Book List: Books Read in 2021

 

BOOKS READ IN 2021

Every January, I try to remember to post a list of the books I read the prior year. Somehow, I completely forgot to post my list of 2021 books. I was really busy at work in early 2022, getting ready for a big trial that started in March. A lot of non-work stuff fell out of my brain. I didn't realize that my 2021 list was missing until I went to post my 2022 list. Oh well. Life happens. 

Here now, a year late, is the lit of the 134 books I read in 2021, in the order I read them. I usually read 100 - 110 books a year and have no idea how I read so many in 2021. You can find an explanation of my rating system below the list. 

• The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Red and the Black by Stendhal 🌹🌹🌹

• Billy Bathgate by E. L. Doctrow 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Not Now, But Now by M. F. K. Fisher 🌹🌹🌹

• Ship of Fools by Katherine Ann Porter 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan by Deborah Reed (reviewed here)🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman by Elizabeth Buchan 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Time Machine by H. G. Wells 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjöwall 🌹🌹

• On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist by Clarissa Ward 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Murder in the Bastille by Cara Black 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Reflex by Dick Francis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• At Home with Books: How Booklovers Live with and Care for Their Libraries by Estelle Ellis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir by Erica Jong 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Shugie Bain by Stuart Douglas 🌹🌹🌹

• Whip Hand by Dick Francis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Valley of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany by Jane Mount 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Lighthouse by P. D. James 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Anglophile's Notebook by Sunday Taylor 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Midnight Line by Lee Child 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Library Book by Susan Orlean 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Charlotte Moss: A Visual Life: Scrapbooks, Collages, and Inspirations by Charlotte Moss 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Missing Joseph by Elizabeth George 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Old Filth by Jane Gardam 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• On The Wealth of Nations: Books That Changed the World by P. J. O'Rourke 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters 🌹🌹🌹

• Mystery Man by Colin Bateman 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Dead Cert by Dick Francis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Slightly Foxed, Vol. 60 (Winter 2018) 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Apropos of Nothing by Woody Allen 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Last Friends by Jane Gardam 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Obasan by Joy Kogawa 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Wisdom of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Florence King Reader by Florence King 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• How They Decorated: Inspiration from Great Women of the Twentieth Century by Gaye P. Tapp 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Faithful Place by Tana French 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt by Arthur C. Brooks 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Consequences by Penelope Lively 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Day of the Jack Russell by Colin Bateman 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Orchids & Salami: A Gay and Impudent Memoir by Eva Gabor 🌹🌹🌹

• The Kingdom of Speech by Tom Wolfe 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Jeeves in the Offing by P. G. Woodhouse 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Dead Bell by Reid Winslow (reviewed here) 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• The Tender Bar by J. R. Moehringer 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Really Big Lunch: The Roving Gourmand on Food and Life by Jim Harrison 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Private Patient by P. D. James 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Mark Hampton: An American Decorator by Duane Hampton 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. 🌹🌹🌹

• Skios by Michael Frayn 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? by Rick Warren 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by Maarten J. Troost 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Book That Changed My Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books That Matter Most to Them, edited by Roxanne J. Coady 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Conservative Sensibility by George F. Will 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Eat Cake for Breakfast: And 99 Other Small Acts of Happiness by Viola Stanto 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Place in the World by Amy Maroney 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Twice Shy by Dick Francis 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Little Book of Japanese Contentments: Ikigai, Forest Bathing, Wabi-sabi, and More by Erin Niimi Longhurst 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Jolie Blon's Bounce by James Lee Burke 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Bruno: Chief of Police by Martin Walker 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Fork It Over: The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater by Alan Richman 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• What French Women Know: About Love, Sex, and Other Matters of the Heart and Mind by Debra Ollivier 🌹🌹🌹

• Mysteries of Pittsburg by Michael Chabon 🌹🌹🌹

• Slightly Foxed, Vol. 69 (Spring 2021) 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Shape of the Journey: New & Collected Poems by Jim Harrison 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Wry Martinis by Christopher Buckley 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Labyrinth by Kate Mosse 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X by Deborah Davis 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Anxious People by Fredrik Backman 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year by Sue Townsend 🌹🌹🌹

