My Favorite Books of 2021
I read a total of forty books last year. I really like that number. It's just a good sounding number. In 2020 I felt like the pandemic had hindered my reading somewhat, so I thought I would get more books read in 2021. I only read two extra books in 2021, but that is about my average anyway. I usually read between 30-40 books a year. And I'm satisfied with the number I did read. Now, before I get into which books were my favorites, honorable mentions, and which books I didn't like, first some stats. Again, I continue to use Book Riot's reading log to track all my books and stats.
The vast majority of my reads were fiction at 93%, but 8% were non-fiction. Breaking down the age categories, the majority were adult books at 75% (no surprise there), then 15% for YA and 10% for middle grade. As for the gender of authors, 52% were male and 45% female. I've tried to balance that out in recent years, and it's not bad. 2% was from non-binary authors. There was one book in that category. 17.5% of my reads were by a POC and 22% had a POC protagonist. I try to read more of those during Black History Month, but I'm not sure if that's going to happen as much this year because this year I feel more like winging it and reading what I want to read. But sometimes I just get drawn to those stories naturally anyway. 12.5% of my reads had a LGBTQ+ protagonist. A lot of the time, I'm not even intentionally trying to read more books with LGBTQ+ rep, it just kind of happens that the book I pick up has that. I think that's a good thing. It shows that books are becoming more and more inclusive. Only 2% of my reads were by LGBTQ+ authors though. Sometimes authors don't always share what their orientation is, so I can only input what I know.
The one month I read the most books was in February, which is interesting because that is the shortest month. I must have read mostly shorter books or finished something I had been reading for a while. I actually just looked and no, there were a couple chunky books in there, so that's interesting. July and August were my lowest reading months. As always, most books I gave four stars, the next highest rating was five stars. The lowest rating I gave was two stars to one book. I tend to be pretty generous with my ratings. Most of the books I read were between 300-500 pages. Basically the average size for a book. It's interesting that I didn't read any books that were below 100 pages. Well, I guess that's not that surprising. Not too many books are that short. 55% of my reading was fantasy, 22.5% was sci-fi and the rest was everything else with general fiction coming in third place at 5%. I'm honestly surprised at the sci-fi number because it feels like I read a good amount of sci-fi, but I guess I don't. I did get a few classic sci-fi books read though, so I'm proud about that. Fantasy is always my top genre and I doubt that will ever change. 85% of my reading came from American authors. Welp. I guess I should read more from authors from different countries. This stastistic can also be tricky to compute because I never know whether to input the data based on the author's nationality or where they live and publish the book, so that could be why it's skewed towards the USA.
But that covers my stats - the ones I care about anyway. Let's get to my favorite reads of 2021 now. In no particular order.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab - Schwab became a new favorite author for me last year, and this book really worked for me. It helped that I enjoy reading about characters who are immortal or live the same day over and over. The writing was beautiful too.
Slay by Brittney Morris - This book was perfection. Both a heavy hitting and feel good story. It really made me care about the characters. It had a good message behind it.
The Fires of Vengeance by Evan Winter - First book was solid. This book was absolutely fantastic.
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez - The book I recommend everyone to read. It was really eye opening, but also very enraging.
Trail of Lightning and Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse - These were both a lot of fun to read, and surprisingly dark. I need the next book in this series.
Nolyn by Michael J. Sullivan - The start of his new series following up The Legends of the First Empire. Admittedly, it took a while for it to get going for me, but I really liked how everything came together and how the new characters percieved past events. I found that to be really interesting.
The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden - Wonderful ending to a beautiful trilogy.
The Wisdom of Crowds by Joe Abercrombie - One of the best fantasy writers out there bar none. This one was a rollercoaster all the way through. It crushed me. It really needs more books. I don't fully accept the ending.
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury - This surprised me because I wasn't sure if I was going to like it. I didn't expect it to make me chuckle either. Great stuff.
