My Favorite Books of 2021

[@mattellis7906]

I added so many of these books to my tbr.

[@librocubicularist3664]

The Luminaries has been on my autumn TBR for 2 year. Hope I could tackle it this year 🤞

[@timmorris7945]

Just saw your video on Robert Alters translation and commentary on the Hebrew bible and I actually bought it a few months ago, It's excellent and has really opened my eyes. I love how you read many different things and dont live in a box . You really see a lot and I really appreciate what you do. Thankyou much. Tim.

[@MinestroneChad]

You worked on Chouette! It's so nice seeing that in my local bookstore and knowing you had a hand in it. Will definitely pick it up. Great Circle also sounds like such a lovely, bright read?? So I'll be looking out for that one too. Haven't been reading a lot lately or generally bc… idk, mental health? 🙃 BUT, the one book I have been able to pick up and read completely is Cold Enough For Winter by Jessica Au - it's so careful and calm and simple, and it's not so much saying things as it is creating space, and it FEELS like my mind is clearer having read it. 10/10 recommend. It comes in the lovely Fitzcarraldo editions too.

[@InsertLiteraryPunHere]

I love this description, on my wishlist it goes! Great to hear from you Dana, hope you're doing well

[@manolitita_gafotas]

Hello, Jennifer. Kapka Kassabova's book is on my 2022 TBR and I feel even more excited to read it knowing that you enjoyed it.

[@dokidoki719]

I am happy to announce that 2022 is already a better reading year. I just finished Nightwood and love it to pieces. Reading Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse now. Maybe a little bit of self love and therapy was all I needed to get back to reading! On to the video 🌈

[@SpringboardThought]

Excited to get to Wintering and The Luminaries and Chouette sounds totally up my alley.

[@audreyapproved]

We have some very different literary taste, but I always love hearing you talk about books. Happy new year!

[@SixMinutesForMe]

Hearing you speak about Wintering, I think you might also get on with The Luminous Solution by Charlotte Wood (I had a similar reaction reading that to how it sounds you responded to Wintering) - brilliant as always, Jennifer :)

[@cheryl184]

I also read 'The Fig Tree' by Goran Vojnović this year, and loved it! 'Yugoslavia, My Fatherland' by the same author is wonderful too. I really appreciate your focus on books from and about Central and Eastern Europe! 🙂

[@StephanieJCohen]

I really loved Cold Comfort Farm too (I mean a cow named Feckless …). I have the Luminaries and The Future is History on my TBR and need to get to this year. Look forward to your videos this year - and love the kitties.

[@jacquelinemcmenamin8204]

First book finished in 2022 is The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak ( partly told from the point of view of a fig tree) Currently reading An Island ( Booker shortlist) The Garden of Evening Mists Best books read in 2021 Great Circle Cloud Cuckoo Land Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan Unsettled Ground by Clare Fuller A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ni Ghriofa The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage Empire of Pain Hidden Valley Road The Promise by Damon Galgut Shelter by Jin Jung Writers and Lovers The Yield by Tara Jean Winch My Policeman by Bethan Roberts The Glorious Heresies ☘️ Swimming in the Dark My Dark Vanessa A Passage North Bewilderment by Richard Powers Memorial by Bryan Washington The Prettiest Star The Vanishing Half The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle We Begin At The End ( best thriller) Standard Deviation (.funniest book) Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead Valentine ( set in Texas) ☘️👋🍀📖🫖☕️📕👓📚🐈

[@bookishinclinations1172]

The Luminaries has been on my shelf for several years and this makes me so excited to pick it up. I also asked for and received Great Circle for Christmas. I added To the Lake just now to my Goodreads and after your last video that I watched I had added Dressed for a Dance in the Snow. Both sound fabulous!

[@MatthewSciarappa]

Book joy!! 🥰 Glad to see 2 poetry collections on your list-not only that, but 2 that I also enjoyed 😌✨

[@sandrazuks9017]

What a fabulous list, added a few to my TBR 👍 Loved Chouette as well 🦉

[@dokidoki719]

Want to read the Luminaries...the size of it is a little intimidating tbh but I have wanted to read this for so long. This year I am going to read the Brothers Karamazov if that’s the last thing I do so maybe next year. Love your reviews as always! I don’t each time you talk about a book you make me want to read it. You make it sound interesting and complex.

