My 2021 reading list

I read 54 books this year! That’s more than any year since probably high school, if not earlier. I log each book to Blurt as I finish it; this is a recap of the year, grouping books into categories:¹

All books are novels that I read for the first time, unless otherwise noted. Within each category, they’re listed in the order I read them. I liked far more of the books than I was neutral towards, and I actively disliked very few: I either choose books well, or have very low standards.

The pinnacle

• Piranesi (Susanna Clarke, 2020): Short and unsettling and very, very good.

• Kindred (Octavia Butler, 1979): About slavery and its effects on everybody (but especially the enslaved), it’s brutal (but intentionally less than it could have been) and compelling, with a spare style that suits the story. You should read it, but only when you’re prepared.

• Lavinia (Ursula K. Le Guin, 2008, reread): This was Le Guin’s last novel (and one of my favorites, along with (in first place) Always Coming Home and (in third) perhaps Tehanu). It’s clearly the work of an older Le Guin, comfortable writing not just as a woman (which only happened some time into her career) but as an older woman. The ending has brought me to tears both times I’ve read it.

Recommended

• Too Like the Lightning (Ada Palmer, 2016, reread): Terra Ignota, book 1. Still has off-putting elements, but I charged ahead to the next book….

• Seven Surrenders (Ada Palmer, 2017, reread): Terra Ignota, book 2. When I started rereading the first book, I had forgotten most of it, but it came back to me as I was reading it. This book, though, I felt like there were whole chapters I was reading for the first time. Really enjoyed it, though! She undercut her “I am writing about only the best people” shtick at the end — a little later than I’d’ve liked, but I’ll take it.

• The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (Becky Chambers, 2021): Wayfarers, book 4. I loved this series; I don’t know if “cozy sci-fi” is a genre, but this would anchor it. Lots of explorations of family and community. (Unlike many series, you really can pick up any book and dive in without missing any context.)

• The Dragon Waiting (John Ford, 1983): I loved it; it felt like a mix of Tim Powers and Neal Stephenson … but sometimes with the attention span of Douglas Adams, or quite possibly I mistook oblique allusions for dropped threads. The book changed directions several times, and briefly became a murder mystery, but even when I wasn’t sure where it was going (or even that Ford was sure), I was happy to be along for the ride.

• H.M.S. Surprise (Patrick O’Brian, 1973, reread): Aubrey–Maturin series, book 3. If you’re interested in reading any of these books (perhaps you enjoyed the movie?) but aren’t ready to commit, start here (but read the Wikipedia plot summaries of the first two before you start).

• The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison, 2014, reread): I’d forgotten how much I’d enjoyed this fish-out-of-water story. The invented-language names were constantly baffling, but once I started aggressively using the glossary and cast of characters as a reminder, the book was smooth sailing.

• The Witness for the Dead (Katherine Addison, 2021): Stars a minor character from The Goblin Emperor; this book’s main character is as fundamentally decent as the previous book’s. It was a pleasure to read, and to watch all the pieces come together at the end.

• This Is How You Lose the Time War (Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, 2019, novella): Well, wasn’t this a delightful read. If you like letters, time travel, and/or love, you’ll be delighted too.

• Steeple, volume 1 and volume 2 (John Allison, 2020–2021, graphic novel): I originally read volume 2 serialized online (it’s ongoing), and it and the first are great ridiculous fun.

• The Golem and the Jinni (Helene Wecker, 2013): A couple quibbles aside, I loved this book, set in Manhattan c. 1900. It felt like a puzzle where all the characters ended up fitting together just so (and I think the quibbles are where I didn’t feel like the fit was quite satisfactory … but they were minor characters).

• The Will to Battle (Ada Palmer, 2017): Terra Ignota, book 3. This was a faster, more intense, I think better book than the first two, which (aside from the faster part) is saying something. I don’t know if it’s due to my growing familiarity with the baroque setting, the improvement of the author’s craft, rigorous editing on the part of her and her editor, or the plot itself.

• Where the Wild Coffee Grows (Jeff Koehler, 2017, nonfiction): Coffee and its origin in the Ethiopian highlands. Well-written and -structured, it covers (among other things) history, economics, biology, sociology, and climate change, but somehow isn’t too long.

