Favourite Books of 2021

While 2021 was another sucky year with respect to all that’s happening in the world, it will definitely go down as my all-time book reading record, with well over 100 books read this year.

Sadly, the Pinterest widget only displays the last 50 pins in a board, so you’ll see less than half the books I read but it’s the only easy option for now.

I powered through quite a few series this year, which is one of the reasons for the high book count. Not having to think about/find the next book to read is a big deal when you are reading 2-3 books a week.

Many of the series were entertaining and I definitely recall wanting to “get back” to them to see what happened next. Having said that, when I think back over the year, only one series really stood out as a favourite. Singletons continue to dominate my favourites.

Like last year, this year’s big disappointment was a highly anticipated book, Infinite 2, by Jeremy Robinson. Infinite was one of my favourite books in 2019 and I reread it in preparation for the sequel. Unfortunately, Infinite 2 just didn’t work for me. The fact that I can barely remember the plot line as I type this speaks volumes. Also like previous years, I continue to reread the Bobiverse books, albeit only books 1 through 3. They never get old.

Okay, here are my favourites from 2021. Andy Weir continues to be one of my favourite authors and while Artemis was good, The Martian, and this year’s addition, Project Hail Mary, were GREAT! Walter Isaacson also continues to be one of my favourite authors, his biographies are amazing and The Code Breaker, which features the story of Jennifer Doudna, is no exception. The bulk of the book was written before it was known that she would share the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on gene editing and CRISPR. Finally, the series I was most excited about this year was “Season 2” of Dean Koontz’s Nameless. Season 2 was a fitting conclusion to what was an excellent Season 1. I think it would have been very interesting if Koontz had decided to write this as a full novel as opposed to a bunch of short stories but the result is still great.

I hope you had a great reading year and I’m looking forward to 2022, with lots of releases already on the calendar.