Best Reads of 2021

Here are my best reads in English during 2021. The total was 69 books, which is a lot for me. This was mainly because in April I sorted my Goodreads reading queue on page count and then mostly read the shortest books on the list for the rest of the year. 67% of the total were e-books, an all-time high.

Find me at Goodreads! Dear Reader, what were your best reads of the year?

  • Castle Hangnail. Ursula Vernon 2015.
  • The Fall of the House of Cabal. Jonathan L. Howard 2016.
  • So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. Jon Ronson 2015.
  • Doctor No (James Bond #6). Ian Fleming 1958.
  • First 1/5 of Arthur C. Clarke, Collected stories, 1937-50.
  • Collected Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham #3.
  • The Wild Girls. Ursula K. Le Guin 2002-11.
  • Slaughterhouse Five. Kurt Vonnegut 1969.
  • The Stone Book Quartet. Alan Garner 1979.
  • The Justice Trade (Ashen Stars RPG). Leonard Balsera et al. 2013.
  • Swords of the Serpentine RPG. Kevin Kulp & Emily Dresner 2020.
  • Suppressed Transmission: The First Broadcast. Kenneth Hite 2000.
  • Nobody’s Fool. Richard Russo 1993.
  • Project Hail Mary. Andy Weir 2021.
  • Time and the Gods. Lord Dunsany 1906.
  • Spoon River Anthology. Edgar Lee Masters 1915.
  • The Palm-Wine Drinkard. Amos Tutuola 1952.
  • Switch Bitch. Roald Dahl 1974.
  • Bronze Age Lives. Anthony Harding 2021.
  • Deep Secret (Magids #1). Diana Wynne Jones 1997.
  • The Pirate. Frederick Maryatt 1836.
  • More Walls Broken. Tim Powers 2019.
  • Murder Me For Nickels. Peter Rabe 1960.
  • Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962-1970. Richard Brautigan.
  • Wylding Hall. Elizabeth Hand 2015.
  • Boy: Tales of Childhood. Roald Dahl 1984.
  • An African Millionaire. Grant Allen 1897.
  • The Seedling Stars. James Blish 1956.
  • The Erotic Traveller. R.F. Burton 1969.
  • Primal Sources: Essays on H. P. Lovecraft. S.T. Joshi 2003.
  • Emphyrio. Jack Vance 1969.
  • A Morbid Taste for Bones. Ellis Peters 1977.
  • A Scanner Darkly. P.K. Dick 1977.
  • Rogues and Rascals in English History. Neville Williams 1959.
  • My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places. Mary Roach 2013.
  • Changing Places. David Lodge 1975.
  • The Perfumed Garden. Umar Ibn Muhammed Al-Nefzawi, 15th c.
  • Werewolves in Their Youth. Michael Chabon 1999.
  • The House of the Seven Gables. Nathaniel Hawthorne 1851.
  • The Samurai. Stephen Turnbull 2016.
  • The Wild Shore. Kim Stanley Robinson 1984.
  • Ice Station Zebra. Alistair MacLean 1963.
  • Minnow on the Say. Philippa Pearce 1955.
  • 50 Years of Text Games. Aaron A. Reed 2021.

Here’s my list for 2020.

Author: Martin R

Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, boardgamer, geocacher and father of two.

5 thoughts on “Best Reads of 2021”

  1. Well, I have a list of 45 favourite authors that I rotate through, but then there are so many other interesting books with potential even though I may not be familiar with the authors yet!

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  2. Not many English-language books this year, one of them: Alice Gorman’s 2019. “Dr Space Junk vs the universe: archaeology and the future”; and some graphic novels, most recently 2021. “Wake : the hidden history of women-led slave revolts” By Rebecca Hall. Illustrated by Hugo Martínez.

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