I know you have been waiting for this for a long time, darlings, but it may take longer. I made an all-time record--124 titles--that I expect never to match again so there will be a long interval between composing and posting. Let's get started.
1. "Great Expectations," by Charles Dickens
2. "Convenience Store Woman," by Sayaka Murata
3. "Rabbits For Food," by Binnie Kirshenbaum
4. "This Tender Land," by William Kent Krueger
5. "The Guest List," by Lucy Foley
6. "The Juniper Tree," by Barbara Comyns
7. "Nothing Can Hurt You," by Nicola Maye Goldberg
8. "Ducks, Newburyport," by Lucy Ellmann
9. "The Wrong Family," by Tarryn Fisher
10. "Pew," by Catherine Lacey
11. "Transcendent Kingdom," by Yaa Gyasi
12. "Shelter In Place," by David Leavitt
13. "The American Fiancée," by Eric Dupont
14. "Weather," by Jenny Offill
15. "The Golden Son," by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
16. "The Murder Room," by P.D. James
17. "The Shame," by Makenna Goodman
18. "Perestroika In Paris," by Jane Smiley
19. "The Push," by Ashley Audrain
20. "The Boy In The Field," by Margot Livesey
21. "Sisters," by Daisy Johnson
22. "Greenwood," by Michael Christie
23. "Girl, Woman, Other," by Bernardine Evaristo
24. "The Nickel Boys," by Colson Whitehead
25. "The Madwoman Upstairs," by Catherine Lowell
26. "Wuthering Heights," by Emily Bronte
27. "Cleanness," by Garth Greenwell
28. "Luster," by Raven Leilani
29. "The House On Vesper Sands," by Paraic O'Donnell
30. "These Violent Delights," by Michael Nemerever
31. "The Cold Millions," by Jess Walter
32. "Anxious People," by Fredrik Backman
33. "A Thousand Acres," by Jane Smiley
34. "The Invisible Man," by H. G. Wells
35. "A Beautiful Crime," by Christopher Bollen
36. "The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow And Other Stories," by Washington Irving
37. "The Sanatorium," by Sarah Pearse
38. "Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead," by Olga Tokarczuk
39. "That Old Country Music," by Kevin Barry
40. "We Begin At The End," by Chris Whitaker
41. "Summerwater," by Sarah Moss
42. "Milk Fed," by Melissa Broder
43. "How Beautiful We Were," by Imbolo Mbue
44. "The City We Became," by N. K. Jemisin
45. "Gold Diggers," by Sanjena Sathian
46. "Black Buck," by Mateo Askaripour
47. "Lake Success," by Gary Shteyngart
48. "The Astonishing Life Of August March," by Aaron Jackson
49. "The Girl With The Louding Voice," by Abi Dare
50. "The Murmur Of Bees," by Sofia Segovia
51. "The Silent Patient," by Alex Michaelides
52. "You Should Have Known," by Jean Hanf Korelitz
53. "The Midnight Library," by Matt Haig
54. "The Orchard," by David Hopen
55. "Yes, Daddy," by Jonathan Parks Ramage
56. "The Paris Wife," by Paula Mclain
57. "Light Perpetual," by Francis Spufford
58. "Antiquities," by Cynthia Ozick
59. "Of Women And Salt," by Garbriela Garcia
60. "Milk Blood Heat," by Dantiel W. Moniz
61. "City Of A Thousand Gates," by Rebecca Sacks
62. "When The Stars Go Dark," by Paula McClain
63. My Year Abroad," by Chang-Rae Lee
64. "The Damage," by Caitlin Wahrer
65. "Moonflower Murders," by Anthony Horowitz
66. "Good Company," by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
67. "Paradise, Nevada," by Dario Diofebi
68. "Olympus, Texas," by Stacey Swann
69. "Falling," by T. J. Newman
70. "The Plot," by Jean Hanff Korelitz
71. "Detransition, Baby," by Torrey Peters
72. "Actress," by Anne Enright
73. "The Song Of Achilles," by Madeline Miller
74. "Later," by Stephen King
75. "Open Water," by Caleb Azumah Nelson
76. "The First Day Of Spring," by Nancy Tucker
77. "The Other Black Girl," by Zakiya Dalila Harris
78. "Mayflies," by Andrew O'Hagan
79. "Not A Happy Family," by Shari Lapena
80. "We Are The Brennans," by Tracy Lange
81. "Ethel Rosenberg--An American Tragedy," by Anne Sebba
82. "Great Circle," by Maggie Shipstead
83. "The Child," by Fiona Barton
84. "Foregone," by Russell Banks
85. "Patsy," by Nicole Dennis-Benn
86. "Hour Of The Witch," by Chris Bohjalian
87. "The Prophets," by Robert Jones, Jr.
