Well pals, we’ve nearly made it to the end of 2021. In the hope of ending this tumultuous year with a brief respite, I say we extol the virtues of our favorite reads and steer each other clear of the stinkers.
Last year, you were kind enough to submit your favorite reads of 2020. And it was a blast! I felt like Hermes, a winged herald, spreading book recommendations between amateur bibliotherapists far and wide. More than one person asked me to pass along their own experiences reading books recommended by others, or to make additional recommendations based on someone’s expressed favorite read. Like a holy carrier pigeon, I communicated these messages.
And so this year, I thought it might be fun to add in a little extra debate fodder: what if this time around, we collected or favorite *and* least favorite reads? I secretly hoped that a selected best and worst read would overlap, sowing true chaos among us. But at the very least, I thought it might be interesting to see what books evoked strong and potentially polarizing reactions.
With that in mind, I’ve arranged the below lightly edited and annotated submissions for your perusal. I didn’t link to all the selections because you can, in fact, Google the ones that interest you.
Whether you’ve been able to spend time with your loved ones or not this holiday season, I hope our little list of reads will give you a smidge of seasonal cheer. (If only because this marks my last news letter of 2021! Let’s hope it’s only uphill from here!)
My king Steven Rodas, who inspired me to include both best and worst reads after offhandedly submitting a least favorite last year, is kicking off this year’s edition! He picked A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders as his favorite read of 2021:
I don’t cross off boxes when I pick up a new book but if I did, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders would check them all.
You join the American writer himself for a class in short story writing — except in book form.
Self-aware, kitschy, insightful. This book was all three of those things. It was the perfect palate cleanser pre-grad school, but that brings me to a caveat. My tally of reads for the year was admittedly lower than most, because of required in-class readings. Would the best thing I read in 2021 be different if I had plowed through more? Maybe. But I was glad I slipped this in before chaos ensued.
If you do read, check out Saunders' appearance on “The Ezra Klein Show” afterward.
A ringing endorsement from a man of taste. Saunders also recently launched a “Story Club” on Substack that “picks up where the book left off” to provide guided readings of short stories beyond Russian literature.
Steven’s worst of the year is Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead.
While vivid for its recreation of 1960s New York City (with a relatable protagonist in tow), it did not capture the transcendent magic of 2020 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Nickel Boys.
Not to mention that with the bevy of characters that saunter in and out of the three-part crime saga, it had me yearning for a dramatis personae more than once.
Long live Steven for delivering a hot take, particularly on a book I just purchased for Martin.
Speaking of whomst, Martin’s best read of 2021 is Ficcions by Jorge Luis Borges. He selected because it was “fantastical” and because he knew it would bother me that he selected this, of all the books, as his choice for THE ENTIRE YEAR. However, he did like this Borges quote:
“A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.”
His least favorite of the year was The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa, though he very much liked its last novella. This answer is a testament to him having a really strong year of reading. He says that it just isn’t his favorite of Ogawa’s work that he has read. (Last year, we both picked her story cycle Revenge as one of our favorites.)
Mel reports that The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson was her favorite of the year:
Multiverses are real and travel between them is possible, but the catch is people can only travel to a universe where their counterpart is not still alive. The premise alone hooked me and as a bonus, it's gay.
Consider me sold. Also:
I am cheating and including a second best thing here: in total contrast to this, They Never Learn was an incredible read that did a great job with its twists and turns.
I, too, loved this one. Great book club pick on our part, if I do say so myself.
Mel’s worst of the year was The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz.
It's a serviceable enough thriller and yet the more I think about the premise of it, the angrier I get. The twist was telegraphed from incredibly early on and the titular supposedly life-changing plot wouldn't have even ranked as the most notable Law and Order episode.
Zoë S recommends Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi as her favorite of the year:
It's a really beautiful novel that engages with mental health, the drive to achieve, the pressures of family, immigrant narratives, the relationships between mothers and children, and the tension between religion and science. And somehow it never feels didactic, despite all of those themes! Plus special shoutout to the author, who also went to my undergrad and includes a small reference to the iconic woman who ran a since-closed Thai cafe that was one of my favorite spots on campus.
Zoë immediately texted me to gush about this one after reading it, so I believe her. I would love a paperback duo of Gyasi’s work, for anyone looking to send me a late Christmas gift.
