Best Books of 2021 + Superlatives

Wow, what a year 2021 was for reading. I managed to finish 129 books. This is not typical for me! Pre-kids, I would read around 80 books/year which is still a lot, but I've read over 100 the last 3 years. I think the pandemic is partly to blame for my higher reading count. We've been very conservative and have done very little for the last nearly 2 years, which leaves more time for reading. I also read A TON while nursing Will during the first 3-4 months of life. I don't know how I could read in the middle of the night - that would be way too stimulating now. But I guess I was so tired that reading on my kindle while nursing him didn't prevent me from falling back to sleep easily! 

I never set a challenging reading goal for myself - I set my goal at 60 books on goodreads because I don't want to focus on the quantity of books read or put pressure on myself to read as much as I did in years past. But if I had to guess, I would say that I will likely read over 100 books again in 2022. I typically go up to bed around 8:30 and read until 9:30, so I still get about 45 minutes of kid-free time with Phil before going up to read. As Paul's bedtime gets pushed back, it will compress my evening reading time, but until then, I'll probably keep reading at the 100+ book rate - we'll see!

It was hard to pick my favorites, but I narrowed it down to the 12 books in the picture below. 4 were non-fiction/memoir, 8 were fiction. 

Instead of talking about what each book is about, I thought I'd instead take page from Sarah of Sarah's Bookshelves, a podcast I discovered this year and absolutely love! She does a superlatives episode for Patreon members and it's a fun way to talk about books. So here are some superlatives that I borrowed from her/came up with on my own.

Most Surprising Read of 2021

The Guncle by Steven Rowley. I am probably selecting this because of recency bias as I recently read it. But it was so good! It's about a gay uncle who takes care of his brother's kids for a summer. Their mom has died from cancer and their father goes into rehab to treat an addiction to pain pills. This book combined humor with grief and substance. I want to read more by this author. I had heard good things about this book, but books that are described as funny as often misses for me but this one definitely wasn't. It wasn't a laugh-out-loud kind of funny - it was more so full of wit. 

The runner-up was Nothing To See Here by Kevin Wilson. This book was recommended so many times on podcasts but I thought surely I would not enjoy a book about kids who spontaneously combust when they get angry! But I loved it! It was another book full of wit.

Best Crowd Pleaser of 2021

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune was loved by so many and was worthy of all of the praise it received. It's full of magical realism which is usually something I'm not a fan of, but it worked in this book. 

The Most Disappointing Book

I really disliked The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris. This could have fallen under the least deserving of the hype category as well. I was so confused for a good chunk of this book and then so disappointed with the ending. I wish I had abandoned it!

The Book I Thought I would Love More Than I Did

I thought I would love Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune since I loved his previous book, The House in the Cerulean Sea but it ended up being "just ok." Nearly the whole book takes place in the confines of a tea shop so it felt a bit drawn out and longer than it needed to be? I felt that way about a lot of books in 2021. It seems like many books could be 50-100 pages shorter?

Most Deserving of the Hype

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner was all over the place and totally lived up to its hype. It's a memoir about the author's experience of losing her mom to cancer. It's a reflection on how she processed her death and their complicated relationship. 

Least Deserving of the Hype

The Idea of You by Robinne Lee. So this wasn't  super hyped, but I did hear about it on several podcasts and I felt like many of my goodreads friends read and loved it. Not me. It's about a May-December romance where the woman is older than the man. He is just slightly older than her daughter and is a pop star that her daughter loves. I just felt like the premise was so unrealistic. She was 39 and her love interest was 20. I just can not relate to falling for a 20-year old. She also made some really questionable decisions - for those who have read this book, I'm thinking about the scene on the boat that the paparazzi capture on film. 

The Book I Didn't Like That Other People Loved

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. I was so surprised that I did not love this book. It was right in my wheelhouse but I felt completely meh about it. I think the fact that I've never seen/read Hamlet might have contributed to my dislike of the book? I gave it 3 stars so it could have been worse but I was expecting this to be a 5-star read and I know several who absolutely LOVED this book.

Pick a superlative to answer or tell me what your favorite book(s) of the year was/were!