All the books that I finished reading in 2021:
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| Still-life with Book & Cat: photo by Cliff Hutson |
- "Your House Will Pay," Steph Cha
- "Next to Last Stand," Craig Johnson
- "50 Ways to Cook a Carrot," Peter Hertzmann
- "Are You There God? It's Me, Margarita," Tim Federle
- "What It's Like to Be a Bird," David Allen Sibley
- "The Ninth Inning," A.J. Stewart
- "Deacon King Kong," James McBride
- "Lords of the Fly," Monte Burke
- "Shakespeare in a Divided America," James Shapiro
- "Why We Sleep," Matthew Walker, PhD
- "The Zombie Survival Guide," Max Brooks
- "Nick: a Novel," Michael Farris Smith
- "City on the Edge of Forever," Peter Lunenfeld
- "The Day of the Locust," Nathanael West
- "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents," Isabel Wilkerson
- "Underland: A Deep Time Journey," Robert Macfarlane
- "Black, White, and The Grey," Mashama Bailey and John O. Morisano
- "An Indigenous People's History of the United States," Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
- "The Reindeer Chronicles," Judith D. Schwartz
- "Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization," David R. Montgomery
- "Past the Post," A.J. Stewart
- "Of Mutts and Men," Spencer Quinn
- "A Cat's Tale: A Journey Through Feline History," Baba the Cat as dictated to Paul Koudounaris
- "Project Hail Mary," Andy Weir
- "Chasing Darkness," Robert Crais
- "World Travel: an Irreverent Guide," Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever
- "Animal, Vegetable, Junk," Mark Bittman
- "Deliverance," James Dickey
- "Tender is the Bite," Spencer Quinn
- "The House Without a Key," Earl Derr Biggers
- "Chinatown Beat," Henry Chang
- "Interior Chinatown," Charles Yu
- "The Chinese Parrot," Earl Derr Biggers
- "Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Science," Vine Deloria, Jr.
- "Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth," Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford
- "Squeeze Me," Carl Hiaasen
- "The Age of Wood," Roland Ennos
- "How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe," Charles Yu
- "Clark and Division," Naomi Hirahara
- "The Botany of Gin," Chris Thorogood and Simon Hiscock
- "This Is Your Mind on Plants," Michael Pollan
- "Behind That Curtain," Earl Derr Biggers
- "The Black Camel," Earl Derr Biggers
- "Sorry Please Thank You," Charles Yu
- "Charlie Chan Carries On," Earl Derr Biggers
- "The Keeper of the Keys," Earl Derr Biggers
- "Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation," Michael Pollan
- "Diet for a Small Planet: 50th Anniversary Edition," Frances Moore Lappé
- "Every Tool's a Hammer," Adam Savage
- "Weapons of Math Destruction," Cathy O'Neil
- "It's a Wonderful Woof," Spencer Quinn
- "On Juneteenth," Annette Gordon-Reed
- "Sapiens," Yuval Noah Harari
- "Where the Deer and the Antelope Play," Nick Offerman
- "Good Clean Fun," Nick Offerman
- "On Animals," Susan Orlean
- "The Dark Hours," Michael Connelly
- "Coffee Lids," Louise Harpman and Scott Spect
- "Seven Brief Lessons on Physics," Carlo Rovelli
- "The New Yankee Workshop," Norm Abram
There you have it. I completed sixty books the second year of the
pandemic. That total is fewer than I read in the
previous year, but not too far off my average of 58 from 2015 through 2020 - give or take a book. However, it puts me well behind
David Allen, who I like to measure myself
against. However, I will register a protest in that fourteen of his were audio books, listened to while he was in his car. There are those amongst us that do not count that as actually
reading. Be that as it may, here is my recap:
The Best:
There were a lot of excellent books in this lineup. Rather than pick just one I am going to divide them into two categories. The best in fiction (in this case hard science fiction) was "
Project Hail Mary" by
Andy Weir, author of "
The Martian." As one of the main character's bosses says; in “When the alternative is death to your entire species, things are very easy. No moral dilemmas, no weighing what’s best for whom. Just a single-minded focus on getting this project working.” Advice that would be well heeded in our
times. And, the problem solving that unfolds is a delight to follow.
The best in nonfiction is a close call. However, my pick is "
Caste" by
Isabel Wilkerson. The author examines the social divisions in American society, many of them generally unacknowledged but which have certainly affected my life, using comparisons with India and Nazi Germany. I may not be in 100% accord with her argument, but it is a very well written book.
The Most Disappointing:
A book I read back in the 1970s had a fairly big impact on my wife and myself. So, I was eager to pick it up again when I saw that a new edition was being released. What a let down!
The book is "Diet for a Small Planet: 50th Anniversary Edition" by Frances Moore Lappé . While it provides a new and "timely introduction plus new and updated plant-centered recipes" the bulk of it contains the same data from the original - which I see as scarcely relevant any longer. The author and her
daughter, who is responsible for the new and revised recipes, should have just released a cookbook. The point of the book is still pertinent, but newer
ones are better suited for the present day.
What Lies Ahead:
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| Tsundoku: photo by Cliff Hutson |
Self-fulfilling prophecy can be a
thing, and I would hate to fall into that trap. But, 2020 may see me competing even fewer books. It is the middle of January and I have yet to finish one. Also, my
tsundoku has a couple of heavy volumes in it (see above) and others on physics and philosophy which may be heavy going. So, we shall see.