[@davidmountstephens8165]

picked up the great circle last year, planning to read it next after seeing your recommendation. Choulette sound interesting have put it in my wishlist.

[@ClaireReadsBooks]

So many great books! I think I may add Cold Comfort Farm to my winter hibernation reading list (the title seems too apt! and it sounds great, too)

[@Rodja.]

I had a fairly bad reading year and I couldn't get into To the Lake, but that part of Europe is one of the things I'm most interested in, so I'm going to try again in 2022. And speaking of the Balkans, my favourite read of 2021 was Where You Come From by Saša Stanišić, which I see marketed as a novel but it's more memoir with fictional elements about his the author's life as a Bosnian refugee in Germany, and his travels back to Bosnia to spend time with his Serbian grandmother who had stayed back. Highly reccomended.

[@lyddie465]

i've borrowed cold comfort farm but never read it. up the tbr it goes!

[@nocturnus009]

I finished Great Circle on Tuesday, it was the perfect book to finish/start my year. I’m unpacking all the things from that read because I’m broken in all the good ways. When it is safe to casually go to the Udvar Hazy Center & the Air & Space Museum I hope this tome has a place in their bookstore. (Stephen Udvar Hazy Center) has the better spaced book store oddly I think. So happy the cats appear to be living in feline détente.

[@myfirstnovel]

I’m not that literary minded unfortunately, my ADD tends to kick in viciously if there’s not a lot of action, dialogue, larger than life goings-on. 2021 standouts were mostly audiobooks, like Tom Hanks reading of The Dutch House which added such pacing and irony (while I had abandoned the print copy). Jenny Lawson’ reading of her Furiously Happy memoir. Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives series. The Winternight trilogy around Russian folklore also comes to mind. I just dipped into Outlander and was surprised at liking it so much. The list says it all lol.

[@OjaswiShxrma]

I did not read a lot in the past year but I did pick up a few books. My favourite novel from last year is probably Gilead by Marilyn Robinson which I did read on your recommendation. Great list though! I am definitely interested in picking up some of the poetry you talked about.

[@pastorytime2683]

I'm really looking forward to reading Chouette! Siân ❤️

[@mikegseclecticreads]

Great selection. I keep hearing about The Future Is History so I'll probably check that one at some point. (There was a similar-sounding one called Between Two Fires that I really enjoyed a year or two ago.)

[@electraandbooks5925]

Yes !! A new video !!

[@Gagging4Lit]

Hair looks gorge. I started the Luminaries over a yr ago and it started off so slowly and boringly that I gave up... I just remember a group of men gathered in a stuffy room talking about finding some gold or something and I didn't care haha. Will go back to it when I feel up to it, eek. The American edition of Great Circle looks lovely. The UK one is garish and pink, like a herpes sore.

[@KendraWinchester]

What a great list! And-oof-that quote from WINTERING 😅

[@Shellyish]

I’d love to read Cold Comfort Farm and I will certainly read The Luminaries later this year. Of course, your top read has piqued my interest.

[@xgrayvision]

Once again, I must reorder my tbr based on one of your videos. 😂 Also-Thanks again for bringing us The Pear Field.

[@SavidgeReads]

Ok how can I not read ‘a savage dream of a book’. I’ve been looking at Chouette for ages and might have to give in (no might, I will after you shared your personal link to it) though might have to get the US edition when I’m there. I need to go back to Great Circle, I wasn’t in the right mind frame but knew it was good if you know what I mean. Fab list.

[@elizabethmclean5277]

Thank you for this wonderful list. A lot to choose from. Please read two books translated from the Polish: 'The Map' by Barbara Sadurska (published in the UK by Terra Librorum) and 'Mud Sweeter Than Honey: Voices of Communist Albania' by Margo Rejmer (Restless Books). The first an imaginative and nostalgic rendering in fiction of the power of one old map, the second a report on the horrors of Enver Hoxha's tyranny.

[@zubaerchaudhari8267]

Hey

[@gingerbard2607]

I couldn't quite hear some of the author's names (and I'm not going to echo the leftist lunacy of demanding proportionality) but it seems to have been a very slow year for male writers?

[@planethamlet]

do you go onto male booktuber's videos and ask about the lack of female authors?

[@RememberedReads]

@Ginger Bard Even if you didn't hear, she has the authors listed in the description. Hieu Minh Nguyen and Goran Vojnović are male.