The difficult year of 2021 kept up its angry stance until the bitter end, so I am two months late with my annual reading list. Mea culpa! But better late than never, and careful readers of this decade-long tradition may note that this year’s list is quite different from other lists. This year I found myself escaping into the realm of international intrigue, and I am now hooked as I discovered that the best of these genres also have some exquisite writing and important insights. You’ll also see some glaring, and perhaps surprising lacunae which have finally been remedied. I hope you might find some new discoveries in this list, too. Again, as always, my apologies for not including poetry in this list, which I read in a different way. But there was a wonderful cascade of poetry collections to dive into this year, as well.
- Bernadine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other
- Clorinda Matto de Turner, Birds Without a Net (1889 Peruvian classic)
- Toni Morrison, Beloved
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letter to a Young Poet
- Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown
- Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over The Bones
- Catriona Lally, Eggshells
- Joan Didion, Let Me Tell You What I Mean
- Michael J. Fox, No Time Like the Future (An Optimist Considers Mortality)
- Christopher MacDougall, Born to Run
- George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
- Viet Thank Nguyen, The Committed
- Mark Helprin, Freddy and Fredericka
- Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club
- Sigrid Nunez, Mitz, The Marmoset of Bloomsbury
- Anna North, Outlawed
- George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
- Kate Sawyer, The Stranding
- Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles
- Daniel Silva, The Kill Artist
- Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet
- Daniel Silva, The Cellist
- Daniel Silva, Moscow Rules
- Sadeqa Johnson, Yellow Wife
- Daniel Silva, House of Spies
- Ben McIntyre, The Spy and the Traitor
- Elizabeth Baines, Astral Travel
- Emily Wilson, trans., The Odyssey
- Leigh Forbes, Outlawed: The Teenage Years
- Louise Penny, Still Life
- Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery
- Louise Penny, How The Light Gets In
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