My list of “Books I’m Not Recommending for Christmas” continues for 2021. In early December, I take stock of what I’ve read over the year. This isn’t a “best books of the year” activity as much as looking back and reflecting upon the novels, short stories, poetry, and non-fiction I’ve read that have made a particular impact. The “not recommending” description comes from my idiosyncratic view that no one should select books for another person, unless that person has requested it.
Mt selections were tough in three categories, because they were what I read the most – fiction, poetry, and mysteries. I’ve divided fiction into two groups this year – those written in English and those translated into English. (Note: not all of these books were published in 2021, and all links are to my reviews.)
Children’s Stories
I read children’s stress because I’m always on the lookout for stories for the three grandsons. Two that I read were especially well done. Sara Barkat’s The Midnight Ball is a story about an invitation, telling time, and the oddest collection of partygoers you can imagine. Seth Lewis’s The Notorious Adventures of Nutt the Nefarious has just the right balance of fun (for kids) and satire (for adults).
Mystery
I’ve been reading mystery stories since I was 9. I’ve probably read more mysteries than any other genre. And I take (some) solace in the fact that T.S. Eliot loved mysteries, too.
This year, I discovered the William Benson legal thrillers by John Fairfax, aka Willian Brodrick. I had already been a fan of Brodrick’s Father Anselm mysteries, and then found this later series (and they’re not easy to find in print; I find used copies via Amazon and Alibris). Summary Justice is the first of the three published so far. I also enjoyed the Ryder and Loveday mysteries of Faith Martin, set in Oxford and of which A Fatal Obsession is the first (of seven so far). Damien Boyd published a new Nick Dixon mystery, Down Among the Dead, and I thoroughly enjoyed the first of Tim Sullivan’s mysteries, The Cyclist.
These mysteries all have one major thing in common. They’re written by British authors.
Faith
Hands down, the book in this category I enjoyed the most this year was Seeing Jesus by Robert Hudson. Hudson takes a historical look at great visions of Jesus claimed throughout the centuries and the impact the people had on the culture, society, and their eras.
Literary Criticism
My taste in literary criticism leans to (surprise) C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, and this year produced a bumper crop of fine works. On C.S. Lewis, there was C.S. Lewis: Pre-Evangelism for a Post-Christian World by Brian Williams and After Humanity, Michael Ward’s guide to The Abolition of Man. Holley Ordway published Tolkien’s Modern Reading, tracing his influences to more than what the conventional wisdom holds.
On the non-Lewis / non-Tolkien side, I really liked Jason Stacy’s Spoon River America and John Mullan’s The Artful Dickens. I also enjoyed the second volume of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s literary memoir, Between Two Millstones.
Non-fiction
My non-fiction reading tends to lean to the iconoclastic and anti-prevailing cultural. Jeffrey Bilbro takes a historical and theological journey into news media with Reading the Times. Rod Dreher looks at the lessons of the Soviet era and applies them to America in Live Not by Lies. In An Effort to Understand, David Murray seeks to find a way across the political divide. The Revolt of the Public by Martin Gurri focuses on the role of information today, and how it has seriously undercut the trust in and credibility of our traditional elites.
Poetry
Because of my work for Tweetspeak Poetry, and also because I enjoy it, I read a lot of poetry. And some really fine poetry was published this year. Just a few of the highlights: The Strangeness of the Good by James Matthew Wilson; My Father’s Face by Chandra Gurung; Love in the Time of Coronavirus by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell; Four Texas Quartets by Mark Johnson Cole (a nod to T.S. Eliot); Learning to Pray by Yahia Lababidi; The Courage It Takes by Kelly Chripczuk; and The Green Man by David Russell Mosley.
Fiction: In Translation
The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazhin was first published in English in 2018. It’s a fascinating tale of a man who awakens in a hospital bed who gradually learns he’s the sole survivor of freezing experiments conducted during the Soviet regime of Stalin. He’s as “old as the century,” and his story becomes Russia’s sory in the 20th century. This may get my nod as my favorite book in my 2021 reading.
Gerta by Katerina Tuckova is the story of a girl of German ethnicity living in Brno, Czechoslovakia, before, during and after World War II. It’s a story that often doesn’t get told: what happened to ethnic Germans living in the “wrong countries” after the war. At the End of the Matinee by Keeichiro Hirano, author of A Man (which I loved), tells the story of a classical guitarist and the reporter who falls in love with him. It’s a story of identity, honor, love, and duty.
Fiction
This was the year Anthony Doerr published a novel after the wildly successful All the Light We Cannot See (2015). This one is entitled Cloud Cuckoo Land, and it is a very different book (and one his wife stopped him from throwing away at one point). It stretches across centuries – the time of the fall of Constantinople, contemporary Idaho, and sometime in the distant future. The book hasn’t had the sensational reception of his previous work, but it a rewarding story, with all the narrative threads brought together at the end.
Other novels I enjoyed include Iron Island by Gareth Griffin, a continuation of his early British history novels; Mildred’s Garden by Laura Boggess; The Sea by John Banville; The Frequency of Us by Keith Stuart; The Weight of Memory by Shawn Smucker; and Mr. Nicholas by Christopher de Vinck. Short story collections I liked include In the Wine Press by Joshua Hren; Scattered Lights by Steve Wiegenstein; and The Pieta in Ordinary Time by William Cook.
Top photograph by Gaelle Marcel via Unsplash. Used with permission.
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