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Books I Read in 2021

In 2021, I only set one reading goal (50 books), and through the power of audiobooks, I met it.

Many of the books I loved this year had a nature focus and have stayed with me. Since learning about the axolotl in Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s World of Wonders, it seems to keep popping up in magazines and podcasts. Helen Macdonald’s Vesper Flights pulled me out onto our balcony to watch swifts circle our building at dusk. As I walk through a leafless Rock Creek Park, I think of her perfect description of woods in winter. I spotted asters and goldenrod around D.C. after Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass taught me what they look like.

I’ve started wondering how listening to a book changes my reception of it. Would I react differently if reading a physical copy? Because I can walk, wash dishes, play a phone game, fall asleep while listening, I might stick with the material longer. It takes more effort to commit to finishing a physical book. And sometimes it's insufficient only hearing words. I need to see them, reread them, write them down. Braiding Sweetgrass is one I want to reread for that purpose.

I switched between audio and e-book for Kira Jane Buxton’s Hollow Kingdom and its talking crow protagonist. I can still hear the narrator’s Genghis Cat and Winnie the Poodle, and sometimes I think, “Poodle doodle doo!” to myself. Would that have stuck with me had I only read it? But the e-book made copying down Buxton’s descriptions like “a charm of finches” and “a gaze of ruffian raccoons” easier.

Other favorites this year were Quan Barry’s witchy high school hockey team in We Ride Upon Sticks, Gail Honeymoon’s Eleanor Elephant is Completely Fine, and The Prophets by Robert Jones. Someone recommended this one to me, and it took me some time to get into. It was unlike anything I’ve ever read.

Anyway, here’s the list, with some notes and asterisks for favorites:

1. Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

2. The Glass Lake, Maeve Binchy - reread

3 Disability Visability, Alice Wong

4 There There, Tommy Orange

5 Dear Haiti, Love Alaine, Maika Moulite, Maritza Moulite

6 Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman*

7 The Last Black Unicorn, Tiffany Haddish

8 Shit, Actually, Lindy West

9 The House in the Cerulean Sea, TJ Klune *

10 Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi - I really enjoyed this one and feel like I need to reread it in physical form

11 The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South, Michael Twitty* - meant to read this years ago, glad I finally did.

12 Black Buck, Mateo Askaripour

13 Save Me the Plums, Ruth Reichl *

14 Weather, Jenny Offill

15 Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche - reread

16 Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, Emmanuel Acho

17 The Unhoneymooners, Christina Lauren

18 The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman - reread

19 The Secret Life of Groceries, Benjamin Lorr

20 Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson - this was one of those audiobooks I shouldn’t have listened to trying to sleep. I kept renewing the sleep timer.

21 The Painted Drum, Louise Erdrich

22 The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

23 Fun Home, Alison Bechdel

24 Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, Lori Gottlieb

25 We Ride Upon Sticks, Quan Barry * - “Behold our Smurfy car!” made me laugh so hard.

26 A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett - reread/bedtime listening

27 The Latinos of Asia: How Filipinos Break the Rules of Race, Anthony Christian Ocampo

28 Hollow Kingdom, Kira Jane Buxton*

29 Alex & Me, Irene M. Pepperberg

30 Gingerbread, Helen Oyeyemi

31 Fierce as the Wind, Tara Wilson Redd

32 I Came as a Shadow, John Thompson

33 The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, V. E. Schwab

34 Caste, Isabel Wilkerson

35 You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism, Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar - read and listened to simultaneously. Amber and Lacey read it together but there are pictures.

36 The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgkin Burnett - more bedtime listening rereading

37 The Midnight Library, Matt Haig

38 The Guest List, Lucy Foley

39 She Come by It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs, Sarah Smarsh

40 A Children’s Bible, Lydia Millet

41 Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald*

42 The Library Book, Susan Orlean

43 The Once and Future Witches, Alix E Harrow

44 My Sister the Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite

45 Blue Horses, Mary Oliver

46 Fiebre Tropical, Julián Delgado Lopera

47 American Fried, Calvin Trillin

48 Think Again, Adam Grant

49 The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett

50 World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, Aimee Nezhukumatathil*

51 Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer*

52 The Mountains Sing, Nguyen Phan Que Mai

53 Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, James Nestor

54 The Last Apothecary, Sarah Penner

55 The Prophets, Robert Jones*

56 Dial A for Aunties, Jesse Q. Sutanto

57 Arsenic and Adobo, Mia Manansala

58 The Girl with the Louding Voice, Abi Daré

59 Becoming a Marine Biologist, Virginia Morrell

60 You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, Sherman Alexie

61 The Night Tiger, Yangsze Choo

62 Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close, Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman

63 Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine, Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilly

64 Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune, Roselle Lim

65 The Sea Around Us, Rachel Carson

66 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid

67 The Final Girls Support Group, Grady Hendrix

68 God Spare the Girls, Kelsey McKinney

69 Beartown, Frederik Backman

70 Us Against You, Frederik Backman - I read three books about hockey this year, field and ice.