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My Top Five Reads of 2021

My Top Five Reads of 2021

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I cannot believe that 2021 is already over, and that 2021 turned out to be just as bad, if not worse, than 2020. But at least I got to read some great books last year. These are my top five books of 2021:

5. The Rose Code by Kate Quinn – another riveting WWII mystery by Quinn. I really enjoyed this one!

4. Matrix by Lauren Groff – completely not what I was expecting from Groff, but this novel was mesmerizing.

3. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr – fantastic novel with three intersecting timelines, this one will be a reread.

2. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro – I will never forget Klara’s story. The world does not deserve her.

And number 1 is…

Fight Night by Miriam Toews! I cannot believe how much I enjoyed reading this novel. I actually laughed out loud, which does not happen that often when I read. Toews is a great writer!

There are reviews for all five of these books on my blog. Hope I have inspired you to read some of them!

Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch by Rivka Galchen

Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch by Rivka Galchen

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The last book of 2021! I was pleasantly surprised by Rivka Galchen’s Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch, so I am glad to finish up the year with a good book. Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch is based on the real-life Katharina Kepler, mother of famed Imperial Mathematician Johannes Kepler, who was accused of being a witch in early 17th century Germany.

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The Light of Days by Judy Batalion

The Light of Days by Judy Batalion

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It took me a long time (yes, two weeks is a long time for me) to finish reading The Light of Days for two reasons:

  1. I have been very tired this December. I do most of my reading before bedtime, and lately I have barely made it through one chapter before I fall asleep on the couch with the cats.
  2. This book can, at times, be difficult to read. There are some passages in this book that depict the most inhumane, depraved human behaviour I have ever heard about, that it was nauseating for me to read. I almost did not finish reading The Light of Days because of this.
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Infinite Country by Patricia Engel

Infinite Country by Patricia Engel

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Infinite Country is a heartbreaking portrait of living undocumented in the US and of a family living in separate countries. The novel tells the story of 15-year-old American-born Talia, who has been raised by her abuela and her father, Mauro, in Colombia, and who must escape from a correctional facility so that she can fly to the US to be reunited with her mother, Elena, and her older siblings, Karina and Nando. Infinite Country also tells the story of how Talia’s parents ended up in the US, why her mother and siblings are still there, and why Mauro and Talia are on their own in Colombia. It explores why people immigrate to the US and how (white) Americans are so callous in their treatment of immigrants.

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Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld

Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld

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I have read two of Curtis Sittenfeld’s previous novels; the first was American Wife, which is based on Laura Bush’s life (the wife of George W. Bush), and Eligible, which is a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in Cincinnati. I enjoyed reading both of those novels; they are both character-driven, interesting reads, although Eligible ventures into absurdity towards the end. I had been very interested in reading Rodham since it was first published last year, not so much because I am a fan of Hillary Rodham Clinton, but because by now I trust Sittenfeld to write a good book. And Rodham is a good book. I cannot tell you how close Sittenfeld’s Hillary Rodham is to the real Hillary Rodham Clinton, but it is a super fascinating “what if?” novel that I highly recommend. The premise of Rodham is this: What if Hillary Rodham had never married Bill Clinton?

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Indigo 2021 Reading Challenge

Indigo 2021 Reading Challenge

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Believe it or not, this is the first time I’ve done a reading challenge. I decided at the beginning of the year that I wanted to expand my reading horizons, and the Indigo 2021 Reading Challenge certainly helped with that. I read genres that I never read before (self-help and true crime) and genres that I don’t read enough of (memoirs). I’m really glad I did the reading challenge, but I think I’m going to take next year off and focus on my TBR pile (which keeps growing, and growing). Here are the books that I read, you can find my reviews for almost all of them on this blog:

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Mister Impossible (The Dreamer Trilogy) by Maggie Stiefvater

Mister Impossible (The Dreamer Trilogy) by Maggie Stiefvater

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I will always be drawn to Maggie Stiefvater’s novels. Her stories are richly imaginative and set in the real world, with just enough of the supernatural to make them seem plausible. Mister Impossible is the second book of The Dreamer Trilogy; the first book is Call Down the Hawk. The Dreamer Trilogy is a spin-off of The Raven Cycle, a quartet of books that I do not even know how to summarize even though I have read them all twice. Essentially, The Raven Cycle is about a teenage girl and four private school boys who are in search of a Welsh king named Glendower who is supposedly sleeping underneath a forest called Cabeswater. There are psychics, ley lines, ghosts and other supernatural things in these books. Nothing I say will make these books make sense, all I know is that I enjoy reading The Raven Cycle; I enjoy the characters and their relationships with each other; I enjoy the lyricality of Stiefvater’s writing.

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Lilia by Linda Ganzini

Lilia by Linda Ganzini

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One of the categories for the Indigo 2021 Reading Challenge is “A book by a local author”, so I went to my local independent bookstore in search for a book by a local author. It was slim pickings unless I wanted to read about the Okanagan (which I do not since I have lived here for over eighteen years). I picked out Lilia by Linda Ganzini not so much because I wanted to read another book about World War II, but because Lilia is a true story based on Ganzini’s mother’s childhood growing up in fascist, Nazi-occupied Italy during World War II. It turned out to be a very interesting and inspiring story.

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The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

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I really enjoyed Stuart Turton’s first novel, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. If you like murder mysteries, I highly recommend it. It is set in the 1920s at a country manor and is about a man who has eight days to solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle, the heiress of the family that owns the manor, the twist being that he wakes up each day in a different body of the guests and servants at manor. It is a highly original novel, which does take a strange turn towards the end, but it is still good. The Devil and the Dark Water is Turton’s second novel, and I had been looking forward to reading it. It is not as original as The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, but it is a worthy follow up.

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