Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Anticipated Books of February 2022

Another month, another set of books publishing that I am excited to read!  And the TBR list gets longer and longer...  Here are the books coming out in February 2022 that I'm most excited for.  Although I have advanced copies of some of them, I haven't read any of them yet - but hopefully will be reading a lot of them next month!

Sunday, January 2, 2022

Jen's Top 10 Books of 2021

 Super-excited to bring you my top 10 favorite books I read in 2021!  And boy, did I agonize over this list!  I’ve been making top 10 lists since all the way back in 1999 (back when I used to just share my list with a few friends), but somehow it never gets easier!  In fact if anything, maybe it gets harder as I read more and more books over the years.  

As a reminder, these are books I read in a particular year, not necessarily books which were published that year - though as it turns out, all but one of this year’s list was published in 2021.  For the first time ever, I only had one 5 star book for the year!  I try to reserve 5 stars for the most amazing books that I know will be all time favorites, and this year even though I read 173 books, there was only one book that felt like it deserved 5 stars - Project Hail Mary.  However, I had 21 books which I gave 4.5 stars to, which is what made narrowing down my top 10 so hard, so perhaps I’ll also be sharing with you a “best of the rest” or a best of various genres.

Without further ado, my ten most favorite of the year, listed in alphabetical order by author’s last name:

Mary Jane - Jessica Anya Blau
Trophy Son - Douglas Brunt
Cloud Cuckoo Land - Anthony Doerr
Early Morning Riser - Katherine Heiny
Klara and the Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro
True Crime Story - Joseph Knox
Once There Were Wolves - Charlotte McConaghy
Detransition, Baby - Torrey Peters
West With Giraffes - Lynda Rutledge
Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir

Read on for a little more about each book: