2021 in Books

To get back into reading, I set myself a nearly unachievable target in 2019 - to read 50 books. I read 51 brilliant books. But it also took away every spare minute I had. So in 2020, I set out to read only 35 books and I ended at 34. This year, I set myself and even more achievable target - 30 books. And I completed it. Most importantly, I got the joy of reading back. Reading for the sake of reading and not to finish up any certain number. Here's the list, with a snapshot review of each.

Book 1. I start this year with a delightful retelling of the Ramayana, Sita by Devdutt Pattanaik. It's possibly the tale most retold inspiring folksongs everywhere. The author draws out versions from different parts of India and South East Asia, gathering tidbits of stories together.

Book 2. Oranges in a No Man's Land by Elizabeth Laird: It's a beautiful story of a young girl's matter-of-fact bravery in war-torn Beirut. What makes it special is not that it's from a child's point of view, but that it's a children's book and the simplicity is truthful, heartwarming.

Book 3. The Vegetarian by Han Kang: It's bizarre (but not as bizarre as Flights by Tokarczuk). Pitched for fans of the movie 'Parasite', it has twist after twist.A woman turns vegetarian and then becomes a tree. But what does it all mean? I really don't know.

Book4. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami: 16 years after highschool, Tazaki goes on a journey to face some unresolved issues. It touches upon the usual Murakami tropes of regret, loneliness and depression, but lacks his signature surrealism.

Book 5. Surfacing by Margaret Atwood: Starts off depressing, it turns spooky and surreal. Our narrator goes back to the Canadian wilderness where she grew up, to search for her father and instead reconnects with nature and her honest animalness, shunning inhumane 'civilisation'.

Book 6. Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf: Two people in their old age deal with loneliness and find a companionship that brings light into their lives. Yet, some scorn at this unusual friendship. Why is that we have such definite views on what someone should or should not do?

Book 7. Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue: A Cameroonian family struggles with the American dream. The stories from immigrants transcend culture, language and race. The book bravely acknowledges that America isn't all that promised land but a rainy day fund is always welcome!

Book 8. Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik : beautifully creative in reinventing the old tale of Rumpelstiltskin into an entirely new world of magical creatures. Converting to gold and claiming your first born have new interpretations. Chernobog's powers and weakness were confusing.

Book9. The Spy and The Traitor by Ben Macintyre: An insider view into spying, this true story is better than any fictional spy thriller you will read. But like fiction, our author builds characters in a biased unidimensional way: sympathetic to heroes; villains are just evil!

Book10. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman: Set in a wealthy retirement village in Kent, the characters are quintessentially British. Osman's wit shines through and I chuckled along happily for the most part. But the story meanders a bit and could do with a little nudge.

Book11. The Idiot by Elif Batuman: Catcher in the Rye meets Normal People in this semi-autobiographical novel about a freshman at Harvard, figuring out life. Too self involved yet pointless, but weren't we all, when we were freshmen? I read it 10 years too late.

Book 12. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi: Unlike her debut 'Homegoing's epic proportions, this is largely inside one person's mind. It's an internal dialogue about faith and science, about addiction, depression; about her relationship with her family. It unravels methodically.

Book 13. Between the Stops (of Bus #12) by Sandi Toksvig: like you would expect of the QI host, it's Quite Interesting. She stays true to character in her memoir pieced together with anecdotes from across the world. But the route of bus #12 isn't enough to hold it all together.

Book 14. My Cat Yugoslavia by Pajtim Statovci: there is something deeply unsettling about this story of a refugee life in exile and a lonely immigrant's outsider view to the world. But the surrealism of the anamorphic cat partner felt forced. The snake, however, made sense to me.

Book 15. Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-ju: it was meant to be every woman in Korea. It's actually every other woman everywhere! Jiyoung leads a normal life, even lucky some might say. That's the worst part. I wish we made every boy read this. And I hope it makes them seethe.

Book 16. My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley: Much like Burnt Sugar, a mother-daughter bond is stressed into acceptance. But more subtle, this story is about the mother, Hen, who struggles through difficult marriages and happiness remains elusive in her quest for a normal life.

Book 17. No One Is Taking About This by Patricia Lockwood: Made of social media style snippets for the attention-deficient generation, it is exhaustingly fragmented and difficult to read. I'm just not woke enough I guess! 2nd half is terrible grief and I wasn't prepared for it. 

Book 18. The Appeal by Janice Hallett: Absolutely unputdownable! A murder mystery that the reader can solve. The story is told in cases files made up of emails and messages between the various characters which you dive into without even knowing who is killed. The plot is clever!

Book 19. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong:A Vietnamese immigrant's letter to his illiterate mother with admiration and anger. Beautifully poetic, I loved it when I started but overtime the continued poetic strands overshadow the actual story and it lacks coherence.

Book 20. Anxious People by Fredrich Backman: A humane mystery solved by building characters and their personalities. It describes how one can be driven to bad deeds with good intentions. It's a heartwarming story about a bunch of anxious people and asks you to cut them some slack.

Book 21. The Lying a Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante: The author delves deep into our psyche of how often and how easily we lie without even considering it lying, through the eyes of an observant adolescent girl. We think we speak the truth, but we all lie just the same.

Book 22. The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward: The synopsis is terribly misleading. It's a weird horror story written up like a psychological thriller. It's a disturbing book and drags in the middle but the pace keeps going. The ending is so so and disappointing.

Book 23. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett: a deep book about identity, haunting a light coloured twin passing for white and those left behind. As much as Stella's choice to turn and Desiree's to return are questioned, Reese's choice is not. So absorbing, in the end, I wept.

Book 24. Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart: It took me ages to read this book about little Shuggie escaping his taxi driver father and clinging to his mother Agnes in Glasgow in poverty and alcoholism, while coming to terms with his sexual orientation. Won the Booker Prize in 2020.

Book 25. Pandora's Jar by Natalie Haynes: PhD thesis on 10 female characters from Greek myths. Some are well researched, like Pandora and Amazons, while some are just personal reflections like Jocasta and Medea. Myths are meant to retold and I prefer retellings to reflections.

Book 26. The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood: I said I prefer retellings but this one was spiteful, annoying and childish. The mean girls act with Helen was pointless, the descriptions of ghostliness distracting and the 12 murdered maids lacked gravitas. What was the point again?

Book 27. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke: A beautifully crafted fantasy with an element of thriller. The book slowly builds a new world of the House, describing the glory of the Statues so vividly that I strolled in the Halls alongside Piranesi. Then the mystery unravels.

Book 28. The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi: yet another story of young people finding their own identity in their own world, but unable to bridge their parents into it while the loving protective parents struggling to understand them. Reminiscent of Celeste Ng.

Book 29. A Boy Called Christmas by Matt Haig: A rather sad story for the holiday season. But a children's story read in the bubbly grandfatherly voice of Stephen Fry. A lovely story of a boy who believes in hope and all that's good, in a world where 'impossible' is a bad word.

Book 30. The Forest of Enchantments by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni: I start and end 2021 on retellings of the Ramayana. No easy task, I applaud the author's enormous effort. Yet feels lacking. Like the author's Draupadi, things happen to her Sita who feels victimised despite her best efforts.