I read a lot in 2021. Probably not the most I’ve EVER read in a year, but I feel like I managed to crush through a good number of books. A few were re-reads, but I’m okay with that. Some people re-watch movies, I re-read books. A few of the books were for my book club, most were read on my Kindle and a few (probably more than any other year in the last decade!) were actually read as print books.
In no particular order…
The Only Good Indians - Stephen Graham Jones A spookier book chosen by my book club to read in the weeks leading up to Halloween. I crushed the entire thing over two days while visiting my family on Vancouver Island, partially because I had the time but partially because it is very well written. Give it a read if you’re ready for creeping horror written by an indigenous author. 4 out of 5.
Ancillary Justice - Anne Leckie A modern sci-fi classic, and one that I dismissed after reading it when it first came out. I thought that I was probably young and immature then and that I should give it another shot. I still don’t like it. The story was ‘meh,’ the odd gendering of characters was confusing, and it felt too derivative of better sci-fi. I still don’t get why it was so well received. 2 out of 5. (it only gets the two because I do like the idea of the main character being the disembodied (or rebodied?) mind of an ancient spaceship. I’ll actually bump it up to 3 out of 5 for that.)
One + One = Three - Dave Trott Billed as a “masterpiece of creative thinking,” it certainly is. Short, bite-sized essays that will inspire you to think differently. Ultimately not memorable. Instead I’d recommend you pick up Richard Shotton’s Choice Factory (a solid 5/5) instead of this 3-star offering.
The Ministry For The Future - Kim Stanley Robinson I’ll preface this review by saying that I am a HUGE fan of KSR, and actually put off reading this book until I was “ready,” that’s how stoked I was for it. Then I forced it on my book club to read it as one of our official selections, though it’s tough to categorize it as a traditional fiction book. There are characters, sure. But the main character is climate change. And the story is told in snippets of conversation, shorthand meeting notes, and scientific journal entries. One entire chapter is just a list of the names of social media accounts for (fictional) conservation organizations. I’m probably not doing a great job of selling this book, but it actually is fantastic. And there is a lot more to it than “conversation snippets.” If you care about the future of the planet and want to feel inspired to do more, then give it a shot. My book club loved it (except one dude who didn’t finish it). I loved it. You should read it. 6 out of 5.
Who Goes There - John Campbell Have you seen the movie The Thing, starring Kurt Russell? This is the 1938 novella that it was based on. A story as old as time: ancient alien crash lands on Earth, gets frozen in ice, people discover it, bad things happen. My book club read this, watched the movie, then played one of the board games, also called Who Goes There. I didn’t love this short story (I’m not a fan of the classic era of sci-fi), but you might. Plus it’s foundational to so many other things, right? I mean how else are you going to play the board game based on it? 2 out of 5.
Hyperion + Fall of Hyperion - Dan Simmons (both re-reads) - Hyperion is one of the best pieces of sci-fi out there: The gist is that each of the 7 pilgrims (no, 6? Het Masteen’s story never gets told) take turns telling the others why they’re on a pilgrimage to visit the “Time Tombs” (giant structures that flow BACKWARDS through time) and see The Shrike, an interdimensional metal demon. Come for the Starship Troopers-esque story of The Colonel, stay for the cyberpunk story of Brawne Lamia and swoon over the romance between her and an android version of John Keats. These two books have everything you could want in sci-fi story. 5 out of 5.
Amoralman - Derek Del Gaudio A superb piece of storytelling about a young man learning to become a card shark. To say much more would spoil it. And as great as the book is, definitely make sure to watch In & Of Itself first, which is a sort of off-Broadway live show that tells a similar story. He’s a showman, not a writer. 5 ouf to 5.
The White Box Essays - Jeremy Holcomb Probably the oddest one on this list. It’s a book of short essays about things to consider when designing a board game. I started reading it because I’m trying to design a board game with a friend, and the book made me really reconsider our approach. Worth reading if you’re designing a game. But also worth reading for the analogies for designing slide decks or doing creative work of any kind. 4 ouf of 5
Ursula K. Leguin - World of Exile and Illusion I’m probably cheating by adding this in because I think I started it over Christmas of 2020 and might have even wrapped all three books (Rocannon’s World, Planet Of Exile, City of Illusion) before New Years. They’re all part of the Hainish Cycle, but like the others, you don’t need to read them in any order. I can remember the plots pretty vividly, but more than that I can remember the haunting feeling I get when I remember them. They all deal with members of an advanced civilization colonising new worlds, how different these worlds can be, and how truly isolated we can be. 6 ouf of 5.
The Tiger - John Vaillant My friend Claudio popped this in the mail for me a few months ago, and it took me a while to pick it up. But when I did, I was glad I did. I could barely put it down. The book is the true story of a man-eating tiger in Siberia, and the men tasked with tracking it down. it’s partly a thrilling hunting story, partly a history book about Siberia, and partly a story about tigers and the Russian wilderness. It’s the same dude (and same style of storytelling!) as The Golden Spruce. 4 out of 5.
Cool Hand Luke - Donn Pearce - I saw the movie that was based on this book years and years ago, and have had enough fun referencing the egg-eating scene that I felt like I had to read the book. It tells the story of a chain gang at a work prison in Florida, and more specifically one of the inmates who was part of the gang who was a symbol of freedom for them. 4 out of 5.
The Dark Beyond The Stars - Frank Robinson (Not the Dark BETWEEN the Stars, which I started reading before realizing it was the wrong one, or the Dark Beyond The Stars, which is an anthology) Huge, depressing spaceships are my kind of sci-fi. Even better if they’re generation ships, and this one delivers. 100 generations into a fruitless journey to find life on other planets, the crew of the ship has to decide if they can risk another thousand generations on an even bigger journey. Or if they should try and return to the Earth that is only a distant memory. 4 out of 5.
Klara & The Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro Another selection for my book club. Not one I would have picked, though I really enjoyed it. The writing was beautiful, the story beautifully bittersweet. Who knew a robot could have so much emotion? Even as a devoted sci-fi fan, I didn’t. I’ll give it a 5 out of 5 as a piece of literature you should read.
Look To Windward - Iain Banks I always recommend this as one of the books to start with if you want to get into Banks’ Culture books: the entire thing is essentially a travelogue about living on an Orbital: a 10,000km diameter ring on which people live in a post-scarcity world. 5 ouf of 5.
These books all get pretty high ratings. That’s because they’re the ones I finished. As much as I read this year, I probably gave up on more books. Have I got more discerning? Maybe.
If you made it this far you should donate to Books For Me. They are a local Vancouver charity that provides books to children who might not otherwise have access to them, encouraging them to build up their own library and start a lifetime of literacy.