2021: The Year In Books

As we wrap up 2021, my first full year remote working, I managed to read a whopping 54 books, an increase of 31 books over last year and my first year completing the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge.  I surpassed last year’s total in mid-June, passed my best years, 2015 and 2016, in late August, and completed book 52 with two weeks left in the year.  I read (or listened) to 18,670 pages, by far my highest total of all time and only the second time I’ve passed 10,000.

Of those books, 16 were non-fiction and, of the 36 novels, 10 were tied to a TV show, either as the source material or as a tie-in.  None of the books came out of my dwindling “to-read” drawer, with 43 e-books and 4 audiobooks.  For the first time since I was a kid, I got myself a library card, which helped me procure 14 of the books.

Just less than half of the books I read this year were by authors I have read before. The 31 authors that I read for the first this year were:

  • Tegan Quin
  • Sara Quin
  • Lucy Foley
  • Jenna Fischer
  • Matt Haig
  • Eric Nusbaum
  • Jon Taffer
  • Charlotte Douglas
  • Susan Kearney
  • Fredrik Backman
  • Jeff Pearlman
  • Minka Kent
  • Alan Cumming
  • Megan Goldin
  • Molly Bloom
  • Barack Obama
  • Ali Wong
  • Timothy Ferriss
  • Issa Rae
  • Walter Tevis
  • Tess Gerritson
  • Gary Braver
  • Andy Weir
  • Matthew Walker
  • James Clear
  • Grady Hendrix
  • Simon Sinek
  • Jason Fung
  • Julia Spiro
  • Jon Pessah
  • Ruth Ware

Erle Stanley Gardner, Mary Kubica, Jeffery Deaver, Andy Weir and Karin Slaughter were the only authors that I read multiple titles from during 2021.

6 of the books I read were released this year, while 5 of them were released last century, with the oldest first published in 1933.

Finally, the breakdown by month, which was fairly consistent across the entire year.

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Book 37 (of 52) – The Final Girl Support Group

The Final Girl Support Group – Grady Hendrix

Imagine, if you will, a world where slasher films like Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Scream were not works of fiction, but instead were based on real life events and the final girls, the real life Laurie Strodes and Sydney Prescotts, all travelled to Los Angeles for a monthly group therapy session?  That is the basic premise of The Final Girl Support Group, that latest entry from Grady Hendrix.  When someone starts attacking the remaining Final Girls, all evidence points to it being one of their own, but the truth is even more insidious.

Through the first 2/3’s of this book, I was completely on board.  But, I feel like things went a little off the rails in that last third.  You know going in to a book like this that there is going to a twist or two, but there really wasn’t so much twists as characters jumping back and forth from suspects like crazy.  Still made for an enjoyable read, but I feel like it missed the landing just a little bit.