I think this started in 2020, but I have noticed a definite change in the cadence of my reading. While I average a book a week or better, my actual reading pace is very different. I'll read some books (several books) in a day or two, while others take me weeks to get through. I think this tendency has grown out of the way I read now, which really has changed since February 2020. Before the pandemic, I did the bulk of my reading on the subway. Sometimes I'd spend a weekend day or a day off reading, but most of my reading was done in 30-40 minute chunks across two daily commutes. This routine I think propelled me forward and kept me moving through books that I might have set aside if I had other options. I've tried, with varying success, to stick to reading before and after work each day, but now I have my whole library available to me every day. If I'm not in the mood to read what I have started, I have many other options to choose from. I don't know that this is either good or bad, but it's a change in how I read.
Here is the full list of books I read in 2021:
- Berta Isla, by Javier Marías
- Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler
- EEG, by Daša Drndić
- Seeing People Off, by Jana Beňová
- Outline, by Rachel Cusk
- Unforgiving Years, by Victor Serge
- The Radetsky March, by Joseph Roth
- Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid
- In the Café of Lost Youth, by Patrick Modiano
- Texas: The Great Theft, by Carmen Boullosa
- The Memory Police, by Yōko Ogawa
- Red, White & Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston
- Dog Symphony, by Sam Munson
- The Dream of My Return, by Horacio Castellanos Moya
- Senselessness, by Horacio Castellanos Moya
- All the Names, by José Saramago
- Ambiguous Adventure, by Cheikh Hamidou Kane
- The Gloaming, by Melanie Finn
- Minor Feelings: An Asian-American Reckoning, by Cathy Park Hong
- Death of an Englishman, by Magdalen Nabb
- Dance of the Jakaranda, by Peter Kimani
- The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai
- Sweet and Sour Milk, by Nuruddin Farah
- Think Again, by Adam Grant
- The Fortune of the Rougons, by Émile Zola
- The Heat of the Day, by Elizabeth Bowen
- Sphinx, by Anne Garréta
- The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin
- The Obelisk Gate, by N.K. Jemisin
- The Stone Sky, by N.K. Jemisin
- The Barefoot Woman, by Scholastique Mukasonga
- The Body Snatcher, by Patricia Melo
- Poetics of Work, by Noémi Lefebvre
- The Emissary, by Yōko Tawada
- Not a Novel: A Memoir in Pieces, by Jenny Erpenbeck
- The Appointment, by Herta Müller
- The Spirit of Science Fiction, by Roberto Bolaño
- Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie
- How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi
- Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe, by Kapka Kassabova
- Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday
- Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke
- Two Serious Ladies, by Jane Bowles
- Telephone, by Percival Everett
- Euphoria, by Lily King
- Offshore, by Penelope Fitzgerald
- While We Were Dating, by Jasmine Guillory
- In the Company of Men, by Veronique Tadjo
- Mourning, by Eduardo Halfon
- Daddy's Gone A-Hunting, by Penelope Mortimer
- Fieldwork, by Mischa Berlinski
- The Enchanted April, by Elizabeth von Arnim
- Dummy Boy: Tekashi 6ix9ine and the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods, by Shawn Setaro
- French Exit, by Patrick DeWitt
- Erasure, by Percival Everett
And now some stats: For the first time ever, the majority of the books I read last year (33 out of 55) were by women, with one more by a non-binary author. Sometime in the late summer – when I accidentally broke the streak – I realized I had read 11 consecutive books by women, which itself is probably a record. I considered reading only women for the remainder of the year, and I almost did but I let a few men slip in. I read books from 23 different countries last year (fewer than in 2020), including books from 6 countries I'd never read previously (the same count as 2020; this year's new countries were: Slovakia, Somalia, Rwanda, Romania, Bulgaria, and Côte d'Ivoire). I read 14 books by Black authors, about the same as last year. For various reasons, I read more non-fiction than I have in a long while: 7 books in total. Two of these were for a work book club. A third – Dummy Boy – I read because it was written (brilliantly!) by a good friend. The others are mostly memoirs and travel journals, which is to say within the scope of non-fiction I usually read. I did two re-reads in 2021: Outline because it was selected for a book club I was in, and The Dream of My Return just because.
When I read it in May, I declared that The Gloaming was the best book I'd read in 2021 to date. It seems like a distant memory now, but I do think it was my favorite book of the year. It sucked me in and took me to totally unexpected places. I picked up both of Melanie Finn's other books last year and I expect I'll get to reading them this year. Some other favorites from last year include Kapka Kassabova's Border, which took me ages to read, but was wonderful and really made me want to visit Bulgaria; Jenny Erpenbeck's Not a Novel, which gave me such a wonderful sense of East Berlin and the strangeness of having the entire world of your childhood just disappear; Victor Serge's Unforgiving Years, which I found rather slow reading but which has stayed with me – I find myself looking for Serge's memoirs every time I'm at a bookstore now; and there are others: Eduardo Halfon's Mourning (he makes my notables list every year I read him, it seems), Daša Drndić's EEG, Nuruddin Farah's Sweet and Sour Milk; Elizabeth von Arnim's The Enchanted April; Percival Everett's Erasure. I feel like I could go on, but I have to stop somewhere. I already have my first book of 2021 set out, but beyond that who knows what's ahead. Here's hoping for another good year of reading, with better circumstances outside my reading life.
