My Year in Books
2021 was a stellar year in books, both in terms of the amount of new works produced this year, and also with my sheer fortune getting around to older stuff. I’ve always made it a point to balance my reading list with new releases and not-so-recent ones, and sneak in a handful of titles from “the canon”, and this past year was no different. And they were all really good!
Goodreads tells me I finished 49 books, a smidge more than I read last year. I didn’t DNF a single one or give below a 4-star. I just got really luck with my picks, I guess! Here they all are with their covers, plus a few words on my absolute favorites:
I read some novellas and shorter works in the first half of the year for a couple of reasons. First, despite my efforts (and some denial), it was still hard for me to go into longer books because of how rough wverything continued (continues?) to be. Second, there simply were so many good short works that came out recently, especially with novellas. Riot Baby and Ring Shout in particular are some of my faves, not just of this form, but in general. Both are gripping stories, told in kinetic language, with an incisive point of view about race and racism, current and historical. I’m also so glad to finally get around to The Traitor Baru Cormorant, which has quickly become one of my favorite epic fantasy books of all time. If I ever get to try my hand at fantasy, I want it to be as scheme-y, tightly plotted, and unapologetically queer as this one.
George Saunders’ A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is my new Bible; I’ve learned so much from it as I’ve mentioned elsewhere on the blog and I feel that I leveled up my craft merely by reading it. The same goes for Craft in the Real World, which I also wrote about. It’s the rare craft book that examines marginalizations and proposes a better way of understanding what we talk about when we talk about craft.
The second half of 2021 still saw some shorter works, mostly in the form of comics. I’ve always been a comics guy and I’ve decided to include them in my Goodreads tally because they really deserve to be treated on par with regular books. (Seriously though, if I included all the comics I read this year, like the entire current X-Men line, this list would be much, much longer.) Of these, I am particularly obsessed with the ongoing series The Department of Truth, a scary look into conspiracy theories and the precarious nature of consensus reality. Every issue has me wanting to write a story about concepts and vibes I see on its pages.
I also loved The Body Scout and Far from the Light of Heaven, both of which I reviewed a couple months back; these two, plus Certain Dark Things are all new releases that show how hot speculative noir is (yes, I know, I am biased here), and how it’s done well.
I’ve also written a teeny bit about Interior Chinatown and Piranesi, which are both honest-to-god literary masterworks. The fact that they are also both speculative is, personally, icing on the cake. In the same league is The Vanished Birds, a 2020 release that I feel was criminally overlooked. It’s epic and sprawling, populated with some of the most memorable characters I met this year.
The Shadow of the Wind is also literary and has speculative vibes, but is very firmly historical fiction, and man, if any book took my heart and wrenched it in 2021, this one is it. I cried multiple times because of how beautiful the story and the writing is, and cried even more as I gushed with friends about it afterward. I got really lucky with historical fiction this year, also discovering Tipping the Velvet, a modern queer classic that I still regularly think about.
This was also a good year for Asia-centered SFF: I read new books Never Have I Ever and Kaikeyi (forthcoming April 2022), and got around to Infomocracy and Waste Tide. They’re all so stunning, I can talk your ear off about each of them. As a reader, these books have really enriched me, and as a writer, they’ve inspired me so much that I hope I get to produce more books like them.
Honestly though, I can talk your ear off about all of these books; like I said, I’ve been very lucky to have a good reading year, and I have so many positive feelings and thoughts about every single one of my reads. I’m looking forward to another great year in books, and if anyone wants to have a rave-fest about Tana French or Brit Bennett, or any of the above titles, you know where to find me.
Image credit: composite photos via Goodreads; apologies that I did not individually credit the sources and creators of these covers, but they should all be easily findable online.