88. "The Lightning Keeper," by Starling Lawrence
89. "Beautiful World, Where Are You?" by Sally Rooney
90. "Matrix," by Lauren Groff
91. "The Magician," by Colm Toibin
92. "Damnation Spring," by Ash Davidson
93. "Harlem Shuffle," by Colson Whitehead
94. I, The King," by Frances Parkinson Keyes
95. "Cloud Cuckoo Land," by Anthony Doerr
96. "Everyone Knows How Much I Love You," by Kyle McCarthy
97. "The Lincoln Highway," by Amor Towles
98. "Peyton Place," by Grace Metalious
99. "Crossroads," by Jonathan Franzen
100. "Happy All The Time, by Laurie Colwin
101. "The Shadow King," by Maaza Mengiste
102. "Cobble Hill," by Cecily Von Ziegesar
103. "I'm Thinking Of Ending Things," by Iain Reid
104. "Florida," by Lauren Groff
105. "The Woman From Uruguay," by Pedro Marial
106. "Intimacies," by Kate Kitamura
107. "Afterparties," by Anthony Veasana So
108. "Agatha Of Little Neon," by Claire Luchette
109. "Mrs. March," by Virginia Feito
110. "The Souvenir Museum," by Elizabeth McCracken
111. "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and "Thorough The Looking Glass," by Lewis Carroll
112. "The Maidens," by Alex Michaelides
113. "The Secret History," by Donna Tartt
114. "Five Tuesdays In Winter," by Lily King
115. "Razorblade Tears," by S. A. Crosby
116. "Our Country Friends," by Gary Shteyngart
117. "A Calling For Charlie Barnes," by Joshua Ferris
118. "The Sentence," by Louise Erdrich
119. "Jane Eyre," by "Charlotte Bronte
120. "When We Were Young," by Richard Roper
121. "A Line To Kill," by Anthony Horowitz
122. "The Power Of The Dog," by Thomas Savage
123. "The People We Keep," by Allison Lauren
124. "David Copperfield," by Charles Dickens
There you have it, darlings--all the books I read in 2021. I began and ended the year with Dickens; that was not planned. Every year I aim for 100, as I am doing this year, but this is my all-time record, so far, and I do not expect to surpass it. But who knows? Let it be my literary legacy.
This took me over two months to post. So, take a look, and pick and choose.
Let me know what you like or dislike.
Happy Reading, Girls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wow an Impressive list indeed!!
ReplyDeleteI’ll let you know what I think!
All I can tell you at this point is that Ducks, Nickel Boys, and Cleanness ended up on my reject pile...
ReplyDeleteVictoria,
ReplyDeleteOf course, I liked some more than others.
I was not crazy about "Cleanness" either,
did not understand all the fuss. But I
did like the other two.
It’s not that I didn’t like Nickel Boys, I just wasn’t strong enough emotionally to get through it.
ReplyDeleteDucks, was simply too annoying for me.
Intimacies was also a big NO
ReplyDeleteVictoria,
ReplyDeleteYes, "Nickel Boys" was a tough read,
but I found it moving. The one thing about
'Ducks" I will never forget is the constant
overuse of the phrase "and the fact that."
And, also, I did not like "Intimacies."
Did not understand all the fuss.