Best and Worst reads of 2021

I can't remember all I read this year. (Not many) There'll be ones I don't think of, but 'The Underground Railroad', 'The Boy with The Topknot' and 'Lady In Waiting' were good.

Best reads:

Gentleman in Moscow Amor Towles.
The nightingale Kristian Hannah
The winter witch trilogy Katherine Arden.
Tsarina Ellen Alpsten

Honourable mentions

The Giver of stars Jojo Moyes
The pianist Wladslaw Szpillman
Windswept and interesting Billy Connolly.

Didn't enjoy

The Tattooist of Auschwitz Heather Morris
Vanishing Half Brit Bennett

Best
Three Hours - Rosamund Lupton
The Other Passenger - Louise Candlish

Honourable mentions
The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman
The Push - Ashley Audrain

Didn’t enjoy
Blood Orange - Harriet Tyce
The Midnight Library - Matt Haig (I really wanted to like this but I just wasn’t bothered about finishing it).

I’m hoping to read a lot more this year, I’ve saved a few of the books mentioned in this thread!

Loved
Small Pleasures by Claire Chambers
Mermaid of the Black Conch by Monique Roffey
Manningtree Witches by AK Blakemore
Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce

Liked
Sarah J Maas court of thorn and roses series
Anthony Horowitz Hawthorne series

Didn’t like
Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny
The Bennet Women by Eden Appiah-Kubi
Magpie by Elizabeth Day
The Feast by Margaret Kennedy
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

Best.
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart.
The Salt Path and The Wild Silence by Gaynor winn.
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason.
The Storyteller by Dave Grohl
Worst,
One August Night By Victoria Hislop.

Favourites:
The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
Kindred by Octavia E Butler
The Absolutist by John Boyne

Least favourite:
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Best book this year
Pachinko by Min Jee Lin

Worst book this year
The Midnight Library by Matt Haigh

My favourite books of the year are:

The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin.
A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf.
To Throw Away Unopened by Viv Albertine.
A Burning by Megha Majumdar.
Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga.
The World I Fell Out Of by Melanie Reid.
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe.
Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life by Peter Godfrey-Smith.
Weather by Jenny Offill.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

Enjoyed:
American Dirt: Jeanine Cummins
Pachinko: Min Jin Lee
The Feast: Margaret Kennedy
Piranesi: Susanna Clarke
The Wolf Den: Elodie Harper
In the Unlikely Event: Judy Blume
The Mountains Sing: Nguyen Phan Que Mai
The Five: Hallie Rubenhold

Duds of the Year:
Washington Black: Esi Edugyan
Lullaby: Leila Slimani
The Lamplighters: Emma Stonex

Favourites
Americanah
The Poet X
An American Marriage
The Sealwoman’s Gift
Anatomy of a Scandal
Where the crawdads sing
Small pleasures
The vanishing half
My dark Vanessa

Meh (didn’t live up to the hype for me)
Thursday murder club
Nomadland (loved the film)
No one is talking about this
Ordinary people

Lots of good books for me this year after broadening my reading through recommendations on these threads.

Favourites:
Cuckoo's Calling - Robert Galbraith
The Silence of the Girls - Pat Barker
Nightingale Point - Luan Goldie
Love After Love - Ingrid Persaud
The Mermaid of the Black Conch - Monique Roffey
Daisy Jones and the Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Five - Hallie Rubenhold
The Girl with the Louding Voice - Abi Dare
Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell
American Dirt - Jeanine Cummins
Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
All The Young Men - Ruth Coker Burns
Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel

Least Enjoyed:
Girl, Woman, Other - Bernadine Evaristo
Queenie - Candice Carty-Williams

Worst:
The Salt Path - Raynor Winn
The Girls - Emma Cline
The Things We Left Unsaid - Emma Kennedy (DNF)

I can't believe that so many people disliked Where the Crawdads Sing. I loved it. I loved the descriptive writing. I felt like I was there.

It wasn't just a miss for me it was by far the worst of the year. I did like the descriptive writing but in every other way I disliked it. I remember being on a thread about it at the time, it very much divided opinions.

Exceptional:

Shuggie Bain -Douglas Stuart
The Shipping News - E Annie Proulx
The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende
The Dutch House - Ann Patchett
Mayflies - Andrew O'Hagan
The Mirror and the Light - Hilary Mantel
Earth and Heaven - Sue Gee
The Only Plane in the Sky _ Garrett M Graff
Small Island - Andrea Levy
And Away ... Bill Mortimer

Enjoyed:

The Other Bennett Sister - Janice Hadlow
The Sealwoman's Gift - Sally Magnusson
Mrs Bridge - Evan S Connell
Year of Wonders - Geraldine Brooks
Katherine - Anya Seton
Washington Black - Esi Edugyan
The Art of Dying - Ambrose Parry
A Room Made of Leaves - Kate Grenville
The Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett
Signs for Lost Children - Sarah Moss
Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan
A Single Thread - Tracy Chevalier
The Small House at Allingham - Anthony Trollope

Don't bother:

A Litter of Bones - J D Kirk
Fall - John Preston
Holy Island - L J Ross
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton
The Fallen - David Baldacci
The Day the World Came to Town - Jim Defede

Looking at my duds, I can see where I've been trying to find a new crime series to get into between more literary reads .. and failing! And I would never have attempted a biography of Robert Maxwell if it hadn't been a book club read .. what were we thinking ..

