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:
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:
Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau - A wonderfully charming coming of age novel set in the 1970s, told from the perspective of 14 year old Mary Jane. She comes from a conservative family, and is hired for the summer as a babysitter to take care of a precocious 5 year old, whose psychiatrist dad has his famous rock star patient and wife Sheba come live with them for the summer. Mary Jane was such a great character and I loved seeing the world through her sweetly naive eyes. All the characters were so great and really came to life. Although it’s a relatively quiet book, I couldn’t put it down, and when I finished it, I cried a little bit just because it was over and I didn’t want to leave the characters!
Trophy Son by Douglas Brunt - This novel follows Anton from his childhood through his 20s, as he is groomed to be a championship tennis player by his dad, and struggles not just to be a great athlete but also to forge his identity. The writing of this book is just phenomenal - it immediately drew me in, the kind of book that makes you feel not just that you are reading about a real person, but makes you feel like you’re actually experiencing it yourself even though my life experiences couldn’t be more different from Anton’s. If you’re a tennis super-fan like me, you’ll also appreciate the detail that goes into describing the tennis - it was literally like watching a game - though it also may make you worry about the psyches of tennis players, especially the young ones. This one was lingering in my Netgalley backlog for several years, but I’m so glad I finally picked it up!
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr - This book is told from 5 different viewpoints in very disparate points in time. In the 15th century, there is Anna, a young Christian orphan in Constantinople, and Omeir, who lives in the country outside of Constantinople. In the 20th and 21st century, there is Zeno, who we see at throughout his life from his childhood to his 80s, and Seymour, mostly during his childhood and teenage years, who has some significant sensory and emotional issues. And in the far future, we have Konstance, born on a spaceship en route to another galaxy. What connects all of their stories is an Ancient Greek tale called Cloud Cuckoo Land which comes into all of their lives at different times in different ways. And there is so much more to it than that! At 640 pages, it is LONG! And with so many different POV characters in different times, it definitely takes quite a while to really get into. But once I got into it, I couldn’t put it down, and it really gelled into something wonderful - connecting the stories both thematically (with some themes including loneliness, being different from others, search for home, environmentalism, and more), and on a deeper story level. So it definitely takes patience, but when I finished it I was crying and felt like my mind had been blown.
Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny - I would describe this as a novel about quirky characters in a small town - more character driven than plot driven. Set in a small town in Michigan, from the perspective of a woman named Jane - she has just moved to town when the book starts, and each section of the book takes place over a shortish period of time in a different year, over a period of 15 or so years. The writing and the characters are just so wonderful, and the end was almost unbearably poignant. Another book where I cried at the end, not because the ending is tragic but because I was so moved and sad it was over.
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro - This novel is set in an unspecified time in the future, told from the perspective of Klara, an Artificial Friend - basically, a human-looking robot with artificial intelligence. I was absolutely mesmerized by the lovely writing and the unusual narrative voice, and I couldn't put it down. I loved seeing the world through Klara's eyes, with her fascinating mix of unusually keen observation and naivete. Because we see everything only from her perspective, there are a lot of questions about the world and what is really happening that are never answered, but I really didn't mind. This book is such a mood/vibe - somewhat similar to Ishiguro's other masterpiece Never Let Me Go in its limited viewpoint on a familiar yet strange world and questions it raises about the nature of humanity. This seems to be a polarizing book, but you can count me firmly in the camp of those who loved it.
True Crime Story by Joseph Knox - This mystery/thriller was such a great page-turner that I tore through it in 24 hours. Don’t let the title and the conceit of the notes from the author throughout fool you - this is a novel, but a super-creative and unique one! The premise is that a college student named Zoe went missing back in 2011. Writer Evelyn starts investigating it years later, eventually sharing parts of what she has written and her thoughts with fellow mystery writer Joseph Knox, a fictional version of the author of the book. The book is all in the form of her emails and excerpts of her book, which are told in the form of weaving together excerpts from her interviews with the family and friends of the missing girl, as well as other people she discovers in the course of the investigation - plus notes from “Knox” and additional interviews he conducted after something happened to Evelyn. I know, sounds very meta and confusing, but trust me when I say it works! It’s a totally unconventional narrative - reads like the oral history format of Daisy Jones & the Six, or like the transcript of a true crime podcast. I found this to just be such a breath of fresh air in a world of copy cat thrillers. It was incredibly effective in building suspense for a disappearance that had happened before the book started, and presenting it as interviews put a fun new spin on the trope of the unreliable narrator. I couldn’t put it down, and it kept me guessing right til the end, which I did not predict but which also made sense. My favorite mystery/thriller of the year!
Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy - At the start of this novel, main character Inti has recently come to Scotland with her co-workers to try to reintroduce wolves into the countryside in order to help the environment, a project opposed by the townspeople. But there is so much more to the book than that, including themes not just of conservation but mystery, romance, family, trauma and more. I really don’t know how I could describe this book in a way that would do it justice. Such a unique and beautifully written novel, I couldn’t put it down! I thought the author’s book Migrations was also great, but this was even better.
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters - This novel alternates perspectives between two characters - Reese, a trans woman, and Ames, Reese's ex, who used to be trans woman Amy but then de-transitioned back to living as a man. When the woman Ames is sleeping with, Katrina, accidentally becomes pregnant, Ames is not sure he can see himself as a father, and suggests bringing in Reese, who has always wanted to be a mother. The book proceeds from there, along with scenes set in Reese and Amy/Ames' past. I'm a cis gender woman, and while I have read a few novels about trans kids/teens, I don't think I've ever read a book from the perspective of a trans adult, and didn't even know there was such a thing as detransitioning. So the book was very different and interesting for me, though sometimes uncomfortable, with an eye opening #ownvoices account of both the unique struggles of being trans along with all the common emotional struggles anyone can go through. The writing was just so sharp and good, really bringing the characters to life, and I couldn't put it down. Think Curtis Sittenfeld/Taffy Brodesser Akner's "Fleishman Is In Trouble," but with a trans spin. This was one of the first books I read in 2021, but really stayed with me all year long.
West With Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge - A wonderful, heartwarming, different historical novel, this book is told as the reminiscence of the over 100 year old Woody as he is in a nursing home. He tells the story of when he was 17 during the Great Depression/Dust Bowl and ended up helping transport two giraffes from New York harbor across the country to the San Diego Zoo. Woody is a great character and this book really is a coming of age novel as much a historical novel, and the giraffes somehow felt so real and soulful they were like characters as well. I enjoyed this so much and didn’t want to put it down, and ended it with tears running down my face.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - This book was amazing - my only 5 star review of 2021. When it starts, the narrator wakes up alone with no idea who he is, where he is, or why. As he explores and his memories start to come back, with the book unfolding both in the present and his flashback returning memories, both he and the reader discover that he is alone on a spaceship on a very important mission. There is SO much more to it than that, but because of the nature of the book, pretty much everything about it is a spoiler and it’s so much better to see it unfold yourself. Just know that it is absolutely terrific, the best kind of intellectual science fiction. It was a long book but I read it quickly because I couldn’t put it down. The tone is similar to Andy Weir’s similarly wonderful The Martian, though it is both a little more science-y (which even though I couldn’t understand it, was interesting), and more science fiction-y, but it’s funny and emotional as well.
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A few other interesting things about these books:
Genres - This list is an interesting mix of genres - one or two historical novels (depending on whether you consider a book set in the 70s historical 😂), two science fiction novels, one mystery/thriller, one that is impossible to categorize (seriously, what genre is Cloud Cuckoo Land), and the rest contemporary fiction.
Repeat authors - There are just two authors on this list who have previously been on my top ten lists - Andy Weir who made both my 2014 top ten list and my top 20 of 20 years list with The Martian and Kazuo Ishiguro who made my 2006 top ten list with Never Let Me Go.
Author gender - I definitely read way more books by women than men, so it was interesting to me that this list is definitely over-representing the male authors relative to what I read this year.
Book club - I read Cloud Cuckoo Land with my virtual book club, which definitely motivated me to pick up such a long book, and which also was a great discussion.
Netgalley - I received seven of these books for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, but I promise that this did not affect my opinion of these books in any way. The other three books I borrowed from the library.
Note that I give all these posts the tag "Top 10," so you should be able to click on the label "Top 10" at the bottom of the post and see all my other Top 10 posts. (If you are reading this on your phone and can't see labels, you can switch to web view instead of mobile view and you should be able to see them.) And if you just want to see all my old Top 10 lists, you can also click through to my Goodreads profile - I have a separate shelf for each of my old lists.
And if you have an Instagram account and are not already doing so, you can follow my bookstagram account at https://www.instagram.com/electric_bookaloo/ where I post book-related stuff almost every single day from reviews to anticipated books to other book features.
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