2021 in Review: Highlights

Well, the world may still be crazy, but in terms of reading, 2021 ended up pretty great! I blew my Goodreads goal out of the water (though I had deliberately set it low so that I wouldn’t stress over it this year) with 98 books read, and so many of them were fantastic! 😆 I finally got around to starting a bookstagram account in April, and I’m pretty pleased with how it’s going so far… and if I do say so myself, my 2021 My Year in Books page is looking pretty neat. 😋

As for some specific book stuff, I started some excellent new fantasy series last year. Notably, The Stormlight Archive (which has been a very long time coming); Black Sun (which has left me on tenterhooks for the sequel); and The Tiger’s Daughter (a sapphic, Mongolian-inspired fantasy with a heavy focus on its central love story – though I’m very much looking forward to more demon-fighting in the rest of the series).

I also did a lot of re-reading this year, and I’m pleased to say that a couple of the books I re-read, I liked even better than the first time around, those being Komarr, which I now rate among my all-time favourites, and The Edge of the Cloud, which was a burst of nostalgia that came at the perfect moment. And speaking of nostalgia, I managed to end the year on a real high point with Terciel & Elinor, a new prequel to a series that’s been one of my favourites since I was a teenager. ☺️

This was a great year for romance, too! It’s not a genre I’ve ever been super-into, but (like many people, I think), I’ve been appreciating it a lot in the last couple of years, and am definitely hoping to read more in 2022. Some of my favourites were Kulti (a slow-burn sports romance), Beach Read (a fun rivals-to-lovers story), as well as the political sci-fi romance Winter’s Orbit, and the Regency-inspired fantasy romance The Midnight Bargain.

… And my summer in general somehow ended up being very Regency-themed, with me (kind of accidentally) participating in #JaneAustenJuly. At long last, I read Persuasion, the last (completed) Austen novel I had left – and it was well worth the wait. 😁 I re-listened to Pride & Prejudice on my summer holiday not long after, inspired by a couple of spin-offs and continuations of that story that I’d been enjoying; namely Longbourn and The Other Bennet Sister.

And last but not least, an unexpected favourite (though also somewhat Austen-adjacent) was the Mean Girls inspired Regency rom-com Reputation. I was nervous to pick this one up, as I’ve historically had pretty bad luck with authors who I initially liked for other reasons (Lex Croucher, who wrote Reputation, is also a youtuber), but it was absolutely hilarious, and the perfect book for the moment in which I read it. 🎶 I’ll definitely be keeping my eyes open for their next release, Gwen & Art Are Not in Love, which should be out in early 2023. 🤞

(ROUGH) TOP 10:

1. Komarr by Lois McMaster Bujold* [REVIEW]
2. Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
3. The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson [REVIEW]
4. Terciel & Elinor by Garth Nix
5. The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk
6. The Tiger’s Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera
7. Persuasion by Jane Austen
8. The Edge of the Cloud by K.M. Peyton*
9. Reputation by Lex Croucher
10. Longbourn by Jo Baker [REVIEW]

(*Re-reads included only where I’ve changed my rating.)

January Haul

I’m trying to cut back on book buying at the moment, which is why my January stack is considerably smaller than some of the others that you’ve seen. But my self-control is far from flawless, so I’ve still managed to accumulate a few new books to tell you about. A few of these I bought with leftover Christmas money; the rest I just couldn’t hold myself back from… 😉

1) Flambards and The Edge of the Cloud by K.M. Peyton. These are the pretty new editions of the first two books in the Flambards series, which follow an orphaned girl named Christina who moves to the countryside to live with her uncle and two cousins. I’ve already read (& own) the whole series, but I’ve been wanting to replace my ugly old copies for a while. The last two books (Flambards in Summer and Flambards Divided) will hopefully be released in this edition later this year.

2) The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsley. A book I know basically nothing about, but it looked interesting. Presumably it has something to do with folk-tales (which I’ve been rather in the mood for recently).

3) A Little Something Different by Sandy Hall. A romance novel told from several different outsider perspectives. I’ve been wanting to read this since I found out that one of the narrators is a squirrel, but, again, I don’t know too much else about it.

4) The Girl of Fire & Thorns Stories by Rae Carson. This is a bind-up of three novellas set in the Fire & Thorns universe. I read the whole Fire & Thorns trilogy late last year, and loved it, so I’m looking forward to reading these. The three stories are called The Shadow Cats, The Shattered Mountain and The King’s Guard.

5) Aristotle & Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. An apparently brilliant story about an unexpected friendship between two boys. I stumbled across this quite by accident at the Oxfam bookshop, and decided to pick it up because (it was incredibly cheap, and) it’s the Little Book Club pick for January and February.

6) 642 Things to Write About by the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. This is basically a creative writing exercise book, with 642 different prompts. I decided to get this in hopes that it would get me back into the habit of writing again. It hasn’t worked yet, but I do keep picking the book up and flipping through it to look at all the different prompts, and they look pretty fun, so hopefully I’ll get there in time. 🙂