Looking Back: The Books of 2021

All the books that I finished reading in 2021:

Still-life with Book & Cat: photo by Cliff Hutson

1. "Your House Will Pay," Steph Cha
2. "Next to Last Stand," Craig Johnson
3. "50 Ways to Cook a Carrot," Peter Hertzmann
4. "Are You There God? It's Me, Margarita," Tim Federle  
5. "What It's Like to Be a Bird," David Allen Sibley 
6. "The Ninth Inning," A.J. Stewart
7. "Deacon King Kong," James McBride
8. "Lords of the Fly," Monte Burke
9. "Shakespeare in a Divided America," James Shapiro
10. "Why We Sleep," Matthew Walker, PhD
11. "The Zombie Survival Guide," Max Brooks
12. "Nick: a Novel," Michael Farris Smith
13. "City on the Edge of Forever," Peter Lunenfeld 
14. "The Day of the Locust," Nathanael West
15. "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents," Isabel Wilkerson 
16. "Underland: A Deep Time Journey," Robert Macfarlane 
17. "Black, White, and The Grey," Mashama Bailey and John O. Morisano 
18. "An Indigenous People's History of the United States," Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
19. "The Reindeer Chronicles," Judith D. Schwartz 
20. "Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization," David R. Montgomery
21. "Past the Post," A.J. Stewart
22. "Of Mutts and Men," Spencer Quinn
23. "A Cat's Tale: A Journey Through Feline History," Baba the Cat as dictated to Paul Koudounaris 
24. "Project Hail Mary," Andy Weir
25. "Chasing Darkness," Robert Crais
26. "World Travel: an Irreverent Guide," Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever 
27. "Animal, Vegetable, Junk," Mark Bittman
28. "Deliverance," James Dickey
29. "Tender is the Bite," Spencer Quinn
30. "The House Without a Key," Earl Derr Biggers
31. "Chinatown Beat," Henry Chang
32. "Interior Chinatown," Charles Yu
33. "The Chinese Parrot," Earl Derr Biggers
34. "Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Science," Vine Deloria, Jr. 
35. "Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth," Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford 
36. "Squeeze Me," Carl Hiaasen 
37. "The Age of Wood," Roland Ennos 
38. "How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe," Charles Yu
39. "Clark and Division," Naomi Hirahara 
40. "The Botany of Gin," Chris Thorogood and Simon Hiscock 
41. "This Is Your Mind on Plants," Michael Pollan
42. "Behind That Curtain," Earl Derr Biggers
43. "The Black Camel," Earl Derr Biggers
44. "Sorry Please Thank You," Charles Yu
45. "Charlie Chan Carries On," Earl Derr Biggers
46. "The Keeper of the Keys," Earl Derr Biggers
47. "Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation," Michael Pollan
48. "Diet for a Small Planet: 50th Anniversary Edition," Frances Moore Lappé 
49. "Every Tool's a Hammer," Adam Savage
50. "Weapons of Math Destruction," Cathy O'Neil
51. "It's a Wonderful Woof," Spencer Quinn
52. "On Juneteenth," Annette Gordon-Reed
53. "Sapiens," Yuval Noah Harari  
54. "Where the Deer and the Antelope  Play," Nick Offerman 
55. "Good Clean Fun," Nick Offerman
56. "On Animals," Susan Orlean
57. "The Dark Hours," Michael Connelly 
58. "Coffee Lids," Louise Harpman and Scott Spect  
59. "Seven Brief Lessons on Physics," Carlo Rovelli
60. "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.

A close runner up is "On Juneteenth."

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:

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.