one— to my girls a few years ago and I don’t think we got very far before I just switched to reading it myself. So this one was a solo venture, and it was just as well.
Matilda— Okay, to be honest, I don’t remember if I actually read Matilda when I was a kid. I know I read other Dahl titles. I read the one with the witch, the one with the peach, and the one with the poachers, for sure. Maybe the one about the golden tickets? But with Matilda, it’s very possible I saw the movie and just sort of imagined I read it. It was okay.
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler— I know for sure I read I loved the scenes of them living in the museum. I remembered very little of the actual plot. In fact, chapters involving the day-to-day, routine stuff loomed so large that I was surprised to find they only stay there for a week. Also, it’s much harder to enjoy a story about kids running away from seemingly decent parents when you consider yourself to be at least a seemingly half-decent parent. I just felt so bad for them, you know? A fun adventure for the kids equals seven days of torment for two adults who are already having a bad go of things being stuck in the sixties and all. It is a weird book and I had to explain a lot of old tech and how inflation works (to the best of my ability). It resonated with the 9-year-old though I didn’t see that while we read it. I didn’t know until we talked about it a few weeks later. And really that points to the fact that the fun part of reading these children’s books is sharing them with my kids, anyway. It’s not really what I get out of the books, it’s what they get out of them, and what we all get out of our time together.
So it’s sorta weird I kept reading Little House in the Big Woods to myself long after the girls’ check out. I finished a few series with my girls and we’re approaching an end to an era. They’re increasingly reading on their own now, so although we do still read together, we are more and more often reading different books when we do. Someday soon we’ll work our way through our very last one together.
Tao Te Ching- Not my last book of the year but the last one I’ll mention. This is the book I read almost every year, and yet that’s about all I have to say about it.
And that’s it! This was an annoying post to do. Now I understand why people tend to do “best/worst of the year” instead of attempting an overview of the past 12 months. It took me three times as long to finish as I had imagined and it turned out a third as good as I had hoped. And for as long as it is, you’d think there’d be a point to it outside of “It’s easy to read 70 books in a year when half of them are graphic novels and/or children’s books!”
Anyway, I’m happy I did it, but wow it was a lot of work.
*I was really tempted to call them “boks” throughout the whole post without ever acknowledging it but I feel like when I employ that level of subtlety in my humor it often gets misunderstood.