Her least favorite of the year included “every headline that was like ‘Will the pandemic have a lasting effect on our children/schools/restaurants/ workplaces/psyches/selves?’ Like ...obviously…”
Zoë gets it.
Chelsey also named Transcendent Kingdom as her favorite!
“This is hard because I read a lot of great stuff this year!! But this was the book I found myself thinking about the most. I don't know if it will hit as hard for someone who hasn't undergone a huge faith crisis, but as someone who has, I've referred back to it a LOT in my conversations with people this year.”
She said that the worst she read this year was The Maidens by Alex Michaelides:
“I RARELY give a book one star; it has to outright offend me and have no redeeming qualities in my mind. I've only given like, 10 books one star in my entire life. Anyway this was one of them. Always fun when I read something so lazy and with zero research done into women's mental health issues. Still not convinced Michaelides has met a woman.”
Alex’s best read of the year was an article from Wired titled “Hundreds of Ways to Get S#!+ Done—and We Still Don’t.” It describes the many apps and softwares that exist to make people more productive, and how they simply don’t work:
Anything that makes me feel less guilty about the way I exist is a winner. And not only that, but this article completely changed the way I view my to-do lists (and my to-do list bankruptcies). Overall, a very validating read.
Leah’s best read of the year was No One Asked For This: Essays by Cazzie David:
I know rich kids of celebrities can be polarizing, but I found her essays to be funny, authentic, and entertaining. Though I do tend to gravitate towards humorous personal essays, I was pleasantly surprised by this one. It surpassed my expectations and I breezed through it in about a week. Plus, who doesn't love some Pete Davidson gossip.
Bleach blonde Pete is a menace to my mental health. That’s all I have to say about that.
Zoe Regan named Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth as her best read of 2021. She loved it because there were “so many queer ladies as main and secondary characters! Plus boarding school mystery, back and forth between past and present, and weird but not too scary horror elements.”
I really enjoyed PBH when I read it last year, so I’m glad to see it back on this list. I even gave it one of my 2020 book awards ;)
Zoe’s worst read of the year was titled “something like Monday is Missing, and it was probably a good book but not what I thought it was going to be and much more gruesome (because child abuse) than I was expecting.”
Kayla’s best reads of the year included The Winternight Series by Katherine Arden, because it made her feel like a kid again while reading, and our favorite SJM classic, ACOMAF: “I am but a human girl wishing for a Rhys yk.” IYKYK.
Her least favorite, however, is She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan.
"Here is a numbered list as to why it sucked:
1. The main character was insufferable and not in an "I'm gonna root for them anyway" type of way. She was like the worst person you know from high school who went through some shit but became a bad person instead of a better one
2. The novel was touted as Mulan meets The Song of Achilles and it was barely either of them. Talk about false advertising!
3. There were battle scenes that were—haha just kidding, all the battle scenes were OFF PAGE. What is the point of that? Instead of battle scenes (in a book about WAR) we got…
4. Pages and pages of political talk and betrayal. Yawn.
5. There is a fisting scene. Sorry if that's a jump scare. Anyway, there's a sex scene between two women (cool) and there is fisting involved (uncool, especially if you're reading the book during breakfast.) It is the 1300s, guys, is this like... Necessary? Isn't there a war going on?
6. The other "'love"" story ends with one of the characters killing the other. There was tension between them because of Unrequited(?) Love and then boom, a casual stabbing. I read this whole 416 page book and for what? To read a two page sex scene with fisting and then not even get a good ending? Unbelievable.
I have only read the sex scene of this book because, when Kayla read it, she immediately sent it to me so we could yell about it together. I’m still yelling to this day.
Kasey’s favorite book of 2021 was Rina by Kang Young-Sook:
A pretentious habit I've fallen into recently is discovering books that no one else has heard of. Sometimes it involves research while other times, like in the case of Rina, the book jumps out at me, a sort of fate. I stumbled upon Rina as I was searching for The Vegetarian by Han Kang in the library. It's strange I picked it up at all, the book was published by the Librarian of Korean Literature and sports a dry, academic-inspired cover. Thrilled by its whopping 42 reviews on Goodreads, I decided to start reading.
