My Top Reads: 2021
Curious what books my husband enjoyed this year? You can check out his list on his blog www.boundaryeffects.com ! There’s some overlap, if it tickles your fancy to see how we think about the same book.
As 2021 wraps up, I wanted, once again, to share my favorite books from the year that has passed. Admittedly, I am still finishing up a few, but knowing that December has no signs of slowing down, I might as well share this list now, while I have some time. Once again I found that whittling down all the titles I read (from this year’s sum of 62 and counting) a challenging task. It was so challenging, in fact, that I couldn’t edit down to 10 titles. Instead, you’ll have to accept my list of 11 favorite books, plus the honorable mention section. Below you’ll find a collection of fiction and non-fiction, mostly first reads for me but some old friends in there as well. Like last year, this list reveals far more than simply what books I liked; it also gives you a glimpse into my heart, into the experiences of the year passed.
When I shared my favorite books last December, I found that revisiting those titles became as much as reflecting on the year passed through the books I read and when I read them, as it was about sharing my love of literature. At that time, if you charted my reading, you would see clearly when the pandemic started, as all of a sudden in March 2020 my steady trickle of reading turned into a river of titles. This year, as I look back on my journal of books I’ve read, I see the same trend, but in reverse. Throughout the winter and spring I kept up my breakneck pace, but in May my pace began to slow and held this new pace until August when it dipped again. This fall, it started to pick back up at this year wraps up. In May, of course, we were fully vaccinated and started having friends visit and visit other friends and family in turn. The August dip reminds me of just what a shift working from the office 100% of the time for the first time since March 2020 was in my personal life. Moreover, August was the month that I took on my new position as Social Media Manager for St. Lawrence University, a job that takes significantly more time, energy, and attention to detail.
The titles below themselves also tell a story. They reflect the thoughts that dwelt in my heart and the questions that lingered in my mind. In this mixture of fantasy and theological reflections, current affairs and classics, you can piece together bits and pieces of who I am. Or at least, who I was in 2021. So, without further ado, my top reads of 2021.
Note: this list is revealed in the order in which I read them.
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
I kicked off the new year by finally reading my husband’s favorite book of all time: War and Peace. While I’ve already reflected at length on Tolstoy’s sweeping novel, I had to acknowledge it here as well. It took two full years of Austin describing in detail the saga of Natasha, Andrei, and Pierre before I dove in, but I am so glad I did. Tolstoy painted a detailed picture of human existence within the pages of his greatest work: you experience hope, betrayal, temptation, anger, forgiveness, and most of all, love. As the characters grow, I found myself in several of them, at different points in my life, and found myself reminded that as much as the world has changed since the 1800s, in the most important ways, it has changed very little. Now, like then, love remains a power that changes and shapes lives, that remains more powerful than anger or hate or war. Love refines us and reveals our truest nature.
Wintering, The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, by Katherine May
Everywhere I looked last winter, people were talking about Wintering. And rightly so! Katherine May’s autobiographical reflection on rest during life’s hardest trials was the perfect balm in the midst of the cold winter of the pandemic. With at times brutal honesty, she combined wisdom from Scandinavian culture, thoughts from C.S.Lewis, and more into a book that brought me both solace and hope, as I navigated some painful personal healing while living through the COVID winter. It’s the kind of book that seems to speak to the reader exactly where they are at that moment — heading into a very different winter, I find myself drawn to it yet again, and I wonder what wisdom its pages may hold for me in this new season.
A Grief Observed, by C.S.Lewis
Throughout Lent, I read a lot of C.S.Lewis. Some were re-reads, such as Mere Christianity, and some, like this one, were new. A Grief Observed is Lewis’s raw and painful reflection on the death of his wife. Lewis married later in life, years after he was an established author, theologian, and member of the Inklings. His wife was a divorced poet, and the two held a professional correspondence for several years before falling in love and getting married. She succumbed to cancer at the age of 45 a mere four years after the two married. Lewis went on to raise her son after her passing. In A Grief Observed, Lewis reveals how much the experience of love and marriage changed his whole worldview on faith. If you compare his thoughts on marriage to those in Mere Christianity (easily the weakest part of Mere Christianity), you see wildly different pictures. In A Grief Observed, Lewis dwells on the mystery of love - how completely and entirely it changes the world around you and the world within you. In his loss, he has such clarity on how in marriage, the love shared by two people changes the world on a profound level, reflecting that perfect world reborn through Resurrection. It is a hard, painful read, but ultimately one that shares a beautiful, if wrenching, picture of true love.
Lila, by Marilynne Robinson
My husband, Austin, is a longtime fan of Marilynne Robinson and her Gilead series. Last year I read the first book in the series, Gilead, and this year, Austin suggested that I read one of the companion novels, Lila. Robinson’s series tells the story of an aging pastor in a small town in Iowa and the crisscrossing narratives of family and friends. While Gilead is the reflection of John Ames, Lila is the story of his wife, Lila. Lila is one of the more mysterious characters of Gilead, and in her book, that mystery is pulled back to reveal the hard life of a homeless woman. Lila’s past shakes her ability to count on the future, even after she marries John Ames. There is a side of her that expects that life she has to be ripped away at any time. Yet, as a result, she has a unique ability to be deeply present in the moment and to see all the beauty that a single moment contains. The pages hold a tension between beauty and pain, loss and hope, through the eyes of a woman who has been tested by the cruelty of the world and yet who still sees it for all the beauty it contains.
