2021 Book Highlights.
By popular demand, here are my favorite reads of the publishing year. An epic, a next-level thriller and a continuation of the beloved Golem and Jinni are among those featured. Female authors dominated.
“My father used to say the world turned wrong when we started separating ourselves from the wild, when we stopped being one with the rest of nature, and sat apart. He said we might survive this mistake if we found a way to rewild ourselves. But I don’t know how to do that when our existence frightens the creatures we must reconnect with. I would give anything not to frighten them; it makes me so sad. And yet the truth is that their fear of us keeps them safe from us.”
Best Of The Best.
Great Circle
by Maggie Shipstead
If you could only read one of the books from this list, please pick Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle. It will stand the test of time alongside all the other great literary epics that have come before it, like Homer’s The Odyssey, Steinbeck’s East of Eden, and Follet’s The Pillars of the Earth.
Spanning multiple generations and set across the entire globe, Great Circle follows a fearless female aviator—not unlike the original daredevil Amelia Earhart—determined to break down the walls people have tried to build around her in all areas of her life.
Shipstead’s historical fiction is impeccably researched and thought-out. The writing is masterful. You won’t want this book to end.
Razorblade Tears
by S.A. Cosby
The main selling point of S.A. Cosby’s latest novel is the thrilling action (what a wild ride!), but the real beauty of it is the heart-centered transformation of its two main characters in the aftermath of their sons’s deaths.
Ike and Buddy Lee are ex-cons. Ike is black and Buddy Lee is white. Their sons marry and are hatefully murdered. Neither Ike nor Buddy Lee accepted their son for who he truly was, and then it was over. Their opportunity to come together and celebrate their boys and their love was gone. So, Ike and Buddy Lee come together in the spirit of revenge instead and all bets are off.
Together they search for answers and end up finding their way out from under the weight of prejudicial thoughts. A result that feels both tender and humane.
The truth is that we all can and should do this: Choose what kind of heart we want to have. One that is open and accepting of others around us, or alternatively closed off from everyone.
Don’t miss this one! It’s set to be a movie too.
The Hidden Palace
by Helene Wecker
After 8 long years and a few delays, Helene Wecker finally released the follow-up to her genre-bending, debut masterpiece, The Golem and the Jinni, and it was worth every second of waiting that we endured as readers.
The Hidden Palace continues the complex love story between its two main characters: Chava, a golem made of clay by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic; and, Ahmad, a jinni born of fire and fighting for his freedom. Their unlikely connection is magnetic and the world-building from Wecker is stunning.
You’ll never read anything quite like The Golem and the Jinni and The Hidden Palace, two of my favorite books of all time. Unless, Wecker gives me what I want and writes a third.
Once There Were Wolves
by Charlotte McConaghy
Charlotte McConaghy is producing some of the most important fiction available to us today. A staunch environmentalist herself, she gives a tremendous amount of life to characters devoted to conservation efforts and a profound sense of urgency to the untenable predicament we have found ourselves in as humans.
In Once There Were Wolves, Inti Flynn puts her whole self into the task of rewilding native apex predators into the Scottish Highlands in an effort to strengthen the imbalanced ecosystem, and in order to save her twin sister, Aggie, from an unspeakable past. It’s inspired by the successful rewilding of wolves into Yellowstone National Park in 1995.
I also loved McConaghy’s book Migrations last year. If you care about the planet and all of its inhabitants, read both of these.
Oh William!
by Elizabeth Strout
In Elizabeth Strout’s latest, Lucy Barton is back for the third time and she takes a deep dive into her tender and complicated relationship with her first husband, William. Along the way, we learn about their respective families of origin and their combined family of creation; about old secrets and infidelity, and how all of life’s obstacles eventually point towards the same life lesson: our hearts are vulnerable in beautiful ways regardless of where we come from or where we’re going.
Elizabeth (and Lucy!) is in a league of her own. Her technical writing is off the charts and her storytelling and relationship building are brilliant. It’s the kind of writing that makes you want to better at your own passions and pursuits. I was both aghast at the level of mastery on the pages and also entirely consumed with the relentless layers of story that continued to unfold throughout. It’s an unbelievably immersive experience—the people and circumstances feel so real that you all but assume you’re living this reality too.
You can’t get this kind of nuance in film or television, so pick up this book soon. It’s a perfect example of why readers read.
The Premonition
by Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis's biting nonfiction thriller juxtaposes a group of well-intentioned medical visionaries against the dangerous and inhumane official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19.
One day in the not-so-distant future, this book will be taught in schools. It proves how the United States had everything necessary to fight the pandemic—brilliant doctors and researchers, world-class labs, prior experience with the pandemic scares of bird flu and swine flu—except official permission to implement a planned response.
Brace yourself. The level of ignorance highlighted throughout the book is staggering.
Honorable Mention.
The Paper Palace
by Miranda Cowley Heller
“Does letting go mean losing everything you have, or does it mean gaining everything you never had?”
The Paper Palace snuck up on me. It was the last book I read in 2021 and I still think about the ending. Elle is caught between an undying love for her closest childhood friend, Jonas, and her faultless husband, Peter.
This story is not uncommon but it does a beautiful job of illustrating the difference between making decisions as a child versus as an adult. When we are young and learning, our choices are either right or wrong, and they form our foundation of discernment. But, as an adult, it’s much more complicated. The spectrum shifts and our choices land somewhere between what is right and what is easy, and they shape the life we want to live.
If you’re into love triangles or layered dramas, this one is for you.
Somebody’s Daughter
by Ashley C. Ford &
Crying in H Mart
by Michelle Zauner
Trigger warning. Both of these memoirs pack their fair share of extraordinarily tough material to get through, least of which is a common theme surrounding the implications of growing up in and around toxic parent-child relationships.
It is evident from the first page of Somebody’s Daughter that Ashley C. Ford has a simple yet poetic way with language and she sums up this dilemma nicely: “Kids can always tell the difference between adults who want to empower them, and adults who want to overpower them.”
Crying In H Mart balances all of the family tension and heartache with some of the most rich and vivid writing about Korean food and culture born out of her mother’s native homeland.
If these hit close to home, you might need to clear your energy field after reading.
Let me know if you pick up one of these books and please send me any titles on your to-read list for 2022; they might show up on next year’s highlights! You can also follow my reading journey on Goodreads and check out past highlights from 2020 and 2019. Happy reading, y’all.
Want to sponsor my reading? You can donate below! I read everything digitally before I invest in hardbacks or unique bindings for our home library.
Metta,
Drewsome.
