I met my ridiculous reading goal of reading 200 books again in 2021. I actually read 202. Here is the link to my super nerdy post with charts and graphs from my reading spreadsheet tracker.
Anyway, out of those 202, 75 were fiction, and out of those 75, these were my top 10 favorites. Well, I left off the C. S. Lewis books I re-read this past year which are obviously still my favorites (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, for example, which I re-read again in December).
Here are ten of my favorite fiction reads from 2021:
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig was my favorite new fiction book I read in 2021. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a new fiction book this much. It might have been Dark Matter or Recursion by Blake Crouch. I love the premise and I love the way it unfolds. I just loved it from start to finish!
The other book I want to highlight is Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, first published in 1970. A dear friend of mine told me this was one of her favorite books and recommended I read it and I loved it so much! It is one of my favorite books I’ve ever read. This allegory/fable reminds me in some ways of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
- The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
- The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
- The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3) by J. R. R. Tolkien
- The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1) by J. R. R. Tolkien
- The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2) by J. R. R. Tolkien
- Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
- The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster
- The Neil Gaiman at the End of the Universe by Arvind Ethan David
- Lumberjanes, Vol. 11: Time After Crime by Shannon Watters
- Lumberjanes, Vol. 14: X Marks the Spot by Shannon Watters
This was my second or third time reading through The Lord of the Rings trilogy, this time I listened to them on audiobook. The only other re-read was the short story, The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster. It was originally published in 1909 and it amazes me that a story from over 100 years ago basically predicted the Internet and so many of the things we use it for today!
This is the blurb about the book from Goodreads: "Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices... Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?'
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe, there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting new novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place."
Here are just a few of the quotes that stood out to me:
"Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight – how to get from shore to food and back again, for most gulls it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight."
“He spoke of very simple things- that it is right for a gull to fly, that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation in any form.
"Set aside," came a voice from the multitude, "even if it be the Law of the Flock?"
"The only true law is that which leads to freedom," Jonathan said. "There is no other.”
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So, what were your favorite fiction books you read this past year?
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