My 2021 Year in Reading

I loved so many of the books I read this year. I’ve compiled some of my favorites below in an attempt to sum up my year and bring my favorites together. The list could easily have been longer!

These books give you a pretty good sense of my reading taste. This year I read lots of nonfiction, although usually of the personal sort, i.e. not books full of facts that I (given my bad memory) will soon forget, but books where people write about their ideas and experiences. As often happens with me, I read more fiction than nonfiction, but my end-of-year favorites list is nonfiction-heavy. I don’t think this means I should read more nonfiction, necessarily — too much of it tires my brain — but it means the nonfiction speaks to me and stays with me in a way the fiction is less likely to.

This was also a year where I felt bored by straightforward memoirs, of which I read at least a couple. It’s not personal writing alone that I want, but personal writing that is weird and unclassifiable and reaches beyond the story of one particular life.

I read lots of weird novels too and novels that have unusual shapes and structures. I love novels that read like strange memoirs, which is perhaps a way of saying I love autofiction. I feel like it’s common to complain about autofiction, but I am here for it. And I’m here for fiction that is digressive, meandering, and awkward.

Writing my newsletters this past year has made me think about how much I love writing about form and structure. I am NOT good at analyzing traditional plots — my mind just doesn’t work that way — but give me a piece of writing that doesn’t easily fit into any given genre, and I will happily ponder how it works and why.

Thank you to everyone who has read any or all of my newsletters this year! I appreciate everyone who lets me take up a little space in their inbox or who clicks over from Twitter to see what I’m up to. I’ve loved doing this writing, and I plan to keep it up in 2022. I’ll probably be back soon with some thoughts and plans (or purposeful lack of plans) for the new year. In the meantime, thank you, thank you, and Happy New Year!

And now, here’s my list of some of the books that meant a lot to me in 2021:

1. An I-Novel by Minae Mizumura, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter (Columbia University Press, 2021, originally published in 1995): I wrote about this book in March. It’s an autobiographical, autofictional novel that takes place in one day and is thinky, contemplative, and formally innovative.

   

2. The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg, translated by Dick Davis (Arcade Publishing, 2013, originally published in 1962): I wrote about this book in April. Ginzburg’s is the essayistic voice I’m most drawn to: confident and open, smart and vulnerable.

3. Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima, translated by Geraldine Harcourt (Picador, 2020, originally published in 1978): I wrote about this book in April. This novel and Minae Mizumura’s books have taught me how much I love the Japanese I-novel tradition. Territory of Light is a gorgeous novel about motherhood and recreating one’s life.

4. To Write As If Already Dead by Kate Zambreno (Columbia University Press, 2021): I wrote about this book in August. Zambreno’s recent books do everything I want books to do: they are both personal and intellectual, they experiment with form, and they are bookish and strange. She writes about friendship, motherhood, art, writing, reading, walking — so many things I care about.

   

5. This Little Art by Kate Briggs (Fitzcarraldo, 2018): my post.
   Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton (Liveright, 2022/Fitzcarraldo, 2021): my post.
   Translation as Transhumance by Mireille Gansel, translated by Ros Schwartz (Feminist Press, 2017): my post.
   I’m lumping these books together because they are all about translation and all really, really great. I discovered this year that I love reading about translation. Each of these books is innovative and strange and full of ideas about language and writing that I thought about for a long while afterward.

6. Bina: A Novel in Warnings by Anakana Schofield (NYRB, 2021): I wrote about this book in June. This is a novel mostly narrated by an older woman who is writing her warnings to the world on scraps of paper. It’s funny, prickly, angry, and weird. I loved the anger running through it.

7. A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa (Biblioasis, 2021): I wrote about this book in June. Add this to the canon of literature about motherhood. It’s also great on literary obsession and women’s writing. I loved it as a book about reading and reclaiming lost histories.

8. Be Holding by Ross Gay (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020): I wrote about this book in July. This is my most memorable poetry book of the year: a book-length poem that begins with basketball and extends in many different directions. Somehow Ross Gay packs a whole world into this poem and does it with such (seeming) ease.

