Monthly Archives for December 2021

Year in Reading 2021

This year, I decided to keep track of the books I read, something as a bibliophile I had never formally done before. The reading year started with Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, a book I liked, though found some fundamental issues with his pessimism about our species. The year’s end found me finishing Ursula K. LeGuin’s City of Illusions, some entrancing early science fiction from a master of the form. I’ve concluded the list with her book, though I’ve started reading N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season the last week of the year—I won’t finish it to make 42 reads. In between, I reacquainted myself with favorites like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, as fresh of a read as when I first read it in 1993. I also celebrated the life of Larry McMurtry, who died this year, by rereading The Last Picture Show. We also lost Anne Rice and Joan Didion, and they’ll probably appear on next year’s list.

Not making the official list this year were books I started but didn’t finish for various reasons: The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, Watership Down by Richard Adams, and The Histories by Herodotus.

Book list 2021

  1. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
  2. The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
  3. Factfulness by Hans Rosling
  4. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
  5. The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker
  6. Native Tongue by Carl Hiassen
  7. The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry
  8. The Spy by Paulo Coelho
  9. The Great Leader by Jim Harrison
  10. The Odyssey by Homer
  11. Sailing the Winedark Sea by Thomas Cahill
  12. Road Fever by Tim Cahill
  13. Candide by Voltaire
  14. Theogeny and Works and Days by Hesiod
  15. Cold in July by Joe Lansdale
  16. Two Kinds of Truth by Michael Connelly
  17. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
  18. Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
  19. The High Window by Raymond Chandler
  20. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
  21. The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by Jonathan Rauch
  22. Charcoal Joe by Walter Mosley
  23. The Oresteia by Aeschylus
  24. IQ by Joe Ide
  25. The Likeness by Tana French
  26. The Clouds by Aristophanes
  27. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
  28. The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem
  29. Unfuckology by Amy Alkon
  30. Making a Literary Life by Carolyn See
  31. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  32. How to Think by Alan Jacobs
  33. There Will Never Be Another You by Carolyn See
  34. Protein Power by Drs. Michael and Mary Dan Eades
  35. Range by David Epstein
  36. The Theban Plays by Sophocles
  37. Rocannon’s World by Ursula K. LeGuin
  38. Planet of Exile by Ursula K. LeGuin
  39. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
  40. The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
  41. City of Illusions by Ursula K. LeGuin