It’s the most unqualified success among the goals I gave myself upon moving to Europe. My courthouse book is an eternal work in progress; my painting hobby is advancing glacially; the improv career is, like so many other things, limited by COVID. But (thanks largely to that very same pandemic) my plan to read more has been a grand slam. In the before times, I’d be lucky to finish three books a year, ticking through 10-20 pages per night as I drifted off to sleep. Last year I finished 37 books¹, just over three books a month. 

As Jeff Bezos has devolved from friendly galactic senator to cackling evil emperor, I’ve feel increasingly ashamed of giving any money to Amazon. So it gives me no pleasure to report that my Kindle is fantastic, and a key part of my reading success. It’s small, light, and trivially easy to read one-handed while laying down. The battery lasts for so many weeks at a stretch that I basically don’t think about it. The display is much comfier on the eyes than an iThingy, but the killer feature is that there aren’t any other apps to switch to. As long as I can keep my phone out of grabbing distance, I can read uninterrupted for whole minutes at a time. (Not hours; let’s be reasonable.) And as for Amazon, which can honestly go fuck itself? I’m hoping for a Kobo e-reader in my future. All of the benefits, none of the evil.

My guiding principle is to read what I want—I’m no longer in college, so I don’t do “good for you” high-art literature unless the spirit moves me. A couple of times I’ve even stopped a book partway through because it wasn’t grabbing me. My other goal is to read books by authors who aren’t white men, but as you can see below, I’ve got much work to do.

On that note, here’s my 2021 reading list (plus January of this year). I want to emphasize that my ratings are for how much I liked the book, not how objectively good I think they are; just because I gave “All the King’s Men” or “The Left Hand of Darkness” 4/5 stars doesn’t make them anything less than literary classics. I was happy to find that my favorite book of the year was “Good as Gone” by my old college classmate Amy Gentry. Without launching into a whole book review, it was an amazing blend of gorgeous prose and page-turning storytelling with a brilliant structural trick that I won’t spoil here. I’m chuffed to be even loosely associated with such phenomenal talent.

• January 2022
  • Louis De Bernieres, “Corelli’s Mandolin” ****
  • John Le Carré, “The Spy Who Came In from the Cold” ****
  • Russell Shorto, “Amsterdam” (in progress)
• December
  • Anonymous, “E” ***
  • Tamara Shopsin, “Laserwriter II” ***
• November
  • Burrough/Tomlinson/Stanford, “Forget the Alamo” *****
  • Frank Herbert, “Dune” (x3) *****
• October
  • Hiroko Oyamada, “The Factory” ****
  • Barry Unsworth, “Losing Nelson” *****
  • Ursula K Le Guin, “The Left Hand of Darkness” ****
• September
  • Emily Nagoski, “Come As You Are” ****
  • Isaac Asimov, “Foundation” ***
  • Kim Stanley Robinson, “Ministry for the Future” ***
• August
  • Raymond Chandler, “The Big Sleep” ****
  • Laura Esquivel, “Like Water for Chocolate” (x2) ****
• July
  • Andrew Hunter-Murray, “The Last Day” (x2) ****
  • David Mitchell, “Cloud Atlas” (x2) *****
• June
  • Kory Stamper, “Word by Word” ***
  • Elliot Ackerman, “2034” **
  • Andy Weir, “Project Hail Mary” **
  • Ben Coates, “The Rhine” ***
• May
  • Robert Penn Warren, “All the King’s Men” ****
  • David Grann, “Killers of the Flower Moon” ****
  • Amy Gentry, “Good as Gone” *****
• April
  • Tracy Chevalier, “Girl with a Pearl Earring” ***
  • John Preston, “The Dig” ****
  • Erik Larson, “Dead Wake” ***
  • Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations” *****
• March
  • Stephen King, “Later” ***
  • Stephen Ambrose, “Band of Brothers” ***
  • Shirley Jackson, “The Haunting of Hill House” ****
  • Various authors, “Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View” ****
  • August Wilson, “Fences” ****
  • Charlotte Perkins Stetson, “The Yellow Wall-Paper” *****
• February
  • Stuart Turton, “The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle” *****
  • Roxane van Iperen, “The Sisters of Auschwitz” *****
• January
  • Madeline L’Engle, “A Wrinkle in Time” (x2) ****
  • Stephen Ambrose, “Undaunted Courage” (x2) *****
  • Greg Shapiro, “The American Nederlander” ****

1. I’m being flexible on the definition of “book,” since there were a few short stories, long-read articles, and plays in there.