Books of 2021

Wow, where did this year go? It does not feel like it is supposed to be the last day of 2021 by at least a couple of months, but apparently, here we are.
Apart from going pretty fast, this was not a year to remember for its good qualities in many respects. But book-wise, it was a pretty good year for me. I read a whopping 32 books, which is even higher than my already pretty high score of last year. I discovered a couple of great new writers but also reread some old favourites. 

 So my full list is:

1 Daring Greatly

2 The boy, the mole, the fox and the horse

3 The Luminaries

4 Focus aan/uit

5 No Bones

6 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

7 Thinking in systems

8 Soul Tourists

9 Wish you were here

10 Life after life

11 Klara and the sun

12 The Three Musketeers

13 Utopia Avenue

14 Here we are

15 Weather

16 The Midnight Library

17 Summer

18 Beach Read

19 The Switch

20 Such a fun age

21 The Flatshare

22 Anxious People

23 Beautiful world, where are you?

24 Public Library and other stories

25 The man in the red coat

26 Normal People

27 Expectations

28 The Eyre Affair

29 Sweet Tooth

30 Mansfield Park

31 A Man called Ove

32 The Christmas Pig

So I (almost) started and finished the year with children's books. I read The Christmas Pig, J.K.Rowling's newest, during a feverish Christmas Day, so chances are I won't remember much about it in a couple of weeks. But it is a better note to end on than last year, when illness drove me to romantic drivel.

I had a couple of rereads when I wasn't really in the mood for trying new things, mostly during October (The Eyre Affair, Sweet Tooth and Mansfield Park). Rereads from earlier in the year were The Luminaries and Life after Life, two novels I loved but didn't really fully understand the first time I read them. Upoin rereading I liked them better than before; sometimes you have to go back after a couple of years and look at such stories with fresh eyes. Normal People was a reread after I was so very disappointed in Sally Rooney's newest novel.

Again, only 1 'classic' novel in The Three Musketeers. No Dutch novels at all. But a surprising amount of non-fiction, especially in the start of the year.

Best English novel

1 Wish you were here

2 Such a fun age

3 Utopia Avenue

So many great novels to choose from! I am really spoiled for choice here. But in a stark contrast to last year; my top 3 contains just 1 female author. I read a lot of books by female writers, but apparently they were not the greatest (and at least 3 of them were romantic summer reads). For example, I immensely enjoyed Ali Smith's Summer, but it was not enough to make the top 3. Maybe if I'd reread the rest of the quartet first, but now it just felt a bit too rushed and unconnected to make the grade.

So what did I love? Wish you were here took me four years to receive and read, but of all the novels I've read this year, it is the one that still sticks out in my mind the most. The whole atmosphere of the novel, with two people so at odds with each other and with the world for all the wrong reasons... I've just reread my original review from March, and apparently the novel really grew on me after that. The same is true for Such a fun age, which I apparently didn't even write about it when I first read it. But it paints such a pointed, accurate picture of current 'woke' times and the way people interact with others; careful to be correct while at the same time doing that mostly so others will think better of them. It is one of the few very American novels I read this year, but the whole American atmosphere only improves on the story it tells. Finally, I would never have thought that David Mitchell could write a novel that would not go to the top of my list that year, but Utopia Avenue apparently does the trick. I loved it, it is certainly in my top 3, but it is not his best novel. 

Best Dutch novel

Zero Dutch novels in the entire year, and just 1 non-fiction book in Dutch (which won't make any list, but it was a nice read on how to focus).

Best non-fiction

1 Thinking in systems

2 The man in the red coat

3 Daring greatly

So I read a lot of non-fiction this year, some of which was an overflow from last year, when a December illness drove me to reading soppy romantic stuff. Thinking in systems opened my eyes on how to see things in connection with each other. I rate highly on the 'system thinking' score in personality questionnaires, so this really spoke to me. The man in the red coat is by Julian Barnes, and at first I didn't realise it was a non-fiction book about an actual person, Dr Pozzi. But being Barnes, the language reads almost like a novel. That I read most of it during an Italian holiday probably also helped with setting the atmosphere of the belle epoque. Finally, Daring greatly is Brené Brown's famous book on how to overcome your inhibitions and dare greatly. I liked her writing style and was interested in reading more, but seeing her online personality as some sort of pep guru makes me wonder if this really is the thing for me.

