3 years ago, I saw that my friend, Leo, had written a list of all the books he had read that year. Honestly, it made me so happy to read and get his recommendations, I decided that year to take on that same tradition. Usually, I post these lists on Facebook, as that is what Leo did, but now I’m looking to document it better, for myself. So this year marks the start of me blogging these lists! I’ll start with the 2021 list, and then do my next blog getting caught up on the 2019 and 2020 lists (sorry they’ll be out of order for anyone who that bothers). Of course, I would like to say that this list is not as long as I’d like it to be. There are many many books I hoped to read this year that I haven’t yet. Let’s hope they make the 2022 cut!
KEY
* books I read that were only about 100 pages (I read a lot of short stories this year to cover as many genres and authors as possible whilst I started drafting my first novel)
** if I have read the book before, but reread it this year
*** MY BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
Without further ado, my list for 2021 is as follows:
*Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr.
*Television was a baby, Allen Ginsberg
*The Break Through, Daphne Du Maurier
*The Custard Heart, Dorothy Parker
*Three Japanese Short Stories (Penguin), (As appears on cover) Akutagawa & Others
*The Veiled Woman, Anai’s Nin
*Notes on Nationalism, George Orwell
*Food, Gertrude Stein
*The Three Electroknights, Stanislaw Lem
*The Great Hunger, Patrick Kavanagh
*The Legend of Sleepers, Danilo Ki’s
*The Black Ball, Ralph Ellison
*Till September Petronella, Jean Rhys
*Investigations of a Dog, Franz Kafka
*Daydream & Drunkenness, Clarice Lispector
*An Advertisement for toothpaste, Ryszard Kapuściński
*Create Dangerously, Albert Camus
*The Vigilante, John Steinbeck
*I have more souls than one, Fernando Pessoa
*The Missing Girl, Shirley Jackson
*Four Russian Short Stories (Penguin), (As appears on cover) Gazdanov & Others
*The Distance of the moon, Italo Calvino
*The Master’s Tools will never dismantle the Masters house, Audre Lorde
*The Skeleton’s Holiday, Leonora Carrington
*The Finger, William S. Burroughs
*The End, Samuel Beckett
*New York City in 1979, Kathy Acker
*Africa’s Tarnished Name, Chinua Achebe
*Notes on ‘Camp’, Susan Sontag
*The Red Tenda of Bologna, John Berger
*The Gigolo, Françoise Sagan
*Glittering City, Cyprian Ekwenski
*Piers of the Homeless Night, Hans Fallada
*The Duke in his domain, Truman Capote
*Leaving the yellow house, Saul Bellow
Win, Harlan Coben
**Shelter, Harlan Coben
**Seconds Away, Harlan Coben
**Found, Harlan Coben
**Deal Breaker, Harlan Coben
**Drop Shot, Harlan Coben
**Fade Away, Harlan Coben
**Back Spin, Harlan Coben
The Familiars, Stacey Halls
***The Railway Detective, Edward Marston
Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Excursion Train, Edward Marston
***I know why the caged bird sings, Maya Angelou
The Railway Viaduct, Edward Marston
Reservoir 13, Jon McGregor
An Artist of the floating world, Kazuo Ishiguro