For a year that started out with a struggle to read much of anything at all, 2021 brought numerous books that made me very happy to read, to have read, to browse repeatedly, and to go back and read bits of them again and again. Both Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins and Fletcher and Zenobia are children’s picture books, and they delight me every time. Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History is a picture book of a different sort; the time I spend with it on re-reading is a mix of remembering and imagining, and it is a wonderful book for both.

I read two large books about rock bands from the 1960s, and I loved them both. Outside the Gates of Eden was written by Lewis Shiner, who was there for the ’60s; Utopia Avenue was written by David Mitchell, who was born in 1969 and thus has a different perspective. Shiner is a Texan, Mitchell is an Englishman, both have their characters start bands locally but then pass through New York and San Francisco where they encounter well-known personalities of the era. Mitchell ends the main story still in the ’60s, with the bridge to the 21st century sketched out in a touching epilogue. Shiner follows his characters all the way through to a slightly alternate version of the 2010s. Both books are brilliant and worth the long ride.

Other books that were long on delight and make me smile again just thinking about them: The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison, a second book set in the world of The Goblin Emperor; All Systems Red by Martha Wells, since I finally got around to the first Murderbot novella; All-American Muslim Girl by Nadine Jolie Courtney, exactly what it says; and A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher, which is not so much a guide but would probably be helpful all the same under certain circumstances.

In 2021, I read nine books in translation: four from Japanese (manga not reviewed here), plus one each from Polish, Icelandic, Turkish, Spanish and Italian. I read five books in German, all from the series “München erlesen” (“Munich selections” with a pun on the German verb for reading). One of them was terrible, another was meh at best, and none of the other three was really great, so on the whole it was a so-so year for reading in German. I did better with poetry: seven book-length collections, which is definitely the most in many years. Four from Seamus Heaney, all terrific. I think of North and Station Island with particular pleasure. I did not connect nearly as well with Louise Glück. Part of the reason could be that I started with her first published collection about which she wrote, “Toward the poems of Firstborn, some written nearly 35 [now more than 50] years ago, I try to cultivate an attitude of embarrassed tenderness.”

Thirty-five of the books I read this year were written or co-written by men. Twenty-six of the books I read this year were written or co-written by women. I read three books (plus the excerpt from Cemetery Boys that was in the Hugo voter’s packet but which did not move me to get the rest of the book) by people who are publicly non-binary and/or trans. Wikipedia says that the gender of the author of The Promised Neverland is not known to the general public. A lot more of the books, especially the Hugo finalists, had characters who were non-binary or trans, but I did not keep specific count.

Eight of this year’s books were re-reads, including three of the first four books I read in 2021. It was that kind of a January. I’ll probably re-read all of them again, except for Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, which was nevertheless worth re-visiting. Now that I have a proper copy, I keep Fletcher and Zenobia close at hand for those moments when it’s the very thing.

Best deconstruction of tropes: The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente. Best trilogy by a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford: Do I even have to name this one? Best romp not yet mentioned: The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix. Scariest book: The Man Without a Face by Masha Gessen. Best book of big ideas and best bits about Ethiopia: Gnomon (twice) by Nick Harkaway. Best example of entirely too much: The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño. Best encounter with the numinous: Piranesi (redux) by Susanna Clarke. Best encounter with theology, possibly best mid-book twist, and best year-ending review: Lent by Jo Walton.

Full list, roughly in order read, is under the fold with links to my reviews and other writing about the authors here at Frumious.

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