Best short-story collection

1 Public library and other stories

I read only the one, by Ali Smith, but it was a beautiful read. She combines stories about libraries and books with eyewitness accounts of people's connection to a specific library, now that apparently they're being closed down all over the UK.

Best scifi/fantasy

1 Klara and the sun

I think this is the only novel I could realistically put in this category, although it perhaps fits better in a new sort of 'dystopian' category (but maybe it feels that way because I'm currently reading The Every and everything connected to tech feels somewhat tainted). Apart from that, it is a beautiful, haunting novel. I must really read some more Ishiguru (as I actually said in my original review, back in April...). 

Best 'new' author

1 Frederik Backman

2 Anna Hope

Frederik Backman is a Swedish author whose novels I've read in English. Apparently they've been pretty popular for a while, with films and series made after them. I discovered him through his newest novel Anxious People, which led me to also try some of the older ones. I like his style and his insights, even though the Swedish setting does not always translate well through the English language. From Anna Hope I read her newest novel Expectations, which was so much better than Sally Rooney's new novel. I am really looking forward to reading Wake, also an older novel that sounds really good based on the description and reviews.

Most disappointing novel

1 Beautiful world, where are you?

2 Here we are

3 No bones

So the first one should be obvious from what I wrote about it before: somehow Sally Rooney's third novel is plagued by the 'second novel' effect, in my eyes at least. Here we are is not a bad novel in itself, but after reading the profound depth of Wish you were here, it fell a bit flat on its face. Graham Swift can be a bit hit and miss apparently. The same is true of No Bones; after reading Milkman my expectations for this novel were so high, that they could only be disappointed.

Authors I read more than once:

Ali Smith (2x)

Graham Swift (2x)

Sally Rooney (2x)

Frederik Backman (2x)

Books of 2020

So this was a funny year. Enough has been said about that in many other places, but compiling the list of books I've read this year brought the message home again; the virus and the following lockdown had their effect on the books I've read this year too. Funny how you don't notice that when you're in the middle of things.
I read 29 books this year, which is slightly higher than my average of the past years. Some of these were pretty lengthy, but to compensate I read some really short ones too, so the overall page number should be comparable. The amount of rereads is much higher than it was in other years, and I think there you can see the corona effect; most of the year it was impossible to just wander into a bookshop and browse, so I had to make do with what was already on my bookshelves. 

Anyway, before I dive into the analysis, let's first look at the complete list:

1 Sweet Sorrow

2 Levels of Life

3 Koning van Katoren

4 Northanger Abbey

5 Girl, Woman, Other

6 Het wonder van Frieswijk

7 One Day

8 The Count of Monte Christo

9 Spring

10 Dune

11 The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying up

12 Leah on the Off Beat

13 How to be both

14 Pleidooi tegen enthousiasme

15 Het water komt

16 Piep

17 Wild

18 Eat pray love

19 The Accidental

20 Grote Verwachtingen

21 The Bone Clocks

22 The Testaments

23 Stoorzender

24 The Underground Railroad

25 Het recht van de snelste

26 Just like you

27 Pride & Prejudice and Misletoe

28 Me & Mr Darcy

29 The Rosie Project

Wow, I did not end on a high note, that's for sure. The stream of reread romantic novels stems from the illness I had in the beginning of December, which drove me to reading quick and easy novels. Not that one should make excuses for reading something light every now and then, but seeing three of them grouped together looks a bit sorry.

Anyway, more rereads than ever, as I said; Koning van Katoren, Northanger Abbey, One Day, Eat pray love, The Bone Clocks, and the final 3 romantic novels make 8 rereads in total. Only one 'classic' novel, The Count of Monte Christo, which in page number probably equals all the rereads. Unless you want to count Dune amongst the classics too, of course. Lots of Ali Smith (Spring, How to be both and The Accidental), which is probably no surprise since I put her as my best 'new' author of 2019. I was planning on ready more from Anna Burns too, but I didn't get her first novel until Christmas, so she will have to wait until 2021.