• Harlem Shuffle (Colson Whitehead, 2021): A delightful story (or, really, three stories) of crime and family, set in late ’50s and early ’60s Harlem.

• Perhaps the Stars (Ada Palmer, 2021): Terra Ignota, book 4. A fitting end, perhaps a little more neatly tied off than I’d like, but perhaps that’s appropriate for a story of this length and intensity. I do sincerely appreciate that it barely hints at an answer to one of my big questions I’ve had since the first book — I don’t think an answer would have improved the books one bit. The series is a little too weird for me to recommend whole-heartedly to just anybody, but I loved it, and will probably reread it one of these days. (For me personally, the series as a whole is very close to reaching “pinnacle” status.)

• The Hidden Palace (Helene Wecker, 2021): The sequel to The Golem and the Jinni. I wasn’t sure it actually needed a sequel, and on the one hand, sure, the first book stood perfectly on its own, but on the other, it was great to spend a little more time with these characters, even if they make some bad choices. I think the rough edges of the first story were filed off, and the stakes were even more personal this time.

• The Ionian Mission (Patrick O’Brian, 1981, reread): Aubrey–Maturin series, book 8. We’ve kind of settled into the sweet spot of the series, if memory serves, and in any case this book is its own sweet spot, a pretty balance of sailing, spycraft, politics, and interpersonal drama, along with a return to the beloved H.M.S. Surprise.

• A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Emma Southon, 2021, nonfiction): A fun and chatty look at Roman law and society through the lens of homicide. Southon uses a good chunk of her page count pointing out how little we know about the lives of Romans other than the richest men, and showing us a bit we can infer about the rest.

Good

• Cuisine & Empire (Rachel Laudan, 2015, nonfiction): Fascinating look at how ingredients, cooking techniques, and culinary philosophies have changed and spread over the millennia.

• A Desolation Called Peace (Arkady Martine, 2021): Teixcalaan series, book 2. A satisfying sequel to Martine’s first, not flawless but still very well executed.

• Web Typography (Richard Rutter, 2017, nonfiction): Exactly what it says on the cover; this was quite helpful as I was putting the finishing touches on my long walk journal.

• God Cancer (Greg Stolze, 2020). I didn’t know I was looking for a short horror novel mashup of Lovecraft (At the Mountains of Madness–style) and cancer, but I sure was.

• Master & Commander (Patrick O’Brian, 1969, reread): Aubrey–Maturin series, book 1. It’s a little longer than most of the other 19 (!) books in the series, a little less tightly-focused, but still very enjoyable.

• Post Captain (Patrick O’Brian, 1972, reread): Aubrey–Maturin series, book 2. Master & Commander was good, but this book is where O’Brian really started to figure out what he was doing.

• The Elusive Shift (Jon Peterson, 2020, nonfiction): How a wargame hack (D&D) came to be understood as a “role-playing game”, and what that meant to early players and theorists. I thoroughly enjoyed it. (Bump up to “Recommended” if this sounds like it would be interesting to you.)

• Leviathan Wakes (James S.A. Corey, 2011): The Expanse, book 1. Competent prose, though wading through the early character introductions was a chore (“Joe Spaceguy’s square jaw set him apart from the other pilots”, etc.). The structure of the book made it quick and compelling: many short chapters, alternating between viewpoint characters, always ending where I wanted to read more.

• The Mauritius Command (Patrick O’Brian, 1977, reread): Aubrey–Maturin series, book 4. Not quite as enjoyable as H.M.S. Surprise, but still a delight, including some choice bits about coffee, and a harrowing description of a hurricane.

• “Mick and Amanda and Reesa and Craig”, “Mick and the Spoonbender”, “Mick and the Fit”, and “Like Uber, but for Monsters” (Greg Stolze, 2021, short stories): Like much of his work, it’s well-crafted, unsettling, and sticks with you for a while.

• A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Becky Chambers, 2021, novella): Charming and cozy, as one expects from Chambers. About half the book resonated with me in a perfect, clear note, and I recognized the half that didn’t even though it wasn’t speaking to me.

