2021 in Books

I love looking back at the end of the year and remembering all the fantastic books I’ve read or listened to. In 2021, I read 28 books - lots of novel, as well as some short story collections and a bit of non-fiction. I also listened to 19 audiobooks. (And I read tonnes of play scripts for work!)

Out of the 47 books I read/listened to this year, I gave eight of them 10/10 for how much I enjoyed them:

• The Testaments - Margaret Atwood
• To Be Taught, If Fortunate - Becky Chambers
• The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox - Maggie O’Farrell
• Hamnet - Maggie O’Farrell
• Remarkable Creatures - Tracey Chevalier
• A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
• The Devil and the Dark Water - Stuart Turton
• The Confessions of Frannie Langton - Sara Collins

As always, this isn’t a reflection on how well-written I thought they were, but pure enjoyment. Well-written books I do tend to enjoy more though, and some of them were astonishingly brilliant. Hamnet might have been my most favourite, and To Be Taught, If Fortunate perhaps the biggest surprise - I’m not sure I would’ve picked out a short novel about space adventuring for myself, but I adored it. One of the books was by multiple authors, 12 by men, and the other 36 by women.

Out of my other books this year…

Favourite Crime Novel: One by One - Ruth Ware, or Endless Night - Agatha Christie

Favourite Short Collection: Exhalation - Ted Chiang (I read lots of good novellas and collections this year)

Favourite Non-Fiction: A is for Arsenic - Kathryn Harkup

[Honourable mentions to: Daisy Jones and the Six (Taylor Jenkins Reid); The Farm (Joanne Ramos); The Castaway (Lucy Clarke); Falling Angels (Tracey Chevalier); The Illustrated Child (Polly Crosby); Nevermore (Jessica Townend); Holes (Louis Sachar).]