In the spirit of this guy (I wish I had his brains) and this guy (I wish I had his money), here’s a look at some some of the best books I read last year. In terms of my personal reading goals, 2021 wasn’t the best. I always shoot for 25 books and 100 short stories; this year I reached the story goal, but fell far short on books—although, of the 20 books I did read, a couple of them were north of 800 pages, so that’s something, at least. Not long ago I wouldn’t even have attempted an 800-page book.
Note, these aren’t necessarily books that were new in 2021, just new to me.
But enough about me; on to the books. Here’s a quick look at the books I read last year that I liked enough to award five stars to on Goodreads:
Fiction
Crossroads
By Jonathan Franzen
I’m going to go ahead and say this was my favorite book of the year. True, it had some advantages: I knew Jonathan Franzen when we were in Sunday School and in high school, and the primary setting for this novel is a church youth group that was, for a while, part of our shared experience. But that familiarity aside, I loved this book and sped through its 600 pages in two weeks—much faster than normal for me. Told from the point of view of all of the members of a minister’s family, this is supposed the first book of a trilogy and I can’t wait for the next two episodes.
Fortune Smiles
By Adam Johnson
This is a collection of short stories. I usually don’t read a short story collection as a whole, but rather nibble from them bit by bit. But this one won National Book Award in 2015, which means it’s on my Books From The Teens list. And man does it deserve all the accolades. Johnson’s characters aren’t exactly the most likable people you’ll read about—in fact, many of them are downright loathsome—but he brings them to life so brilliantly that you can’t help but cheer for them. Johnson, in fact, is one of the rare authors who appear in that “Teens” list twice, as his The Orphan Masters Son won a Pullitzer in 2013. I look forward to reading that one this year.
Animal Dreams
By Barbara Kingsolver
This was, I think, the fifth book I’ve read by Barbara Kingsolver and I’d have to say it’s not my favorite of hers, maybe not even my second favorite (see Prodigal Summer and Flight Behavior), but it’s still absolutely a five-star book. I think of her as an Appalachian writer, but this book is set in Arizona, in a region I’ve come to love over the last few years. I’m looking forward to diving into another of her books early in 2022.
Theft
By BK Loren
I really enjoyed this book. It’s the story of a woman who is skilled at tracking animals, and she keeps track, as much as possible, of a pack of endangered wolves near her home in New Mexico, in an effort to protect them from an overzealous wilderness agency. When her brother—living near where they grew up in the Colorado mountains—confesses to a murder and then flees into the woods, she is called on to track him, in hopes of bringing him in alive. The story stretches back to their youth, growing up together and their mother’s battles with Parkinson’s, but the theme of the book revolves around the supremacy, beauty and sometimes ferocity of nature.
All The Light We Cannot See
By Anthony Doerr
I loved this book. I sort of didn’t want it to end. It’s the story of a blind girl who has to leave Paris with her father during the German occupation, and a German boy who turns out to be a genius with radios who gets pulled into the war effort. Of course their stories come together over the course of the story, but in a sense there are connections between them throughout.
The language is cinematic, and the story is certainly epic in scope, but I sort of hope they never make a movie from it.
Nonfiction
A Promised Land
By Barack Obama
I always enjoy a good presidential memoir (or even biography; see below), and this was one of the best. This book stretches over 700 pages and only covers the first 2-1/2 years of his first term. The rest will be covered in a subsequent book or books. It could have been shorter by half, but the executive branch is so large, and Obama apparently felt obligated to mention all of the people who contributed to the mission. No complaints, though. I really enjoyed reading about the process-driven debates over important presidential decisions. It’s said that a president doesn’t get to make any easy decisions; if they’re easy, they’re made at lower levels than the Oval Office. I’d also read Michelle Obama’s book not long before this one, and it was fun to compare the two accounts of their time in the White House.
Fire Season: Field Notes From a Wilderness Lookout
By Philip Connors
Lately, I’ve been entranced by books about nature, and this one was a nice addition to my growing list of five-star books from that category. The author works summers as a lookout in a fire tower on Apache Peak in the Gila Wilderness area in southern New Mexico. It’s an existence of near-total solitude, with only his dog and, every few weeks, a couple of days off when he can go down the mountain and spend time with his wife. There’s a lot of history of how the Gila came to be the nation’s first wilderness area, plenty of homage to other writers—like Norman McClean and Jack Kerouac—who also spent summers as lookouts, and a healthy examination of the U.S. Forest Service’s evolution on the question of whether to fight natural forest fires.
Washington: A Life
By Ron Chernow
I’ve read several books about the Civil War, but not much about the U.S. Revolution, so this one filled in the gaps for me. This lengthy (900-plus pages) biography covers George Washington’s life—and the creation of the United States—in great detail, warts and all. Washington the general, Washington the statesman, Washington the slave-holder: it was fascinating to look back at such a different time in the country’s history, and see how the decisions were made to build a new government from scratch.
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
By William Finnegan
William Finnegan is a writer for the New Yorker, and this is his memoir of his younger life, when he literally traveled around the world pursuing his passion for riding waves. He has lived in Hawaii, Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, Madiera, San Francisco, Long Island and others, always waiting for the right season, the right set of waves. This is an exceptionally well-written book, a way for me to vicariously enjoy something that I will never be able to do.