• The Darlings by Cristina Alger 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Choir by Joanna Trollope 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Uncommon Clay by Margaret Maron 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• An Alphabet for Gourmets by M. F. K. Fisher 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler 🌹🌹🌹

• Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose by Flannery O'Connor 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Changed Man by Francine Prose 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Split Images by Leonard Elmore 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• May We be Forgiven by A. M. Holmes 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Theban Mysteries by Amanda Cross 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age by Sherry Turkle 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• BUtterfield 8 by John O'Hara 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Building Beauty: The Alchemy of Design by Michael S. Smith 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Incredulity of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Funerals are Fatal (aka After the Funeral) by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Slightly Foxed, Vol. 71 (Autumn 2021) 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• French Lessons by Ellen Sussman 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Rizzio: A Novella by Denise Mina 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• House Made of Dawn by Scott N. Momaday 🌹🌹🌹

• Peril at End House by Agatha Christie 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Past Tense by Lee Child 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Walden by Henry David Thoreau 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The French Chef in America: Julia Child's Second Act by Alex Prud'homme 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• March Violets by Philip Kerr 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Dr. Yes by Colin Bateman 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Plum Sauce: A Wodehouse Companion by Richard Usborne 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Reflections on the Psalms by C. S. Lewis 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• My Man Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• LaBrava by Elmore Leonard 🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Final Curtain by Ngaio Marsh 🌹🌹🌹🌹1/2

• Gertie: The Fabulous Life of Gertrude Sanford Legendre, Heiress, Explorer, Socialite, Spy by Kathryn Smith 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Secret of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton 🌹🌹🌹🌹

• The Scandal of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

• Maison: French Country Style by Elizabeth Hilliard 🌹🌹🌹

• Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? by Marion Meade 🌹🌹🌹🌹

MY RATING SYSTEM

In 2020, I switched to using roses for my rating system, since this is Rose City Reader. My rating system is idiosyncratic and ever-changing. It is a mix of how a book subjectively appeals to me when I read it, its technical merits, and whether I would recommend it to other people. For example, I might rate a book highly if it's a social comedy set in a British country house because that kind of story checks all my boxes. On the other hand, I will probably rate a book on the low end if it lacks any humor, takes itself too seriously, or intolerantly espouses a point of view I disagree with ("intolerantly" is key in that sentence). 

With those general guidelines in mind:

🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹 Five roses for books I loved, or would recommend to anyone, or I think are worthy of classic "must read" status." Examples would be Lucky Jim (personal favorite), A Gentleman in Moscow (universal recommendation), and Great Expectations (must read).

🌹🌹🌹🌹 Four roses for books I really enjoyed and/or would recommend to people who enjoy that type of book. So I give a lot of four roses because I might really like a book, but it isn't an all-time favorite. And while I'd recommend it to someone who likes that genre -- mystery, historical fiction, food writing, whatever -- I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who asked me for a "good book."

🌹🌹🌹 Three roses for books I was lukewarm on or maybe was glad I read but wouldn't recommend. This is where my subjectivity really shows because I will often give a book three roses simply because it isn't a genre I like. I will read sci-fi books, for example, because they are on some Must read list I'm working on, then not enjoy them because I don't like sci-fi. So when I give a sci-fi book three roses, take it with a big grain of salt.  

🌹🌹 Two roses if I didn't like it. I like most of the book I read because I chose to read them and I read what I like. But I occasionally pick a clunker. And I often dislike the book my Book Club picks. 😉

🌹 One rose if I really didn't like it. I don't know if I've ever rated a book this low. The Magus might be my only example and I read it before I started keeping my lists.

I use half roses if a book falls between categories. I can't explain what that half rose might mean, it's just a feeling.

Here is a link to the star rating system I used for years. I include it because the stars I used in years past meant something different than these roses, so if you look at my lists from past years, the ratings won't mean quite the same thing.