The story follows the titular Rina as she defects from an unnamed country (presumed North Korea) towards "freedom" (presumed South Korea). Of course things go awry and she is stuck in the middleman country (presumed China). Rina's picaresque journey has magical realism (or is it just real?) elements, a makeshift family and a lifetime lived in just a few years. The intentional vagueness of location gives the story a fairy tale feel but real world implications and keeps the story grounded. Rina falls into my two favorite (not real) genres: sur-real (a surreal story with roots in the real world) and travel-not-travel (travel narrative that defies the privileged, western view of travel). Rina is easily the best book I've read this year and one of the top ten best books I've read in my lifetime. I feel incredibly lucky to have stumbled upon this gem.
Kasey always recommends the best books, so I’m excited to get my hands on this one. (Her pick last year, The Wandering by Intan Paramaditha, turned out to be one of my favorite reads of 2021.) For more from Kasey, you can also consult her recommendations of Asian diasporic writers from earlier this year.
Denise, queen of my heart, has provided a smart list of best reads including Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto”; Eduardo Kohn, How Forests Think; Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies; Lisa Lowe, The Intimacies of Four Continents; and Herman Melville, “Benito Cereno.”
What’s not to like about the replicative baroque of fern reproduction, anthropological field work on dreaming dogs, wild unruly histories of the opium wars, and what I think is arguably the best novella ever written?!?
For giggles, she also really enjoyed Lisa Hanawalt’s I Want You; Samantha Irby’s Wow, No Thank You; and “not a book but Tuca and Bertie seasons 1 & 2 are both literary masterpieces.” She categorized these as her “fever dream” submissions. I love her.
She also “tried really hard to read Richard Powers’ The Overstory. It was totally inoffensive but I just could not find any momentum to finish it.”
Denise’s brain is a gift.
Cheri L Filion selected The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson as her favorite read of 2021, as it is “very readable and sooo informative.” Her least favorite was The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah, because “it was hard to make the leap of faith on a lot of the plot. It had some un-needed things such as the boyfriend getting permanently injured. The end especially was convoluted and hard to buy.”
I am still in a state of shock as to how much attention Kristin Hannah got this year, so I’m intrigued to see her appear as a “least favorite” here!
My mother, who wishes to henceforth be referred to as “Your Highness,” said that Love and Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch is the best (and really only) thing she read this year, because it was a “simple romance evocative of Italian beauty.” Uh huh.
The worst she “read” was This Is Happiness by Niall Williams because it was boring. Okay!
Callie says that Little Secrets by Jennifer Hillier is the best thing she read this year because “IT IS A SUSPENSEFUL READ!!!!” Lucky for me, she bought a copy for my mother that I plan to pilfer.
Mark Stagno picked The Wisdom of Crowds by Joe Abercrombie as his favorite read of 2021, because it’s a “magnificent end to a grim dark fantasy trilogy with amazing characters and complex world building.” A very good blurb to make me want to pick it up.
My angelic gem Molls says that a quote from a recent GQ interview with BTS’s Min Yoongi is her greatest read of 2021:
As a person that quit my job without a plan this year, this quote gave me a lot of comfort and grace for myself. I know I made the right choice and have experienced the best five months of my life, but in a society that’s so focused on chasing what’s next, it felt nice to read the opposite from one the biggest stars in the world!
You may already know this, but I am a big Molls fan. Here’s the aforementioned quote:
We can’t give our dreams too much meaning. Dreams are just dreams. When I say it’s okay to not have a dream, it’s because you don’t really need one. You shouldn’t have to struggle so much in order to live your life. It’s heartbreaking to see people being pushed to pursue one path when there are 7.8 billion people in the world, living out 7.8 billion different lives. People in their 60s and 70s can dream too, of course, but I often think that the world is especially cruel to the young. It’s often suggested that they’ve failed if they don’t start out on a particular path or continue along as expected. But as you live, you realize life doesn’t work that way. It would be good if children and youth didn’t blame themselves too much, because it’s not their fault. And don’t compare yourself to other people either. There is absolutely no need for you to compare the size of your dream to someone else’s dream.
She also had some CHOICE words about Bunny by Mona Awad.
Maybe not the worst, but def. the most head scratching thing I read in the year 2021. Months later I'm still trying to make heads or tails of it! So bizarre and made me feel like maybe I’m just too dumb to get it hahaha
I stand by my review of Bunny, a book I once lovingly referred to as being “warped like a Barbie in a microwave.” I’m very much into that kind of thing, but I know it’s not for everyone!
