What I've Read in 2021 So Far
This blog, like so many before it, has fallen into disrepair. To get it back on track, here’s a list of every book I’ve read so far in 2021, with a sentence or two or three or four of commentary.
How I track what I’ve read.
The Books
Moneyball by Michael Lewis. I read this because it’s one of those business books people tell you to read. I enjoyed it. Would I read it again? Probably, but not any time soon, and I still haven’t seen the movie.
The Human Stain by Philip Roth. The definition of a novel that hasn’t aged well. An illiterate cleaning woman, a white man explaining the Black experience, an exploration of cancel culture before cancel culture was cancel culture, but a good look at what the late Clinton era and early Internet era contained.
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. Mandel. Bernie Madoff fan fiction. Not worth the time, but for some reason on a lot of lists of books you should read.
Firestarter by Stephen King. Required reading for the Stephen King completionist. Not high on the list for anyone else. Like a lot of Stephen King works, contains some questionable depictions of indingenous Americans.
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson. A perfect short story collection by one of my favorite writers. Will read again, probably soon.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Meh. A nice fantasy mystery, a cool story, but didn’t stick with me much.
How Fiction Works by James Wood. Recommended to me by Adam O’Fallon Price when I reached out to him about the best books to read on the craft of writing. I lent out my copy recently and I’m already thinking about how I need to get another copy, because any aspiring writer should read this but I need a copy for myself to hold onto and another to lend out.
The Boy in the Field by Margot Livesy. I’m confused by this book. Not the mystery it initially broadcasts itself as. Confused by the author’s use of “boy” throughout, as the boy in question is a grown man, graduated from school, with a job. A good book but my main observation is the author seems to fundamentally misunderstand how children view themselves and young adults.
Mia Dao by Joyce Carol Oates. Weird, quick read. A girl and the cat she loved, and a murder or two.
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. Like everything he writes, beautiful and haunting and masterful. I heard there’s a movie based on it. Starring Matt Damon. Doesn’t look very good.
The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley. A page turner. Part of my recent obsession with reading more page turners and thrillers, something that began in late 2020. Almost the exact same storyline as The Guest List, although slightly more believable, as it doesn’t revolve around monumental coincidence.
Watch Me Disappear by Janelle Brown. Also a page turner. Not something anyone needs to prioritize reading.
A Good Marriage by Kimberly McCreight. If you like twists and turns and adverbs, this book’s for you.
A Legacy of Spies by John LeCarre. LeCarre retcons his first hit.
In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien. I’d read two other books by Tim O’Brien. The Things They Carried—required reading at my high school but at few others, as far as I can tell—and Going After Cacciato, his strange, haunting, magical realism Vietnam war novel. In the Lake of the Woods is another Vietnam novel, because I don’t know that he can write anything that isn’t, but it’s also a missing person story, and a certain kind of missing story I haven’t read before and don’t expect to read again. The footnotes take it to the next level.
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. I’ve finally read a Pynchon novel!
The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn. The worst book I’ve read this year. Hard to put down. I recommend the New Yorker article about A. J. Finn’s lies over this dumb book.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John LeCarre. The first book by LeCarre I read, in 2019, and the first book of his I’ve re-read, only two years later. Does more need to be said?
The Night Manager by John LeCarre. This is one of those rare examples: the television show that is better than the book it’s based on. I watched the show first, read the book, and would recommend the show over the book.
Devolution by Max Brooks. We read this as part of my book club. It was my least favorite book we’ve read. I think my summary for the rest of our book club was something like “a problematic investigation of the other, cluttered with name drops and tedious pop culture references.” If you want to read a book about Bigfoot killing contemporary yuppies, you won’t be disappointed by this.
The Antagonist by Lynn Coady. I discovered this book years ago, in a library, when I was looking for novels written in epistolary form, preferably ones written in the form of a series of emails. I wasn’t able to check it out from that library because I was in Wisconsin. It’s not the best novel I’ve read this year but I’m glad I read it. I don’t think I’ll read it again.