Best English novel

1 Spring

2 How to be both

3 Girl, Woman, Other

This category was pretty hard this year, mainly because I read so many rereads, non-fiction works and plainly bad books. But there were some great ones in there too. 

Spring is of course by the lovely Ali Smith, the third instalment of her seasonal novels. I am very much looking forward to the final novel (which is already out but not in the edition I need to complete my quartet), as I read an interview with her in which she states all the connections between the novels should become clear then (apart from some references to Shakespeare, classical musicians and contemporary artists that she already pointed out in the article and which I've missed so far anyway). How to be both is also by Ali Smith, making it the first time two novels from the same author find their way into my top 3. But Spring is definitely the better of the two. I read Girl, Woman, Other first of all these novels, which puts it in danger of slipping away in the mind, which it sort of did. It was one of the Man Booker prize winners of 2019 (look for the other one down below) so maybe it should have stuck with me more than it did. Anyway, it was still a great novel, a female view on contemporary Britain.

Honourable mention goes out to Just Like You by Nick Hornby, who just didn't make the cut.

I've just had a quick look back, and this is the first year that all novels in my top 3 were written by a woman. This may be a reflection of my changes in reading preferences, or it may be a reflection of me not buying books that have come out by male authors I usually love to read, such as Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell, The Man in the Red Coat by Julian Barnes or State of the Union by Nick Hornby.

Best Dutch novel

The only Dutch novel I read that could go in this category is Koning van Katoren, which is a reread (Het Wonder van Frieswijk is also a Dutch children's book but it is so thin it is more a novella). All the other Dutch books I read this year were non-fiction.

Best classic

1 The Count of Monte Christo

If you only read one classic novel, the outcome is easily predicted. But I really liked this novel, as I've written before; despite the huge number of pages I flew through. Must really read more by Dumas in next year.

Best non-fiction

1 Grote Verwachtingen

2 Piep

3 Stoorzender

So these are all Dutch and wildly differing in their topic and size; Grote Verwachtingen is a pretty sizeable book on the years 2000-2019, which I started somewhere in 2019 and just finished this year. It is a nice read, a good follow-up to In Europa 1900-2000, but it took me a while to get through. Piep on the other hand is a really small collection of stories by biologist Midas Dekkers, in which he combines biology and (Dutch) literature; two of my favourite things. Stoorzender is an autobiography of one my favourite comedians (to name just one of the categories you can put him in) Arjen Lubach. Funnily enough, when the theatres were open, I heard several bits of this book spoken aloud by him without even knowing there was a book coming up. The bits he read out were the best bits of the book, it must be said. 

I have been reading three non-fiction books in English for the last couple of weeks, I put them down because of the illness but will probably finish them sometime early 2021, so next year this list will probably include more English titles.

Best short-story collection

I read no short story collections at all this year, something I just realised when putting in this category. I have several ready to read now, so this will be amended next year, but it is a sad realisation.

Best scifi/fantasy

1 Dune

Again, if you only read one... But this novel too was better than expected; really one of the classics in terms of character/society/plot building.

Best 'new' author

1 Bernardine Evaristo

Again, this was not a good year for finding new novels or authors. But I really liked Girl, Woman, Other from Bernardine Evaristo and have bought several of her older novels. So she is still a good new addition to my literary perspective.

Most disappointing novel

1 The Testaments

2 Sweet Sorrow

3 The Underground Railroad

So this was a toss up between the first two. I've written about my disappointment with The Testaments and Sweet Sorrow before, so I won't repeat myself except to say that Atwood gets first place because I expected so much more from her novel. I've read not-so-great novels by David Nicholls before, but never a novel by Atwood that was this bad. It makes me sad, putting two authors I generally like in the disappointing pile, but I've done the same in 2018 and 2019, so maybe their writing styles and my tastes are starting to grow apart somewhat. The Underground Railroad makes third place not because it was so bad, but because it could have been so much better. Again, it is all to do with the expectations you have; The Nickel Boys was my favourite novel of 2019 and Whitehead was in my list of best 'new' authors.

