Books of 2021

This year I logged 30 books, down 5 from last year but it's been an interesting year--I'll leave it at that. Here a some thoughts on a number of them:

Best fiction book of the year came about at year's end when my Bright Leaf book club chose The Secret History by Donna Tartt. It was a hands down choice. Reading it, I thought of the Loeb-Leopold murder and our club's all time favorite, Stoner by John Williams. My club mates thought of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, to which I agreed. With the exception of Laila Lalami's The Moor's Tale, the year's first selection of my WDS book club, other enjoyable books were Bright Leaf selections: A Beowulf translation by Maria Headley, Grendle by John Gardner, Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann, and Mona by Pola Oloixarac. I also read The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles in the WDS group--it was good, but after Rules of Civility and Gentleman In Moscow, I was a little let down. Same feeling about Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.

In the non-fiction category, I pulled The Great Influenza by John Barry, a timely tome, out of my Little Library and enjoyed the 100 year comparison to our current pandemic. Later in the year, I came across Maverick, a wonderful biography of Thomas Sowell by Jason Riley and thought for sure that would be my non-fiction pick for the year. But then came Americana: 400 Years of American Capitalism by Bhu Srinivasan and nudged Maverick back to a very close second place.

Other worthwhile books this year came about unexpectedly from books passed along by friends, the Little Library, and neighbors. They include Outline, by Rachel Cusk (reminded me of Transit of Venus), Anxious People by Frederik Bachman, and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt.

###