   

9. Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri, translated by Morgan Giles (Riverhead, 2020): I wrote about this book in August. I’ll remember Tokyo Ueno Station for its evocation of place and for its strangely porous structure that captures the lives of the poor and forgotten.

10. Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette (New Directions, 2020): I wrote about this book in September. The way the two sections of this novel work together is brilliant. This book is harsh, suspenseful, easy to understand but hard to read, and powerful on the levels of emotion and structure.

11. The Other Name: Septology I-II by Jon Fosse, translated by Damion Searls (Transit Books, 2020): I wrote about this book in October. A novel written in one long run-on: I love this sort of thing. This novel should be boring, but it’s not. It’s hypnotic, beautiful, and absorbing. I’m so bad at finishing series, but I would like to read further in this septology in 2022.

12. Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (Graywolf, 2004): I wrote about this book in November. This is a gorgeous hybrid work — a poetic essay with images — that looks at post-9/11 America. It’s melancholy, ruminative, innovative, and influential: I picked it up because writers I love have talked about how important this book is to them, and I can understand why.

    

13. The Breaks: An Essay by Julietta Singh (Coffee House Press, 2021): I wrote about this book in November. I’ve tried to push this book on people who care about parenting and climate issues (I’m not sure I’ve been successful, but I’m still trying). This book is so smart and honest, and it’s helped me think through what it means to live responsibly in this time we’re in.

14. Deborah Levy’s autobiographical trilogy: Things I Don’t Want to Know, The Cost of Living, and Real Estate (Bloomsbury, 2018, 2019, and 2021): I wrote about the first book earlier this month. I’ve been happily reading and rereading these books in print and on audio for the past month. Levy thinks through what it means to be a woman and a woman writer and the resulting books are both aesthetically satisfying and inspirational.

15. Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes, translated by Richard Howard (Hill & Wang, 2020, originally published in 1980): This was my first Barthes book and not my last; I’m happily in the middle of A Lover’s Discourse right now and have others ready for me on my shelves. After reading Barthes, a lot clicked into place: I see how much of an influence he is on many of my favorite writers. His mix of philosophy and theory with personal, emotional writing is everywhere, and I love it. Also, Barthes writes the most brilliant asides and parentheses and is delightfully, unexpectedly weird.

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New on the TBR

New books acquired:

• The War by Marguerite Duras, translated by Barbara Bray (New Press, 1994, originally published in 1985): I own this book thanks to Garry on Twitter. I escaped a kids’ birthday party about a month ago and made my way to a coffee shop, but didn’t have a book. After tweeting about my stupidity and misfortune, Garry offered to send me pictures of pages I could read on my phone. And then he did! I read the first few pages of this book over my coffee and was hooked. Don’t ever tell me Twitter is a terrible place because it’s not (at least not always).

Current/Recent Reading

• The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy (Bloomsbury, 2019): I’m rereading this on audio (my third time through the book). Juliet Stevenson is the narrator you want for these books.

• What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons (Penguin, 2017): A coming-of-age novel in an autofictional vein about a young woman dealing with her mother’s death, her South African heritage, and her place in U.S. society.

  

The Cormac Report

I occasionally pick Cormac up, even though he’s almost 9, around 50 pounds, and getting tall, just to see if I still can. I hate the idea that the most recent time I picked him up was the last time, so I do it again. I wonder, too, about the last time I will read to him out loud. We still have our tradition of reading for a few minutes before bed, but Rick has been doing all of that reading — which is fine, it’s Tolkien and I’m not interested in reading that — and the last time I read to him myself was maybe a month ago when I read him Ghost Girl. Perhaps I should suggest reading him another book, just to make sure that wasn’t the last time.

Last night he remembered a thing we used to do, which was that he would read a chapter of a book, in this case one of the Zoey and Sassafras books, and I would read it immediately after him, and then we would take turns reading chapters from there. So we did that once more, and it was sweet. It’s not the same as reading out loud, but still a practice I’d like to keep going as long as he lets me.

Happy New Year everyone!