Honourable mention goes out to Levels of Life by Julian Barnes, which I haven't written about, had actually forgotten I'd read until I started to compile this list and then had to look up for what it was about. This is not a good sign, for a novel and a novelist that I've enjoyed so much before.

Authors I read more than once

Ali Smith (3x)

David Nicholls (2x)

Books of 2018

I was hoping to add another book to this list, but it seems I will not finish reading it before the year is out, and also it is too beautiful a book to hurry up the reading, so I will make that my first book of 2019. I made a films of 2018 list a couple of days ago, in case films are more your thing.
But back to books: 2018 was a year with a nice variety of readings, more varied than my books of 2017 list. Also, a lot longer: I read 29 books this year, which is 6 up from last year. Again, I didn't read a long classic novel (although they are still on the to-read list) and also I quit reading a couple of books that took me too long to get through. If I have little time to read, I want to spend that time with books I actually like.

So, my complete 2018 list:
1 Lincoln in the bardo
2 Uncommon type
3 The heart goes last
4 The English patient
5 The sense of an ending
6 The ocean at the end of the lane
7 De zeven wetten van de liefde
8 The blind assassin
9 Murder on the Orient Express
10 The ABC murders
11 The noise of time
12 Fahrenheit 541
13 The Penelopiad
14 The view from the cheap seats
15 The garden party
16 All Change
17 The Liar
18 A handful of dust
19 Seveneves
20 The Children Act
21 My purple scented novel
22 The diary of a bookseller
23 Far from the madding crowd
24 Call me by your name
25 The only story
26 Shades of Grey
27 Normal people
28 Het bestverkochte boek ooit
29 Pride & prejudice & mistletoe

So, four rereads: The ocean at the end of the lane, The Liar, The Children Act and Shades of Grey, all by some of my favourite male authors (Gaiman, Fry, McEwan and Fforde). Two Dutch books, which are both non-fiction. I started reading two Dutch novels, but put both of those down as they didn't engage me enough. Will have to try again next year.
I had a couple of book resolutions for 2017 and 2018; stop reading of I don't like the novel, fewer rereads, read more great new authors such as Margaret Atwood. Also, as I was short on these last year; read more Dutch novels, short stories, non-fiction, and more new female authors. Some of those worked out, some clearly didn't. Despite the 'rules' I was really hoping for new novels by Ian McEwan or David Mitchell, but not having those I read more by new discoveries such as Julian Barnes, Margaret Atwood of course, and my newest love; Sally Rooney. Also, I read four Man Booker prize winners this year (Lincoln in the bardo (2017), The sense of an ending (2011), The English patient (1992) and The blind assassin (2000)), which makes 2018 a year filled with some of the best novels ever written.

Anyway, let's look at some lists:

Best English novel
1 Normal people
2 The sense of an ending
3 The English patient
So many great novels this year! This list was hard to make, also because novels that I've read more recently seem to stick in the memory better than those I read in January or February. But I managed to bring it down to three novels. But the undisputed number one is Normal People by Sally Rooney. I haven't been this happy reading a novel in a very long time. The Sense of an Ending makes a close second, though. Julian Barnes was a 2018 find, and I actually read three of his novels this year. The Sense of an Ending was the first and by far the best. It is one of those deeply emotional, tragic without being dramatic, stories about someone finally realising how much they've been deceiving themselves all of their life. As I wrote in February; This is a novel you can pull out each year, read again, and still find new bits in it. I will leave it alone for a couple of years, and then time will tell whether that is true. The last novel on the best novel list is another Man Booker winner (Normal People was merely longlisted, which is a shame, although I am now reading the 2018 Man Booker winner Milkman and can see how that is even better than Normal People) and another novel I read in February. The English patient, an instant classic I'd somehow missed all this time. I was watching Bodyguard on Netflix yesterday and it got me thinking about The English patient, so much so that I had to rewind because I'd been reminiscing so much. That is what a good novel does to you; it sticks with you, and you remember it while watching or reading other great things.
Honourable mentions on this list go to The Blind Assassin and Call me by your name, which didn't make the list but are still great novels.

