My Reading Year + 10 Favorite Books I Read in 2021

Circe is a Greek goddess who gets exiled to a remote island. Here she interacts with the Greek myths we all know and discovers her magical powers. I honestly did not know I could love Greek mythology this much, and I immediately added about 10 other Greek myths retold from the perspective of women to my TBR.

We gave this middle grade book to my daughter for Christmas last year and she LOVED it and begged us to read it. I am happy to report that I loved it just as much as she did. Cilla is a spunky little girl confident in her future as a literary star. She’s also half Chinese and half Caucasian, and while she searches for her literary identity she is also searching for where she belongs in her family. This book made me laugh out loud and cry actual tears and I loved it so very much.

I love books that make you care deeply about something you previously had no interest in. I found Barbarian Days absolutely riveting and the only thing that could tear me away was looking up surfing videos on YouTube. William Finnegan goes on surfing adventures all around the world: from Hawaii to Fiji to Portugal. And while it’s about surfing it’s also about love and obsession and travel. Yes, it’s 450 pages, but I could have kept reading.

Listen, I don’t normally love long books, but this is another epic that honestly may be my top book of the year (the other one being Barbarian Days and my favorite will just depend on which day you ask me). Shipstead tells the story of two women: Marian Graves, who falls in love with flying in the early 20th century, and Hadley Baxter, who is playing Marian in a movie. Their stories are intertwined in interesting ways, and while a big story like this can be hard to land, Shipstead does so beautifully.

I read this on audio, and yes it took me months, but I think it’s the only way I would have committed to such a huge book. The narration was fantastic and I loved the behind-the-scenes look at Obama’s presidency — from his family life to his thought processes behind his decisions. Yes, he can get a little long-winded in a few sections, but the financial crisis probably deserves that, right? Now I really want to read Michelle Obama’s book and am definitely looking forward to volume 2 of this one.

Again, another book that was so much more fascinating than I expected! Going back to some of the first women to work in Disney’s animation studios, Holt details the struggles they had to be recognized and the decisions they made that changed the way movies were made and led to iconic animation we know today. I will honestly never watch another Disney movie (or animated move for that matter) the same way again.

Another great rom-com from Emily Henry! Poppy and Alex are platonic friends who go on vacation together every year. Until they had a falling out. But this is rom-com, so you know where we are headed. This book was so fun and the banter between Poppy and Alex was adorable. This doesn’t have to be a beach read, but that’s where I read it and it was perfect.

Every since Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing, he is a must-read for me. Here he tackles the Sackler family, the people behind Oxycontin an the opioid epidemic who continued to sell the drug and deny any wrongdoing. Keefe’s investigative journalism and narrative non-fiction writing are just unparalleled. And while this isn’t the easiest read, it is both important and riveting.

Did I expect to fall in love with Fossey’s memoir about tracking and observing gorillas in the Rwanda’s mountains? No. But did I? Yes. I found Fossey a fascinating figure, and I learned so much about gorillas. This is half memoir of her time in Rwanda (from life at her base camp to her efforts to combat poaching) and half detailed observations about the behaviors of gorilla family groups. I thought it was all so interesting.

This is a book I knew I would probably like, but also had been avoiding a bit because it felt like a commitment (especially if I wanted to read all 6 books in the series). But I finally read it and am happy to report I loved it. This is mostly a reflection on Knausgaard’s relationship with his father, both in his childhood and after his father died. It’s hard to describe what happens. He wants to get beer to a New Year’s Eve party as a teenager? He cleans out his grandmother’s house with his brother? But Knausgaard makes the mundane absolutely shine, and books that can do that often end up as my favorites.