The Books of 2021

I love lists. I also suck utterly at Goodreads. I tried to be more on top of logging my books there this year, and did well over the summer and then... fell off. But I always log my books in my Google Keep lists, for School Year and Summer and then track the calendar year.

I started doing this when I took my grandmother's lists of books and digitized them into an Excel spreadsheet. It was fascinating to see what she read when, and to know that the books you read tell a story. 

At the end of the year, I take my Google Keep lists and I write down the books I read per month, and then do a genre grouping to see what I read the most of. There's overlap in that, because of course books don't always fit in just one category. 

So... in 2021 I read a whopping 106 books. I have no idea how many pages that is since I suck at Goodreads, but I can say that some of them were lengthy for sure.

In terms of months, I read the least in November (5) and the most in July and August (12 each). Go figure, the months that were entirely summer break were the most plentiful, and my most stressful month at school so far had me struggling to focus. I read 7 books in September and October, 8 in January and May, 9 in February, March, and April,  and 10 in June and December. 

Here's my genre breakdown: 

Young Adult: 33

Nonfiction: 20

Poetry/Stories: 3

Realistic Fiction: 15

Historical Fiction: 8

Mystery/Twisty: 23

Fantasy/Sci-Fi: 31

Books Bryce Bought Me: 15

Books by Diverse Authors/Diverse Characters: 40

My favorite book each month: 

January: I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

February: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

March: Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

April: Broken (in the best possible way) by Jenny Lawson 

May: Starfish by Lisa Fipps

June: Before the coffee gets cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

July: The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune

August: The Boatman's Daughter by Andy Davidson

September: The Secret Bridesmaid by Katy Birchall

October: The Fisherman by John Langan

November: Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

December: The Last House on Needless Street by Cariona Ward

My favorite books all year (top 20): 

The Fifth Season (and entire Broken Earth trilogy) by N.K. Jemison

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

This is My America by Kim Johnson

Finna by Nino Cipro

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Before the coffee gets cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Tender Is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

Miss Benson's Beetle by Rachel Joyce

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

The Boatman's Daughter by Andy Davidson

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagowski, PhD and Amelia Nagowski, DMA

The Secret Bridesmaid by Katy Birchall

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

The Fisherman by John Langan

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

A History of Wild Places by Shea Earnshaw

The Last House On Needless Street by Cariona Ward

The Weirdest Book I Read This Year: 

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

The NUMBER ONE BOOK of 2021: 

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

Seriously, If you haven't read this book yet, please go read it. It is phenomenal. And I realize now that I never wrote my post dedicated to it, so I will have to remedy that soon. 

And there it is, my reading life of 2021! Really, out of all 106 books there were only THREE that I didn't like. So much good reading!