2021: Year in Review

I need to give myself some props--I read 40 books this year! That exceeds my 2013 (pre-kids!) total. I also wrote about quite a few of the books I read, though you can see the start of the school year destroyed that streak (and drastically reduced my reading too). 

1. Irresistible by Adam Alter
2. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
3. Slaughterhouse-Five, a graphic novel adaptation by Kurt Vonnegut, Ryan North, and Albert Monteys
4. The Best of Me by David Sedaris
5. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
6. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
7. A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet
8. Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
9. The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez
10. The Liar's Dictionary by Eley Williams
11. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
12. Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
13. News of the World by Paulette Jiles
14. The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante
15. A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies
16. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
17. Imitations by Zadie Smith
18. Consent by Vanessa Springora
19. Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion
20. Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
21. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
22. Nick by Michael Farris Smith
23. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
24. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
25. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
26. Cosmogony by Lucy Ives
27. The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
28. The Doctors Blackwell by Janice Nimura
29. Memorial by Bryan Washington
30. Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour
31. The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
32. The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
33. The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo
34. No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
35. Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor
36. Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
37. The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
38. Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
39. Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
40. When We Cease to Understand the World by Bejamin Labatut

About 60% of the books were written by women, and a third were written by writers of color. Eight were nonfiction, and though most were published in 2020 or 2021, I read several old classics (hello 1851 with Moby Dick!).

Fortunately I liked quite a lot of the books I read! Moby Dick and Mrs. Dalloway were challenging but worth it. Butler's science-fiction is enthralling. Found myself carried away by some strong contemporary writers: Ferrante, Rooney, Lockwood. The enjoyment I got out of Saunders' book-as-college-class suggests I really would appreciate going back to school. I loved Green's Anthropocene Reviewed so much I wrote my own essay in the same style (and had my students do so too!).