• Subcutanean (Aaron A. Reed, 2020): A horror novel with twinned premises: It involves parallel universes, and each copy of the book is uniquely generated. (Mine was seed 40105.) Very effective as horror, and successful (as far as I could tell) in how it was generated, though of course I’m very curious what another version would be like.

• TARDIS Eruditorum, Volume 7: The Sylvester McCoy Years (Elizabeth Sandifer, 2020, nonfiction): Part of a series of critical surveys of Doctor Who. Though a fan of the show, I’ve never seen a single episode of this era, much less read any of the novels, so I expected to skip my way through this volume. But Sandifer always had something interesting to say, and I found myself reading cover to cover.

• Lovecraft Country (Matt Ruff, 2016): Described as a novel but really a set of closely-connected short stories. As reviewers have said, the racism is far more scary than the horror, though the second half of the book does bring nice bits of the Lovecraftian “sure, magic is evil, but maaayyybe just this once?”. Really, it just made me want to run a Harlem Unbound game of Call of Cthulhu.²

• The City & the City (China Miéville, 2009): This was one where I enjoyed having my misapprehension corrected partway into the book; it’s a murder mystery set in a pair of overlapping/intertwined cities, with none of the overt supernatural of the other Miéville books I’ve read.

• The Silver Pigs (Lindsey Davis, 1989, reread): Marcus Didius Falco series, book 1. A hard-boiled detective thriller set in imperial Rome, the book was quite good … except for first part, which painted the main character with such unpleasantness and misogyny that it was something of a slog. The “but with a heart of gold” was there, of course, but I wish the author hadn’t felt the need to play into that trope quite so hard. I’m considering reading more of the series, but I don’t know if the next book resets the character back to his initial state; if so, I’d probably rather just read something else.

• The Shadow of the Torturer (Gene Wolfe, 1980): The Book of the New Sun, book 1. Technically this was a reread, but I recalled so little that I may as well treat it as my first time. Really quite good, though it’s not my favorite novel by any stretch. Looking forward to the next book in the series.

• Desolation Island (Patrick O’Brian, 1978, reread): Aubrey–Maturin series, book 5. This one was grim, nearly unrelentingly so: plague, storms, and mutinies, with a bare glimmer of hope at the end of the story. Compelling reading.

• The Claw of the Conciliator (Gene Wolfe, 1981): The Book of the New Sun, book 2. Not quite as compelling as Shadow, but it felt like the protagonist was a little more active (even if he was somewhat unpredictable). (This turned out to be a recurring theme with these books.)

• The History of Jazz (3rd ed.) (Ted Gioia, 2021, nonfiction): This was kind of the flip side of A History of the World in Six Glasses (below): I wish it hadn’t been quite so long, but I was fascinated by every part of it, and wouldn’t cut much if anything. (Boost this to “recommended” if you’re a jazz fan, of course.)

• The Fortune of War (Patrick O’Brian, 1979, reread): Aubrey–Maturin series, book 6. As foreshadowed in the previous book, the backdrop is the War of 1812. This one shines a spotlight on Maturin’s spycraft: It played an important role in the previous books, esp. H.M.S. Surprise, but Maturin is uncharacteristically the more active character for much of the novel.

• Game Wizards (Jon Peterson, 2021, nonfiction): One of those niche books I sometimes read about the history of role-playing games. This one focuses on TSR from before its inception to the ouster of Gary Gygax. It was mostly just sad: The two principal figures (Gygax and Dave Arneson) come across as bitter, insecure, and emotionally-stunted grudge-holders; the story is fascinating (with much more detail than I’d known before), but their animosity left me with a bad taste in my mouth long before the end of the book.

• My Real Children (Jo Walton, 2014): The book started very bluntly, but became much more nuanced well before the halfway point, and was heartbreaking at the end. Not a perfect book, but I very much enjoyed it.

• Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don’t Rhyme (Arika Okrent, 2021, nonfiction): Full of charming, bite-sized little pieces about why English is the way it is. I already knew much of it, but there was also plenty I didn’t know, and a couple times it ventured deeper into linguistics than my dilettante self could quite follow. You know whether or not you would enjoy the book from the title.