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Stephen Brusatte - Probably the best book on dinosaurs I've read, and I've read a lot of them.
Honorable Mentions
Above the Timberline by Gregory Manchess - This is an illustrated sci-fi story. The art work is beautiful, the story is fine, but nothing special. I think it would make a cool movie though.
Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard series by Rick Riordan - Just a fun time, and some of the best characters.
Dune by Frank Herbert - Love the world of Dune, but I admit it occasionally lost me.
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo - Entertaining with a very interesting character. I'm talking about the Darkling.
Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala - Another fun read. I had never read a cosy mystery before. So much food.
Least Favorite, Disliked/Hated, DNF
Bear Town by Fredrik Backman - I thought I was going to like it, but I mostly just didn't care for the writing style. I'm open to trying another book by him though.
Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline - Just blah lol. I was not happy with some choices that were made.
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad - Awful. My worst book I read all year.
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs - It was very creative, I just got bored.
The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang - Not enough development, and I didn't fully understand the magic system.
Darkspell by Katherine Kerr - I liked Daggerspell just fine, but more characters got introduced and I just got confused and tuned out.
The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling - I wanted more thrills and I was really really not a fan of the relationship that developed in this one.
Haunted by James Herbert - It was disappointing. Too much bouncing around, over-the-top ending, and the main character could be annoying at times.
The Black Company by Glen Cook - My one DNF. The writing style was not for me.
Goals for 2022
I don't really like making goals because I don't stick to them. I had no goals for 2021, but this year I have a few things I'd at least like to try to accomplish. The main one is reading more books from authors that maybe I only read one book by, really enjoyed it, but have yet to read any more books by them. I have a list of authors for this. That is my main focus. The other two things are more optional, but I'd also like to start a new epic fantasy series (new to me) from my physical TBR. Should be easy enough. I don't need to finish the series, just start one. Lastly, I'd like to try to read more classics too. Probably mainly going to be public domain stuff, and not sff classics. I think I can do some of these. They're not too hard. We'll see how I do by the end of the year.
Tomorrow, I'm going to post my book survey that comes from the Perpetual Page Turner blog. She hasn't posted one for this year, so I'm going to reuse the same questions from last year.
The vast majority of my reads were fiction at 93%, but 8% were non-fiction. Breaking down the age categories, the majority were adult books at 75% (no surprise there), then 15% for YA and 10% for middle grade. As for the gender of authors, 52% were male and 45% female. I've tried to balance that out in recent years, and it's not bad. 2% was from non-binary authors. There was one book in that category. 17.5% of my reads were by a POC and 22% had a POC protagonist. I try to read more of those during Black History Month, but I'm not sure if that's going to happen as much this year because this year I feel more like winging it and reading what I want to read. But sometimes I just get drawn to those stories naturally anyway. 12.5% of my reads had a LGBTQ+ protagonist. A lot of the time, I'm not even intentionally trying to read more books with LGBTQ+ rep, it just kind of happens that the book I pick up has that. I think that's a good thing. It shows that books are becoming more and more inclusive. Only 2% of my reads were by LGBTQ+ authors though. Sometimes authors don't always share what their orientation is, so I can only input what I know.
The one month I read the most books was in February, which is interesting because that is the shortest month. I must have read mostly shorter books or finished something I had been reading for a while. I actually just looked and no, there were a couple chunky books in there, so that's interesting. July and August were my lowest reading months. As always, most books I gave four stars, the next highest rating was five stars. The lowest rating I gave was two stars to one book. I tend to be pretty generous with my ratings. Most of the books I read were between 300-500 pages. Basically the average size for a book. It's interesting that I didn't read any books that were below 100 pages. Well, I guess that's not that surprising. Not too many books are that short. 55% of my reading was fantasy, 22.5% was sci-fi and the rest was everything else with general fiction coming in third place at 5%. I'm honestly surprised at the sci-fi number because it feels like I read a good amount of sci-fi, but I guess I don't. I did get a few classic sci-fi books read though, so I'm proud about that. Fantasy is always my top genre and I doubt that will ever change. 85% of my reading came from American authors. Welp. I guess I should read more from authors from different countries. This stastistic can also be tricky to compute because I never know whether to input the data based on the author's nationality or where they live and publish the book, so that could be why it's skewed towards the USA.