A Deadly Education, by Naomi Novik
I LOVED A Deadly Education. Let me repeat that. I LOVED A Deadly Education. Novik’s dark academia novel felt like high stakes Harry Potter and is one of the best fantasy books I’ve ever read. The Scholomance is a magical school built by wizards that draws all magically gifted tweens and teens into it for four years of magical preparation. There are no teachers - the school itself is alive to some degree and teaches the students itself. Well, the school, and experience. There were significant flaws to the design, and magical monsters that draw power from consuming fledgling wizards also wander the school. El — short for Galadriel — is determined to make it out alive. Being born with the deadly powers of a dark sorceress complicates matters for El, as daily she must choose to act against the powers and curse she was born into and choose a different, more self-sacrificial path. Through El’s story, Novik paints a picture of the systemic problems of privilege and plays with the standard tropes of fairytales and fantasy. El’s voice is scathing, sarcastic, and yet somehow wise and good, and one of my favorite literary characters of all time.
The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig
The Midnight Library was another book that was everywhere this year if you follow along with book conversation, and rightly so. The story tells of a magical library filled with limitless possibilities, endless lives to choose from. Haig’s main character, Nora, finds herself within the library, presented with all these lives to try on for size. Deeply reflective, Nora’s journey is one about the possibilities of life and the beauty the possibility in each moment and choice provides.
The Invisible Library, by Genevieve Cogman
Yes, I love a good library motif. The Invisible Library was a reread for me. I first read it in 2017 when I moved to England. This year was my third time reading the first book of the series following librarian Irene and her assistant Kai, as they travel throughout the multiverse, collecting books and preserving them in The Library, an entity connecting the multiverse and preserving the balance between chaos (and the Fay) and order (and the Dragons). The series is easily one of my favorites, playing with fictional tropes, and ultimately dwelling on the power of literature.
The Premonition, A Pandemic Story, by Michael Lewis
Most of us think we know the story of the pandemic, but few people know the story the way Lewis does. Taking his reader back decades, Lewis tells the story of the pandemic and the USA’s (and the world’s) inability to prepare for it through the eyes of public health professionals who had been on the ground for years. The book is chilling and captivating from beginning to end, though I don’t recommend you read it before bed, unless you want stories of mysterious Hepatitus C outbreaks linked to poor health treatments running through your head.
Ariadne, by Jennifer Saint
There’s an interesting subculture of feminist retellings of Greek myths developing and as someone raised on D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths, I am here for it! Ariadne is one of several that I read this year, and ultimately I selected this title because I truly loved the character of Ariadne. Ariadne is the wide-eyed, sensitive, yet strong princess of Crete who ultimately turns on her people to help the hero Theseus defeat her brother, the Minotaur. Her reward is to be abandoned by Theseus on an island and left to die as he returns, triumphant, to Athens. Ariadne, despite her odds, wins the favor and love of God Dionysis and flourishes. Her story is not necessarily a happy one, but one of female resistance in the face of a patriarchal world that blesses toxic masculinity and fails to listen to the voices and the wisdom of its women.
The City of Brass, by S.A. Chakraborty
2021 was the year that I, somehow, discovered several new good fiction series. Among them was The Daevabad Trilogy. The City of Brass is the first book in The Daevabad Trilogy, a sweeping series incorporating elements of Islamic, Ancient Egyptian, and West-Asian lore. Through the eyes of Nahri, a con-woman and healer from Cairo, we see a fantastical world layered over this one, a world full of ancient wars, blood feuds, and magic. As Nahri’s own parentage is slowly revealed to her, she finds herself caught in a shifting web of alliances and between warring groups. The history of the mysterious magical city of Daevabad reveals the complexity of cultural reconciliation in the pursuit of peace and the tensions within the city’s royal family illuminates the difficulty of balancing the love for family with the pain of familial betrayal.
All Hallows Eve, by Charles Williams
I’ve been meaning to read the works of Charles Williams for years, but it wasn’t until my father started going through his expansive library and handed several of his novels to us that I actually picked one up. Like his contemporaries of Lewis and Tolkien, Williams’ novels are allegorical, but unlike his fellow Inklings members, his fantasy is far darker. In his earlier days, Williams crossed paths with the occult and his books are warnings of the very real darkness he came across, and point to the very real power of grace that he turned to. All Hallows Eve feels different from any other novel I’ve read before — not much happens, but within the story of a handful of young Londoners, Williams draws back the curtain on the spiritual planes layered over our own, and the interaction between them. He manages to find a balance of describing evil exactly as it is — a reviling presence that every part of your being knows is *wrong* without glorifying it or becoming fascinated with it. It simply is. And he also knows the power of goodness and grace, and its ability to overcome the wrongness and to purify that which was intended for evil. I wouldn’t recommend William’s writing for everyone, or for everyone at every point in their life, but for me, Williams’ insight into the spiritual world was one that I was finally ready for.
It’s Honorable Mention Time!
God and the Pandemic, by N.T. Wright
Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Zookeeper’s Wife, by Diane Ackerman
In Calabria, by Peter S. Beagle
The Once and Future King, by T.H.White
The Complete Complete Collection of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Canon Doyle
