The 2021 Read List

2021 was a hard year. It shook me in ways that 2020 didn’t. A lot of things got lost in all the shaking, and along with my writing practice, one of the biggest of these was my reading. I only read twenty-five books in 2021. Of those, thirteen (a full half) were rereads. When I did turn to a book, I was seeking comfort from it. Comfort and enough momentum to suck me wholly into the pages and out of my own experience. These are certainly not bad things to seek from reading, and I did find what I was looking for, but it does make my 2021 read list a little different than those from previous years. I have, as ever, selected eight recommendations. Though in order to meet that number this year, I have of necessity added multiple rereads to my list, and half of my recommendations cover not one but multiple books by one author (either in a series or not). I do not recommend these titles any less heartily than those on my lists from past years. In fact, perhaps by the very nature of what I required from my 2021 reading, I can recommend these even more strongly. One way or another, I hope as ever that you are able to find what you are seeking from this list—be it a new friend, a kindred reader, or a new adventure ready to meet you wherever you happen to find yourself in 2022.

1. The Greenhollow Duology: Emily Tesh

In the fall of 2020, my (now) husband set about building a new world in which to set the new campaign he was planning for our online D&D group. I watched him enthusiastically researching different mythologies looking for just the right combination of stories to bring his vision to life. He asked us, his players, to not only create our new characters and their backstories but also to contribute some bits of our own lore to the world. What began for me as somewhat haphazard research to fulfill this prompt, has since merged with my inherent love of the (mostly Disney) fairy tales on which I was raised and blossomed into a real fascination for folk mythology. My D&D research was not the first place I encountered the legend of the Green Man, but it did reacquaint me with the idea of that figure just in time for my eye to be caught by The Greenhollow Duology. I found these two little books deeply absorbing, light enough to be easy reading, deep enough to be insightful, and much too short. I wanted very much to stay in this world a while longer. Matthew Lloyd Davies’ narration was delicious as well, which is always an added perk!

2. The Secret Garden: Frances Hodgson Burnett

Was it the hours of walking I did in 2020, musing on the architecture of Cambridge, imagining hidden doors and secret spaces? Was it the vast number of robins I encountered on those rambles—personable and curious—or my continuing fascination with the melodious cadence of the Yorkshire accent, around which I just can’t quite place my tongue? Whatever the trigger, I found myself walking into 2021 with a great desire to read The Secret Garden. I grew up on the 1993 film (with the incomparable Maggie Smith as the terrifying Mrs. Medlock), and could undoubtedly quote the whole of it to you today, but I could not tell you when it was that I had last read the book itself. Reading it as an adult, I was quite enchanted. It has just the right note of Gothic suspense and, after all, a story about throwing off convention in order to surround yourself with good people and heal what ails you by taking long vigorous walks across the moor and digging around in your very own “bit of earth,” strikes just the right note in our current times. Don’t be surprised if next year finds me digging and knitting happily away in Yorkshire myself.

3. The Once and Future Witches: Alix E. Harrow

I have always been easily caught by the word “witch” in a title. Though I have learned that I am fairly picky about which witchy content I find entertaining and which a little too forced. I am particular in my fantasy tastes. I picked up and put down The Once and Future Witches at multiple bookstores, always caught by that intriguing promise of magic in the word “witches” and the echo of Arthurian legend in the “Once and Future,” but always just a little skeptical at the back-cover blurb. I finally downloaded an audio copy because, well, Alix Harrow’s first novel, The Ten Thousand Doors of January, is one of my all-time favorite books. This one is instantly darker than January—more adult. The world is a late-nineteenth-century America that runs close enough to our own timeline to make its harsh realities hit uncomfortably close to home. It is a timeless story of three sisters and their magic and at the same time a story that provides perfect commentary and insight into the world that currently exists beyond its pages. It is dark. It is challenging. In the end, it is profoundly hopeful. I will likely not pay as many visits to the Eastwood sisters as to January Scaller, but I shall still, undoubtedly, return to them in time and glean something new from the journey.

4. The Name of the Wind: Patrick Rothfuss

Speaking of being particular about fantasy . . . I will admit that it took me much longer to pick this one up than it should have done because of a deep prejudice I have long held against most “fantasy” novels. This is one of Dylan’s all-time favorite books. I got him the tenth-anniversary edition when it came out and watched him, night after night, rereading the story with such intense joy that I was intrigued. Then I saw Patrick Rothfuss’s arc as a guest on Critical Role and heard The Name of the Wind recommended from a couple of other sources and was finally persuaded. I picked up Dylan’s old paperback copy and allowed myself to be carried away into the perfect kind of fantasy. I can now join the millions of other fans who will tell you about a 700+ page book that passes much too quickly—a world and characters so beautifully drawn that you want to follow each one into their own corner of the map and stay with them for eight-hundred pages of their own. It is a tale that is certainly not always comforting, but more than sufficiently gripping to carry you right away.