• The Surgeon’s Mate (Patrick O’Brian, 1980, reread): Aubrey–Maturin series, book 7. As usual, the book is split between sea and land, and on land (as with the previous book) Maturin’s spycraft is more foregrounded than had been typical of the series.

• Light Chaser (Peter F. Hamilton and Gareth L. Powell, 2021, novella): A fun, short, fairly simple story about a woman traveling a route through colonized space at near–light speed.

• The Sword of the Lictor (Gene Wolfe, 1982): The Book of the New Sun, book 3. The narrator seemed even more of a character, and less a pawn of the author, than in Claw. Not coincidentally I enjoyed this book more than the previous two.

• The Citadel of the Autarch (Gene Wolfe, 1983): The Book of the New Sun, book 4. This was far and away my favorite of the four books, with a narrator who finally seems human, and something of an explanation for some of the seemingly-irrational events of the earlier books. Was the payoff worth it? Yes; I’m still not a fan of the semi-inscrutability of the earlier books, but they had their own compensating virtues. (I would have called this “recommended”, except that it is essentially incomprehensible without the previous three, and I can’t in good faith recommend them blindly.)

• Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Hannah Arendt, 1964, nonfiction): Reporting on the show trial of the bureaucrat who kept the trains running to Auschwitz, Arendt uses it as a narrow lens to look at the Holocaust. Her discussions of then-modern Germany and Israel are not generally relevant today, but the question that will keep coming back to me is how to resist from within such a system.

Okay

• Last One at the Party (Bethany Clift, 2021): A post-COVID “everybody in the world but the protagonist dies from a plague” story. I have mixed feelings about this one: It wasn’t what I expected, the protagonist did not start out at all sympathetic, and there were some gruesome descriptions of the recently-dead. That said, it was compelling, I found myself rooting for the protagonist by the end, and the end itself was satisfying.

• The Blacktongue Thief (Christopher Buehlman, 2021): If you can get past an excessive amount of swearing — I can put up with a lot, but this was a lot — it has a surprising amount of heart; I eventually decided it felt a little bit like The Lies of Locke Lamora (but without a con game or heist).

• Caliban’s War (James S.A. Corey, 2012): The Expanse, book 2. Focuses on PTSD and how three of the main characters deal (more or less successfully) with theirs. The storyline basically echoes the first book’s.

• A History of the World in Six Glasses (Tom Standage, 2005, nonfiction): In many ways, I wanted this to be deeper — any of the chapters could comfortably have been twice as long — though I’m not sure I wanted to read a book that was twice as long. The sins of brevity were largely atoned for by the appendix (“how can I taste something like the early forms of these beverages?”) and thorough bibliography (for further reading).

• King of Sartar (Greg Stafford, 1992): This is something of an anthropological study of Stafford’s RPG setting Glorantha, which inevitably reminds me of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home. But while the vast majority of game designers aren’t Greg Stafford, it’s also true that Stafford wasn’t Le Guin. (Boost this to “good” if you’re interested in Stafford’s Glorantha setting.)

Not recommended

• Abaddon’s Gate (James S.A. Corey, 2013): The Expanse, book 3. I had two major dissatisfactions with the book. First, one of the viewpoint characters made consistently dumb decisions, from before the book started to almost the end; I understand the arc the author wanted to draw, but it made a quarter of the book unpleasant. Second, two characters made a big deal about violence being a dead end and a last resort … but the book sure loves its military-grade ultraviolence, in precise detail. Which is exciting reading! But the author kind of wants to have their cake and eat it too, but really just wants to eat tasty cake.

• The City of Brass (S.A. Chakraborty, 2017, did not finish): The Daevabad Trilogy, book 1. I set this aside about halfway through. I’m frankly a little baffled by the good reviews; I’m not sure I was even reading the same book. Maybe you’ll like it — obviously plenty of people do — but it’s not for me.

• The Priory of the Orange Tree (Samantha Shannon, 2019, did not finish): I set this aside about a quarter of the way through. I wanted to like it, and probably would have finished it if I’d read it ten years ago, but today it feels more drawn-out and portentous than I’m willing to tolerate.