I keep annual reading lists as a record for myself and I post them in invitation for fellow readers to talk about books both read and overlooked. Feel free to contact me.

I’ve put ** next to my absolute favorite reads of the year.

Selected 2021 Reading (by genre, then alphabetical by author/editor last name)

Fiction/Novels/Novellas

• Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith
• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo **
• A Separation by Katie Kitamura
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan
• Parakeet by Marie-Helene Bertino**
• A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies
• The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett**
• Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald
• Lakewood by Megan Giddings
• The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier**
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy**
• Eat Only When You’re Hungry by Lindsay Hunter
• The Pisces by Melissa Broder
• Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley
• On Fragile Waves by E. Lily Yu**
• The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai**
• Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton
• Red Clocks by Leni Zumas**
• Inferno by Eileen Myles
• Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney**
• Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder**
• Normal People by Sally Rooney

Nonfiction/Essays

• Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses**
• Girlhood by Melissa Febos
• Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains by Kerri Arsenault**
• Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl by Jeannie Vanasco**
• In the Land of Invented Languages: Adventures in Linguistic Creativity, Madness, and Genius by Arika Okrent**
• Essays One Lydia Davis
• White Magic by Elissa Washuta
• The Most Fun Thing: Dispatches from a Skateboard Life by Kyle Beachy
• We Were The Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
• Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage by Dani Shapiro
• Tastes Like War by Grace M. Cho
• Real Estate by Deborah Levy
• Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane
• Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation by David Correia, Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Nick Estes, Melanie K. Yazzie
• Sacred Instructions by Sherri Mitchell

Short Story Collections

• The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans**
• The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw**
• Give My Love to the Savages: Stories by Chris Stuck**

Poetry

• A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver
• Whereas by Layli Long Soldier**
• The Slow Art by Sierra Golden**
• How to Carry Water: Selected Poems by Lucille Clifton
• The Renunciations: Poems by Donika Kelly
• Licorice by Liz Bruno

Zines/Chapbooks/Graphic Novels

• Seek You by Kristen Radtke
• Love Life by Patty Gone
• No Self-respecting Woman by Katherine Morgan