Best and Worst reads of 2021

[StColumbofNavron]

I don’t think we have a thread yet. I love to see what people have read and rated.

Standouts for me:
Frenchman’s Creek, Daphne du Maurier
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, Jorge Amado
The Island of Missing Trees, Elif Shafak

Honourable mention
The Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy
Twenty Years Later, Alexander Dumas
The Autumn of the Ace, Louis de Bernieres

Not For Me
Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
Us, David Nichols

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

Worst:
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

@RampantIvy

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.

For me, it was that very description that didn’t work. I felt like it was her only chance to write a novel so she threw everything she had at it. I can normally envisage the world I see in stories, with or without description so it was weird that I just could not see it, in spite of her laboriously painting it. Outside of the writing, the plot didn’t really work for me or the characters and I don’t have to ‘like’ them to enjoy a read. The only good thing that came out of it for me was that the court scene led to a reread of To Kill a Mockingbird. I wanted to give it 1 star but Us by David Nichols got 1 and it felt unfair to lump it with that so I gave 2.

All that said, I’m glad lots of people did like it. If it brings you joy it brings you joy and it’s all so subjective. I felt like my actual heart broke when people didn’t like A Gentleman in Moscow.

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)

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

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

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.

Best book this year
Pachinko by Min Jee Lin

Worst book this year
The Midnight Library by Matt Haigh

Pachinko was great and I think if I hadn’t read The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane last year that deals with not dissimilar themes it would have been on my best reads, but because I love Tea Girl it didn’t quite make it. I’m thinking I was a bit harsh now.

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.
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.

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
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!

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

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.