2021 Booklist
In 2021 I read 70 books.
Half were written by men, half by women. Almost an even split between fiction and non-fiction. Almost two thirds were by Americans, only ten percent Canadian this year. About half were by non-White writers. Very few were duds.
Of the fiction, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Half of a Yellow Sun”, Douglas Stuart’s “Shuggie Bains”, Min Jin Lee’s “Pachinko “, and Michelle Good’s “Five Little Indians” probably stood out the most and get my highest recommendation. Obvious classics like Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five,” Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov”, Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”, and Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” don’t need a recommendation from me; they’ve stood the test of time for good reason.
In non-fiction, I’d recommend K.S. Komireddi’s “Malevolent Republic,” which is a fantastic, highly opinionated history of modern India. Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny,” Vaclav Havel’s “Power of the Powerless,” Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer,” and Ruth Ben-Ghait’s “Strongmen” are all apt reads for this particular time. Anand Gopal’s “No Good Men Among the Living” is an amazing account of what it has been like in Afghanistan for the past twenty years. It makes clear that people who understood what was happening on the ground there were in no way surprised at how quickly the regime collapsed as soon as the American military pulled out. And Johnathan Matter Smucker’s “Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals” is the best critique I’ve read of left wing activism by someone who is a participant in it. He articulates a number of criticism I’ve had working in this space over the years and provides recommendations for changes we need to make so we can make our ideals a political reality.
The full list:
- Akhtar, Ayad Homeland Elegies
- Wiley, Peter Booth Yankees in the Land of the Gods
- Hugo-Bader, Jacek White Fever
- Ben-Ghiat, Ruth Strongmen
- George, Rose Ninety Percent of Everything
- Richardson, Heather Cox How the South Won the Civil War
- De Rosney, Tatiana A Secret Kept
- Vonnegut, Kurt Slaughterhouse Five
- Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi Half of a Yellow Sun
- Stuart, Douglas Shuggie Bains
- Kolker, Robert Hidden Valley Road
- Ward, Jesmyn Sing Unburied Sing
- Reding, Nick Methland
- Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi Americanah
- Katlia Land - Water - Sky
- North, Anna Outlawed
- Yee, Paul A Superior Man
- Trethewey, Natasha Memorial Drive
- Robinson, Eden Return of the Trickster
- Zhang, C. Pam How Much of These Hills is Gold
- Snyder, Timothy On Tyranny
- Havel, Vaclav Power of the Powerless
- Filipovic, Jill Ok Boomer, Let’s Talk
- Dostoyevsky, Fyodor The Brothers Karamazov
- Jaffe, Sarah Work Won’t Love You Back
- Land, Stephanie Maid
- Komireddi, K.S. Malevolent Republic
- Nesbitt, Eleanor Sikhism
- Grant, Melissa Gira Playing the Whore
- Hughes, Langston Selected Poems
- Tolstoy, Leo Hadji Murad
- Townsend, Camilla The Fifth Sun
- Good, Michelle Five Little Indians
- Askaripour, Mateo Black Buck
- Denis, Nelson A. War Against All Puerto Ricans
- Lee, Min Jin Pachinko
- Hoffer, Eric The True Believer
- Thammavongsa, Souvankham How to Pronounce Knife
- Ung, Loung First They Killed My Father
- Smith, Clint How the Word is Passed
- Baldwin, James If Beale Street Could Talk
- Jacobs, Meg Panic at the Pump
- Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai The Mountains Sing
- Blow, Charles M. The Devil You Know
- Robinson, Kim Stanley Ministry for the Future
- Kavenna, Joanna Zed
- Cooper, Sam Wilful Blindness
- Chambers, Becky To Be Taught If Fortunate
- Pallant, Eric Sourdough Culture
- Gordon-Reed, Annette On Juneteenth
- Ford, Ashley C. Someone’s Daughter
- Carreyrou, John Bad Blood
- Greene, Graham The Quiet American
- McBride, James The Color of Water
- Shelley, Mary Frankenstein
- Gopal, Anand No Good Men Among the Living
- Hamid, Mohsim Exit West
- Harris, Zakiya Dalila The Other Black Girl
- Goethe The Sorrows of Young Werther
- Taylor, Keeanga From #blacklivesmatter to Black Liberation
- Lewis, Michael The Premonition
- Lee, Chang-Rae My Year Abroad
- Dosh, Avni The Girl in White Cotton
- Sathian, Sanjena Gold Diggers
- Samaha, Albert Concepcion
- French, Howard Born in Blackness
- Zauner, Michelle Crying in H Mart
- Chambers, Becky A Psalm for the Wild-Built
- Smucker, Johnathan Matter Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals
- Bordwell, David Planet Hong Kong
In 2022 I intend to read fewer books. Not necessarily read less, but read fewer books more deeply. I don’t speed read but I do tend to read one book after another without a lot of time for reflection. I’d like to slow it down and read more deeply this year.