Books you’ve read in 2021

Phoenix

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Let’s go :disco:

Here’s a list of my 2020 books:

1. Rhythm of War - Brandon Sanderson
2. Cleanness - Garth Greenwell
3. Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
4. My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Otessa Moshfegh
5. Assassin’s Apprentice - Robin Hobb
6. The Raven Tower - Ann Lecke
7. The Glass Hotel - Emily St. John Mandel
8. Dawnshard - Brandon Sanderson
9. Nine Perfect Strangers - Liane Morriarty
10. Assassin’s Quest - Robin Hobb
11. Mexican Gothic - Silvia Moreno-Garcia
12. Royal Assassin - Robin Hobb
13. Sin Eater - Megan Campisi
14. Conviction - Denise Mina
15. Strange Practice - Vivian Shaw
16. The Beguiling - Zsuzsi Gartner

Currently reading Shuggie Bain
 
I’ve just started The Robber Bride by Atwood tonight because it’s always annoyed me that I’ve never read it, so will report back
 
Thanks to my okhti al kabira, Phoe-Phoe for starting the thread. My 2020 books:

1. Miriam Towes - All My Puny Sorrows
2. Joan Didion - The White Album
3. Rebecca Makkai - The Great Believers
4. Rebecca Solnit - A Field Guide for Getting Lost
5. WG Sebald - The Emigrants
6. James Wharton - Something for the Weekend
7. Julian Fuks - Resistance
8. J.M. Coetzee - Summertime
9. Akwaeke Emezi - Freshwater
10. J.M. Coetzee - Elizabeth Costello
11. Ben Lerner - 10:04
12. Candice Carty-Williams - Queenie
13. Amit Chaudhri - Friend of My Youth
14. Annie Ernaux - I Remain in Darkness
15. Elisa Shua Desapin - Winter in Sochko
16. Zeba Talkhani - My Past in a Foreign Country
17. Cho Nam-Joo - Kim Ji-Young, Born in 1982
18. Pauline Delabroy-Allard - All About Sarah
19. Elena Ferrante - The Story of the Lost Child
20. Maggie Nelson - The Argonauts
21. Karl Ove Knausgaard - A Death in the Family
22. Megan Bradbury - Everyone is Watching
23. Yukio Tsushima - Territory of Light
24. Cathy Park Hong - Minor Feelings
25. Valeria Luiselli - Lost Children Archive
26. Douglas Glover - Attack of the Copula Spider
27. Patricia Highsmith - Carol
28. Alice Munro - The Beggar Maid
29. Sam Selvon - The Lonely Londoners
30. Mary Gaitskill - Bad Behaviour
31. Elif Shafak - How to Stay Sane in an age of Division
32. Natalia Ginzburg - Family Lexicon
33. Chris Power - Mothers
34. Douglas Stewart - Shuggie Bain
35. Marieke Lucas Rijnveld - The Discomfort of an Evening
36. Colm Toibin - The South
37. Agatha Christie - Murder on the Orient Express
38. Dorothy B. Hughes - Murder on the Orient Express
39. Avni Doshi - Burnt Sugar
40. Patricia Highsmith - The Talented Mr Ripley
41. Pat Barker - Blow Your House Down
42. Brandon Taylor - Real Life
43. Bryan Washington - Memorial
44. Cormac McCarthy - No Country for Old Men
45. Sayaka Murata - Earthlings
46. Mary Gaitskill - Lost Cat
47. Yuri Herrera - A Silent Fury
48. Natalie Diaz - Postcolonial Love Poem
49. Ocean Vuong - Night Sky With Exit Wounds
50. Tommy Orange - There, There

29 women, 2 non-binary, 19 poc :disco:
 
It wasn’t planned but I only have 2 male authors and 11 female authors last year.
 
Oh honey I don’t have a problem with the number of books I read. 15-20 is what I usually do.

I was talking about the male/female author split.
 
Oh honey I don’t have a problem with the number of books I read. 15-20 is what I usually do.

I was talking about the male/female author split.

Just take the pass, sis! :disco:

I definitely gravitate to female authors a lot more, although Coetzee was the first time I read a guy and felt like I needed to read ALL of his stuff.

Do you have any reading resolutions?
 
No I don’t like reading challenges, it takes away from the fun of reading for me.
 
I was tempted to do away with my reading challenge. I found it quite stressful this year cos I had to read so much stuff for class that I hadn't chosen myself. So I would like to read a few longer books this year as I do love sticking with a book for a while, and not give a fuck about my challenge.
 
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My 2020 list

01. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
02. My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Ottessa Moshfegh
03. The Blue Fox - Sjón
04. Rollercoaster: Europe 1950-2017 - Ian Kershaw
05. Giovanni’s Room - James Baldwin
06. The Art of War - Sun Tzu
07. Drömfakulteten (Dream Faculty) - Sara Stridsberg
08. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
09. Virginia Woolf - A Room of One’s Own
10. Chagall - Rainer Metzger
11. Rothko - Jacob Baal-Teshuva
12. Birds without Wings - Louis de Bernières
13. How to Design Humane Cities - Karsten Palsson
14. The Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
15. The Sea, the Sea - Iris Murdoch
16. Manet - Gilles Nerét
17. Degas - Bernd Growe
18. Cézanne - Ulrike Becks-Malorny
19. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
20. Monet - Christof Heinrich
21. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
22. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
23. Emma - Jane Austen
24. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
25. Carol - Patricia Highsmith
26. First Love - Ivan Turgenev
27. Renoir - Peter H. Feist
28. The Plague - Albert Camus
29. Arabs; a 3000 Years History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires - Tim Mackintosh-Smith
30. The Virgin and the Gypsy - D.H. Lawrence
31. Rosseau - Cornelia Stabenow
32. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Márquez
33. Gauguin - Ingo F. Walther
34. van Gough - Ingo F. Walther
35. Forbidden Love - Héloïse d’Argenteuil
36. Seurat - Hajo Düchting
37. Toulouse-Lautrec - Matthias Arnold
38. The Kreutzer Sonata - Leo Tolstoy
39. A Russian Affair - Anton Chekhov
40. The Seducer’s Diary - Søren Kierkegaard
41. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
42. Atlantvärlden (World of the Atlantic) - Axel Andersson
43. 1Q84 (Book 1) - Haruki Murakami
44. Death in Venice and Other Stories - Thomas Mann
45. Tristan - Thomas Mann
46. Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
47. Deviant Love - Sigmund Freud
48. Magnetism - F. Scott Fitzgerald
49. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
50. The Complete Fables - Aesop
 