5. Winter Solstice & Coming Home: Rosamunde Pilcher

I can’t remember if I came to Rosamunde Pilcher first through my grandmother (who adored her, and whose copies of September, The Shell Seekers, and Coming Home, along with a collection of shorter novels, I inherited), or through a chance encounter on a rainy Thursday afternoon in my high school library. One way or another, when I found myself, last year, deeply in need of comfort, I fondly remembered a long-ago reading of September and decided to give it another go. September led to Voices in Summer and The Carousel, then to Winter Solstice, Coming Home, and finally on to Sleeping Tiger. I delighted in September, as I remembered doing the first time through so many years ago, and enjoyed watching the evolution of Pilcher’s ideas of characters and story-telling in her shorter works, but Winter Solstice and Coming Home were the best—with Winter Solstice rising to the top to likely become a new friend I choose to revisit every year. These books are all so cozy, and while their often predictable storylines share many tropes, each (of the longer novels at least) is richly its own entity, and the characters are so fully themselves and so intricately fleshed out that I can’t help wishing I could travel to Scotland or Cornwall on this side of the page and settle cozily into community with them there.

6. Underground: A Human History of the Worlds Beneath Our Feet: Will Hunt

This book. Unquestionably the first-prize winner of the 2021 list. I saw the blurb in a newsletter from the Harvard Bookstore, ordered a copy, picked it up, devoured it, and proceeded to recommend it to everyone I know who reads. Dylan read it. We got a copy for his family who passed it around. I recommended it enthusiastically to my Harry Potter reading group, our online D&D group . . . On the surface, Underground is a book about the author’s fascination with tunnels and his life-long exploration of why underground spaces have fascinated so many other humans and human cultures throughout our history. But (pardon the pun here) this is far from a surface sort of book. Will Hunt writes beautifully and his deep (I did it again—sorry) love and respect for his topic cast an irresistible spell. Hunt has done his research the world over and is intently reflective on his own experiences and the stories and facts he has gathered. I was entranced, awed, and have come away with a burning desire to explore more of the hidden places under our feet.

7. Harry Potter: J.K. Rowling

A year does not go by in which I don’t reread at least one of the Harry Potter books, especially now that I’ve begun reading them in community with my Harry Potter and the Sacred Text reading group. But while these seven YA novels have always and continue to hold a special place on my shelf, their influence and their presence becomes all the more crucial in years like 2021. I last read all seven books in 2016—a real rock-bottom year for me. I may have made it through them all again last fall had I not had (the blessedly joyful distraction of) a wedding to plan. I did make it thoughtfully through both Sorcerer’s Stone and Half-Blood Prince, the first alongside my local HPST group, and the latter in community with a larger and more far-reaching virtual HPST gathering. These stories, these characters, and the brilliantly open and insightful souls alongside whom I read them last year were a balm, a solace, a safe and forgiving space to begin to process the pain of profound loss. While the author and her personal views have grown more troubling and problematic in recent years, Harry Potter himself, his story, his world, and his many fans continue to be a boon in my life.

8. Amelia Peabody: Elizabeth Peters

Last, but certainly not least, we have Amelia Peabody. These I know I have also mentioned before in this space, and I cannot tell you how many times I have read them. I met this series in high school on a friend’s recommendation. I read them through first in the tatty trade paperback editions I still have on my shelf, then at some point down the line I discovered Barbara Rosenblat’s brilliant audio editions, and have experienced Amelia, Emerson, and their world through her voice ever since. These are also comfort books for me, though, as with everything I choose to return to again and again, I know I get much more from these books than merely comfort. My desire to begin rereading the Amelia Peabodys at the end of 2021 I know stems from my relationship with Amelia and Emerson’s marriage. This fictional couple was and is the most intimate and longest-lasting example in my life of what a solid, loving, demonstrative, equal partnership can look like. It only makes sense then, that as I began my own marriage, I would want to turn back to the Emersons for guidance.

And there they are! Eight(ish) recommendations from my 2021 reading. If you are interested in buying any of these titles, most of the title links will take you to Bookshop.org where you can choose your favorite local bookshop to benefit from your purchase. If I couldn’t find the book in their catalog, I have defaulted to either a direct link to the shop where I acquired the physical book or to Audible. (I feel like the Amelia Peabody books especially benefit from the most amazing talents of their narrator!) Also, as I have been mentioning my Harry Potter and the Sacred Text reading group so often, you may notice I’ve included a link to their local groups page as well as a link to Not Sorry Productions, the parent company that has grown out of the original HPST Podcast. At the Not Sorry website, you can find information on all of their podcasts as well as information on the paid classes and pilgrimages they curate. Finally, below, I’ve included my complete 2021 read list in chronological order.

And with that, I shall return to my stack of to-be-reads. I wish you all happy and adventurous reading in 2022!