I can't believe that so many people disliked Where the Crawdads Sing. I loved it. I loved the descriptive writing. I felt like I was there.

The Great Alone was also a standout winner for me.

I disliked Normal People. I just couldn't engage with the characters and found them irritating. I felt the same about the Thursday Murder Club. I found The Midnight Library boring and repetitive.

Favourites:
The Country of Others by Leïla Slimani. A French woman marries a Moroccan soldier during the war and moves to Morocco.
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Two sisters during the Biafran war.
Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga. Thanks to her brother's death a girl gets the opportunity to escape poverty through education.
Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea by Teffi. Famous writer escapes the Bolsheviks.
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford. The British upper class fall in love.
Bright by Duanwad Pimwana. Stories of a working class community in Thailand.

Least favourites:
The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrutskie. YA nonsense about lesbian pirates and sea monsters.
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata. Too weird and disturbing for me which was a shame because I love her writing and thought Convenience Store Woman was wonderful.

Absolute Faves:
Sorrow and Bliss
The Dutch House
Excellent Women
Daisy Jones and the Six
Rodham
Lanny
American Dirt

Really Enjoyed:
Go Tell It On the Mountain
Such a Fun Age
A Room with a View
The World of Susie Wong

Duds:
Earthlings

Best:
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
Luster by Raven Leilani

Worst:
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

@TheAnswerIsCake no! Please share your opinions! As others have said I think that's so important! I also feel really bad for Kate Clanchy herself, because her love for her students is so clear in her book- as well as her sense of self, which must be so messed up now.

Yes it's probably white privilege that meant you (we) didn't spot the problems- and you can take that as an issue for you if you want, but you definitely can't criticise yourself here, really and I certainly don't think you should feel 'wrong' for liking the book. The comments she makes in the book are so negative and patronising when you look at them individually- and it feels shocking in retrospect when you see them....

....but it was published by a major publisher. She's represented by a top literary agency. Several very high profile authors endorsed it. It won several major awards. That's a MASSIVE problem with white privilege underpinning an entire industry. It's deeply, deeply uncomfortable that an entire industry let the book be published at that level without identifying any problems. I feel like that's the major problem- and poor Kate Clanchy is being made out to be the main one at fault.

Oh I've gone a bit overboard. But don't blame yourself for liking something that is, ultimately, sweet, well-meaning, and reflective. Publishing needs to change,

@packetmix. I loved Miss Benson's Beetle. Makes it into my top 10 for 2021

Best A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

Loved: Midnight Library by Matt Haig, the Salt Path by Raynor Winn, Run by Ann Patchett, Empire of the Sun by JG Ballard, In the Woods by Tana French.

Worst: Generation X by Douglas Coupland

Those People by Louise Candlish, a big disappointment after Our House, I was expecting twists and turns but it was as if she finished the book in a rush.

My favourites - that I’ll likely reread at some point:

Circe by Madeleine Miller

Scythe by Neal Shusterman

The Mammy by Brendan O’Carroll (can not stand Mrs Brown the tv show but this book was charming and sad and just reminded me so much of my granny. So much better and different than the tv show).

The Godfather by Mario Puzzo

Charlotte’s Web by E B White

The Bunker Diary by Kevin Brooks

Very good, but likely won’t reread:

Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Barracuda by Christos Tsiolkas

The Cry by Helen Fitzgerald

All That Remains: A Life in Death by Sue Black

Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

The Secretary by Renee McKnight

Disappointed by:

Testaments by Margaret Atwood

The Little Friend by Donna Tartt

All of the Thomas Cromwell series by Hilary Mantel (listened to Bring up the bodies on ebook; was my New Year resolution to start and finish this series in 2021).

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey

Couldn’t finish:

Summer House with Swimming Pool by Herman Koch

So many books by Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, The Heart Goes Last, Wilderness Tips.

The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson

Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi

Bird Box by Josh Malerman

And quite a few more actually. The reason I’ve managed to get through so many more books this year is because I allow myself to put it aside if I’m not engaged now by the third chapter.

Life is too short to persevere with bad books. I have over 1000 on my reading wish list. I’ll never get to try them all if I waste time on ones I don’t like.

Tsarina is great but really gory in places.

Loved:
Hail Mary Project - Andy Weir
Miss Bensons Beetle - Rachel Joyce

Did not enjoy and ended up DNFing the f Dune prequel, Duke of Caladan