But that covers my stats - the ones I care about anyway. Let's get to my favorite reads of 2021 now. In no particular order.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab - Schwab became a new favorite author for me last year, and this book really worked for me. It helped that I enjoy reading about characters who are immortal or live the same day over and over. The writing was beautiful too.
Slay by Brittney Morris - This book was perfection. Both a heavy hitting and feel good story. It really made me care about the characters. It had a good message behind it.
The Fires of Vengeance by Evan Winter - First book was solid. This book was absolutely fantastic.
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez - The book I recommend everyone to read. It was really eye opening, but also very enraging.
Trail of Lightning and Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse - These were both a lot of fun to read, and surprisingly dark. I need the next book in this series.
Nolyn by Michael J. Sullivan - The start of his new series following up The Legends of the First Empire. Admittedly, it took a while for it to get going for me, but I really liked how everything came together and how the new characters percieved past events. I found that to be really interesting.
The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden - Wonderful ending to a beautiful trilogy.
The Wisdom of Crowds by Joe Abercrombie - One of the best fantasy writers out there bar none. This one was a rollercoaster all the way through. It crushed me. It really needs more books. I don't fully accept the ending.
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury - This surprised me because I wasn't sure if I was going to like it. I didn't expect it to make me chuckle either. Great stuff.
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Stephen Brusatte - Probably the best book on dinosaurs I've read, and I've read a lot of them.
Honorable Mentions
Above the Timberline by Gregory Manchess - This is an illustrated sci-fi story. The art work is beautiful, the story is fine, but nothing special. I think it would make a cool movie though.
Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard series by Rick Riordan - Just a fun time, and some of the best characters.
Dune by Frank Herbert - Love the world of Dune, but I admit it occasionally lost me.
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo - Entertaining with a very interesting character. I'm talking about the Darkling.
Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala - Another fun read. I had never read a cosy mystery before. So much food.
Least Favorite, Disliked/Hated, DNF
Bear Town by Fredrik Backman - I thought I was going to like it, but I mostly just didn't care for the writing style. I'm open to trying another book by him though.
Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline - Just blah lol. I was not happy with some choices that were made.
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad - Awful. My worst book I read all year.
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs - It was very creative, I just got bored.
The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang - Not enough development, and I didn't fully understand the magic system.
Darkspell by Katherine Kerr - I liked Daggerspell just fine, but more characters got introduced and I just got confused and tuned out.
The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling - I wanted more thrills and I was really really not a fan of the relationship that developed in this one.
Haunted by James Herbert - It was disappointing. Too much bouncing around, over-the-top ending, and the main character could be annoying at times.
The Black Company by Glen Cook - My one DNF. The writing style was not for me.
Goals for 2022
I don't really like making goals because I don't stick to them. I had no goals for 2021, but this year I have a few things I'd at least like to try to accomplish. The main one is reading more books from authors that maybe I only read one book by, really enjoyed it, but have yet to read any more books by them. I have a list of authors for this. That is my main focus. The other two things are more optional, but I'd also like to start a new epic fantasy series (new to me) from my physical TBR. Should be easy enough. I don't need to finish the series, just start one. Lastly, I'd like to try to read more classics too. Probably mainly going to be public domain stuff, and not sff classics. I think I can do some of these. They're not too hard. We'll see how I do by the end of the year.
Tomorrow, I'm going to post my book survey that comes from the Perpetual Page Turner blog. She hasn't posted one for this year, so I'm going to reuse the same questions from last year.