Best Dutch novel
Non-existent this year

Best classic
1 Fahrenheit 541
2 Far from the madding crowd
3 A handful of dust
As always, one can argue here when a novel counts as a 'classic'. Last year, the oldest novels I read were over 20 years old but didn't feel as classics because they were still so current. This year, I felt like putting The English patient here, only to find out that novel is actually from 1992. Strange, how some novels feel much older than they are, while others are exactly the opposite.
Anyway, the novels I put in are from 1953, 1874 and 1934. I could also have put the Agatha Christie novels I read, as they're also from the 1930s, but I liked these less. Fahrenheit 541 is the newest novel on the list and my biggest discovery of 2018. I still can't explain how I missed this novel up until actually reading it (because Neil Gaiman mentioned it in The view from the cheap seats) but there you are. Read this novel, if you haven't already. Far from the madding crowd is a Thomas Hardy novel, which makes it a classic in its own right, but also a book to be shunned if you studied English literature and wrestled through Jude the Obscure, as I did. But as it turns out, this is a far nicer read. A handful of dust is also one of those fallen-through novels; one of my friends actually wrote here thesis on Evelyn Waugh and I never bothered to read any of the novels in it, except for Brideshead revisited a couple of years ago. I liked that better, A handful of dust is a bit too cynical and nasty for my taste, but still a good read.

Best non-fiction
1 The view from the cheap seats
2 The diary of a bookseller
3 Het bestverkochte boek ooit
I'm not sure if The view from the cheap seats counts fully as non-fiction, as with Neil Gaiman you can never be sure, but it by far the best non-fiction I read this year. The diary of a bookseller follows the life of a bookseller in the biggest bookshop in Scotland, which was a revealing, if somewhat narcissistic, read. Het bestverkochte boek ooit is by De Correspondent, the Dutch non-news news website that is expanding into the USA to bring the news that is not the current, actual, hyped up news but the stories behind the news, the events slowly unfolding. This book is about our obsession with numbers and what they actually mean.

Best short-story collection
1 Uncommon type
2 The garden party
Not a lot of short-story collections this year, but more than in 2017, when there were none. Uncommon type was a big surprise this year; it turns out Tom Hanks can actually write a pretty decent story! The second short-story collection I read was by Katherine Mansfield. I read The Garden Party (the story from the title) for my English lit studies, when again it was one of those timeless stories that feel still current, even though it was written in 1922. The rest of the stories are nice reads, but not as memorable as Tom Hanks' book.

Best fantasy/scifi
1 Seveneves
2 The Penelopiad
Not a lot of fantasy or scifi to go around this year, and Shades of Grey counts as a reread, but these two deserve some kind of mention. Seveneves is a scifi novel that taught me more I ever thought to know about the ISS, living in space, space physics and building a new world. The Penelopiad is Margaret Atwood's interpretation of the Odyssee myth. This may not count as fantasy in the strictest sense of the word, but I do want to mention it because of her very human and real characters.

Best 'new' author
1 Sally Rooney
2 Julian Barnes
3 Michael Ondaatje
This list can hardly come as a surprise. Will read more of these authors whenever I can.

Most disappointing novel
1 All change
2 The heart goes last
3 The only story
This list always hurts. This year, it contains three of my favourite 'new' authors; Elizabeth Jane Howard, Margaret Atwood and Julian Barnes. I've said all I ever wanted to say on All change. The heart goes last was my most disappointing Atwood novel this year; compared to The Blind Assassin or The Handmaid's tale it feels rushed, with stock characters and a stock message. The same is true for The Only Story; Julian Barnes's newest novel. I had actually forgotten what it was about, but reading the blurb it all came back to me; the failed relationship of characters I didn't actually care about. Especially reading it directly following Call me by your name, which depicts a blossoming relationship in all its lovely longing, this novel made me thoroughly sad. I hope to pick up better novels by Atwood (Alias Grace is still waiting) and Barnes next year, as it hurts me to put authors I usually really love in this list.

Authors I read more than once:
- Margaret Atwood (3x)
- Julian Barnes (3x)
- Agatha Christie (2x)
- Neil Gaiman (2x)
- Ian McEwan (2x)