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. The Sacklers are a pack of scoundrels. Not much more to say. I recommend this book paired with Winners Take All and The Constant Gardener, for more on the villainy of pharmaceuticals and philanthropy.
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. The best novel I’ve read this year. Go read it now if you haven’t.
Whale Day by Billy Collins. A gift from my parents for either my birthday or Christmas. Nice, simple, honest poetry.
Our Kind of Traitor by John LeCarre. The least favorite of the le Carre novels I’ve read. Still worth a read, but not to be at the top of your list.
Rising Sun by Micheal Crichton. Did not age well. A racist paranoid rant in the form of a low-rent neo-noir novel.
Blockade Billy by Stephen King. Meh. I realized while reading this that I’d read it before and it was so immemorable I didn’t remember reading it until I was halfway through. I’ve already forgotten what happens in it.
The Constant Gardener by John LeCarre. I wanted more on the evils of pharmaceuticals, so I turned to this one next. I am doing the thing where you enjoy a novel by an author so you read their next one. Normally I burn out in this style. I haven’t burnt out yet.
Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard. I’ve always wanted to read something by Elmore Leonard. More meta than I realized it would be. My biggest complaint here is looking up the cast list for the movie afterward and realizing they cast Danny DeVito for the “Shorty” character when it’s obvious the character was meant more as a parody of a Tom Cruise type.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Loved this book. Expected to hate it. I will never be as smart as an Andy Weir protagonist, I know that much.
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons. Good, quiet, beautiful book. I see it compared a lot with Catcher in the Rye. I think that’s unfair. This is very much its own novel.
Agent Running in the Field by John LeCarre. The last novel published during his lifetime. Quiet, reserved, with exploration of the Trump and Brexit eras. No easy answers provided. Worth a read.
Who is Maud Dixon? By Alexandra Andrews. Everyone knows Mr. Ripley was talented. What this book presupposes is, maybe he wasn’t? If I hadn’t already crowned The Woman in the Window as my least favorite book I’ve read this year, this would be the winner. For a book full of unrealistic twists and turns, it’s oddly predictable.
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones. Gruesome horror. I particularly enjoyed the Reservation setting that didn’t settle for any tropes, aside from the horror tropes.
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris. I’ve heard this described as Get Out meets The Devil Wears Prada. I haven’t seen or read The Devil Wears Prada, but that seems like a perfect description. I liked this, didn’t love it, but definitely recommend it. If you cannot tolerate borderline-supernatural premises for intrigue, you might have to skip it.
Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson. I think it was my third time reading this book. I’ve started to loop back through it one more time. Perfection.
Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica. I finished reading this a few weeks ago and already forgot most of it. Do you like twists and turns and missing women narratives? Read it if you do. I’ll warn you, the first chapter involves a child in captivity, which was so hard to read that I almost put it down. I don’t know that I recommend this to anyone other than the Read Every Missing Woman Book completionist.
The Bullet by Mary Louise Kelly. Whatever. I need to stop reading these thrillers.
The Fisherman by John Langan. This book should’ve either been shorter or longer. The middle 150 pages or so were a flashback, told in a murky, dissatisfying way by a diner cook, who was himself repeating something a reverend told him, who was repeating something a woman in a nursing home told him, or maybe the reverend did some independent research? I’m describing what I would normally love but it’s told in a way that feels a little sloppy instead of coherent. I intend to write more about this book. Worth a read. I’ll probably read again. Liked it in spite of, or maybe because of, its many imperfections. Good Moby-Dick references too.
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson. I’ve read three works of short fiction by DJ this year. What a champion. This one was also a re-read. Go read it.
I have an idea that I’ll start writing individual blog posts about each book I write. Perhaps that’s what you’ll see in here next. Either way, I intend to start writing more about what I’ve read, and it’s good to get this list out of my system.