Books of the Year 2021 – looking back and looking forward

Books of the Year–well everyone else does it, and with over 60 books read last year, I feel I should tease out some virtual award-winners.

But what is coming up in 2022? Well, I already have six books from Netgalley to read, with release dates from February to June. I’m going to be doing the usual Reading Challenges: Mount TBR, Alphabet Soup, Spacetime Reading Challenge, and continuing the Non-Fiction Adventure. You can see my near-successes on all of these (missed X on the Alphabet, but achieved all the others). In 2022 I’m going to be Finishing the Series–between five and eight of them– for the challenge of that name. You can see details of all these Challenges in their respective pages. Just click the highlighted links.

Books of 2021 by Category

It’s only fair to divide these into categories:

• Science fiction (including space opera, spec fiction and time travel)
• Crime/Mystery
• Historical (inc. mystery and spec fiction mainly in historical settings
• Middle Grade
• Non-fiction
• Special mentions

And then give you the short-lists, those I rated five stars or was very mean with an otherwise excellent four-star read (one qualifier for that this year)

This year I had 21 five-star reads out of 60 books read, which is about normal. Four are indie published, which is probably lower than previous years (I didn’t count the reread, which was an indie five star), but also reflects the number of books I had from Net-galley in 2021: 10 out of 21 achieved five stars.

Science fiction

• Voyage of the White Cloud
• Free-Wrench
• A Swiftly Tilting Planet
• The Galaxy, and the Ground Within – winner by virtue of astounding alien-culture building

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Crime/Mystery

• The Night Hawks
• The Madness of Crowds – winner by virtue of excellent representation of political manipulation
• Death By Donut
• The Lantern Men

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Historical

• The Kingdoms
• The Rose Code
• Dangerous Women – winner by a whisker as Rose Code won the Goodreads award and Dangerous Women was just as good

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Middle Grade

• Adventures with Waffles
• A Swiftly Tilting Planet
• The Year of Shadows – winner because it still resonates loudest with me
• The Cat Who Saved Books
• Max’s Arabian Adventures
• Trouble With Tattle-Tails
• Goodnight Mister Tom
• The Weather Weaver

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Non-Fiction

• The Art of Enough
• The Saturn System through the Eyes of Cassini
• Finding the Mother Tree* only four stars but worthy of inclusion for the wow factor – and it wins against the others

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Special Mentions

• What You Can See From Here
• The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse

Both of these are essential reading for anyone who needs some peace and positivity, or just acceptance of their part in this troubled world.

Is it possible to pick a Book of the Year?

Yes. For the first time…

Note: I also read Finishing the Hat after Christmas. I just can’t squeeze it in at the last moment. It needs a category for itself, really. See the review 15th January.