Kristen said that Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith was the best thing she read this year. The worst thing she read was the Jeremy Strong profile in The New Yorker, because “the writer couldn’t commit to hating on him or not and the result was irritating.” Agreed!
Al had the nerve to list a fanfiction, “Lettering the Nest” by MitchMatchedSocks, as their favorite read of the year. I am hiding a link to it in this description because I do not want my parents to accidentally click on it.
Listen, I haven't read an actual book all year and I'm subsisting primarily on fanfiction to fuel my brain space. This slowburn, college AU, ABO (I'll let Anna tackle defining that one), polyamorous romance between three kpop boys ticked all my boxes and made brain go brrrr. It's over 100K words and ongoing which means every so often I get a jolt of pure serotonin when I get an email that says "Lettering the Nest has a new chapter!"
I am not explaining ANY of this. You’re all on your own. Meanwhile, Al’s least favorite of the year was Credence by Penelope Douglas.
This is an attempt to get Anna to cover pure smut in her newsletter, is it working?
Have I mentioned that Al is a menace to society????????
Anyways, I was promised a problematic kinky romp, and instead I got some of the most stilted, unenjoyable writing I've ever encountered. I should have known I don't vibe with Penelope Douglas since I read (and hated) her much-lauded Birthday Girl, but Credence was being celebrated by too many of my Goodreads friendslist to ignore. Sad to say, they were all wrong.
I cannot believe that Jaybird is making me include The Lady of Rooksgrave Manor by Kathryn Moon (an iconic pen name) as their favorite read of the year. They enjoyed it because “she writes the love between all of the love interests so well, that even though it was filthy it also felt super sweet. All around a 10/10 perfect book for me.”
Emphasis on the filth. Many of you have heard me yell about this book. I will NOT address any further information about it here, sorry!!!!!
Anyway… Jaybird’s worst of the year was “probably Diver's Heart by K.A. Knight.”
Ashley recommends the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown because it has “lots of action, good writing, characters I really loved.” (See, Al and Jay? This is what a nice and normal recommendation looks like!!!!)
Ashley also does NOT recommend These Hollow Vows by Lexi Ryan. “Reading this actually made me physically repulsed, I could not have read a more generically written YA book with all the Bad tropes if I had TRIED. Had to DNF it, the only book from 2021 that made it onto my ‘hated’ list.”
Amy picked Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao as a favorite read of 2021: “It’s super fresh and a wonderful spin on so many different tropes. Plus poly rep in a YA!”
We love to see it.
Amy’s worst of the year was Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James. “I felt very confused the whole time I read it.”
Erin M. cited The Poppy War trilogy by R. F. Kuang as their best of the year:
I read the first book of the trilogy in December of 2020 and then I read the last 2 books in the beginning of this year and they have stuck with me throughout this entire year. I cannot say enough good things about this series. The writing, the pacing, the historical references, the magic, the characters! Everything is so well done.
…and Saving Zoe by Alyson Noël as their worst:
It was a birthday gift and wow. Promising concept, but writing and execution was absolutely abysmal. I've never rated a book a one star until this book.
Lisa read a lot of good stuff this year, including Know My Name by Chanel Miller; Dare Me by Megan Abbott (“leaps and bounds better than the show”), In Five Years by Rebecca Serle (“underrated!!!!”) and The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn (“payoff wasn’t as great as I’d hoped for though”).
She also says that “Two Rumaan Alam books (Rich and Pretty, That Kind of Mother) both disappointed me 🥴”
Rose picked The Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller and The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman as her favorites of the year. Her least favorite was A Gathering of Shadows by V.E. Schwab.
This is clearly a Madeleine Miller fan newsletter. Olivia selected Circe by Madeleine Miller as her favorite 2021 read:
I’m a sucker for Greek mythology, but Miller’s writing is stunning, and she’s turned Circe into a feminist hero.
As someone who basically threw Circe at people for years, I am thrilled to see it make the list!
Olivia also noted that, while it isn’t the WORST book she read this year, she was most disappointed by Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
And that’s all for this year! Want to argue the merits of a book someone slandered here? Hoping to gush about a particularly fabulous favorite? Intrigued by some of the more ~romantic~ cited selections? Keep me posted and I, a messenger god, will relay your feedback.
Otherwise, I’ll see you you in 2022 with my very own book awards. They will once again be based on criteria I will make up as I go along. Godspeed.