impressive. I'm a failure! couldn't even complete my own challenge of 15 books because I am stuck on the 14th (Svetlana Aleksijevitj, which is not as good as I had anticipated)

I've set the challenge to 15 books for 2021 so I can fail again!
 
12 of mine were from Taschen’s Basic Art series; so they’re short art books and probably shouldn’t count but they were interesting and educative enough so they should count.

I’ll set 20 as a goal, but I won’t rush. I have a lot of really long books to read, each one would probably take a month to read.
 
I only read 21 books last year. My goal was 30. Oh well.

1. E.M. Forster - Maurice
2. Toni Morrison - Sula
3. Jack Kerouac - On the Road
4. Adam Kay - This is Going to Hurt
5. Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in my Mind
6. Naja Marie Aidt - When Death Takes Something From You, Take it Back
7. Liane Moriarty - Nine Perfect Strangers
8. Sjon - The Blue Fox
10. Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex
11. Almost Sebold - The Almost Moon
12. Margaret Atwood - Bodily Harm
13. Cocteau - Les Enfants Terribles
14. Garth Greenwell - What Belongs to You
15. Garth Greenwell - Cleanness
16. Iris Murdoch - The Sea, The Sea
17. Tomasz Jedrowski - Swimming in the Dark
18. Vladimir Nobokov - Lolita
19. Yann Martel - Life of Pi
20. Elizabeth Gilbert - Eat Pray Love
21. Philippe Besson - Lie with Me
 
12 of mine were from Taschen’s Basic Art series; so they’re short art books and probably shouldn’t count but they were interesting and educative enough so they should count.

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I should add here that I have 4 other books on the go (i.e. I started last year and have semi-abandoned.) I hate DNF whether it's a book or a race, so I shall post them here to remind myself that I need to re-start and finish them individually before I move on:

1. Museum of Innocence
2. Goodbye Berlin
3. The Meaning of Mariah
4. Brick Lane
 
anyone already reading or going to read Klara and the Sun by Ishiguro? it's up next in my reading group. my first Ishiguro!
 
anyone already reading or going to read Klara and the Sun by Ishiguro? it's up next in my reading group. my first Ishiguro!

I think it will be my next after Shuggie Bain. It sounds divine!
 
I hardly read last year, blame covid.

Have been on a bit of a scifi vibe since picking up my kindle again, the past month I’ve read:

The Dog Stars - Peter Heller. A good post apocalypse book, nothing outstanding in its plot but I fucking love anything with an end of world scenario. 8/10

Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes. I discovered this book on the back of a press release by a company giving stroke patients DMT. I googled Algernon, the company name, saw the synopsis and bought it. What a story. 10/10

Children Of Time - Adrian Tchaikovsky. Have just finished this, a proper turner. The sci fi element is good, but the themes around god and society were really interesting, plus the little twist at the end. Awesome. 10000000/10
 
Last year's list. I was going strong during lockdown and completely fell off a cliff from autumn onwards for the most part so made it to 36.

I Am Malala - Malala Yousafzai
The Empty Family - Colm Tóibín
Being Various - New Irish Short Stories - Lucy Caldwell (editor)
Cleanness - Garth Greenwell
Brooklyn - Colm Tóibín
Labels - Louis de Barnières
The South - Colm Tóibín
Aria - Nazanine Hozar
The Girls of Slender Means - Muriel Spark
Mysteries of the Home - Paula Meehan
You Will Be Safe Here - Damian Barr
An Honest Man - Ben Fergusson
Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin
Swimming in the Dark - Tomasz Jedrowski
Lie With Me - Philippe Besson
Alone in Berlin - Hans Fallada
Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
In the Shadow of the Banyan - Vaddey Ratner
The Rest Just Follows - Glenn Patterson
Sealskin - Su Bristow
Unorthodox - Deborah Fieldman
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Tattooist of Auschwitz - Heather Morris
Goodbye to Berlin - Christopher Isherwood
The Story of the Night - Colm Tóibín
The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
A Traveler At the Gates of Wisdom - John Boyne
At the Jerusalem - Paul Bailey
West - Carys Davies
Astonishing Splashes of Colour - Clare Morrall
Shuggie Bain - Douglas Stuart
Don't Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight - Alexandra Fuller
The Road Home - Rose Tremain
Maggie and Me - Damian Barr
Stay With Me - Ayobami Adebayo
One August Night - Victoria Hislop
Nora Webster - Colm Tóibín
 
This year going even slower but will hopefully pick up.

All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong

And near the end of:
The Death of Vivek Oji - Akwaeke Emezi

Which is great so far.
 

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