2021 Reading!

Hello, lovely people. Coming to you shamefacedly with a list of books I read in 2021. Yes, I went all of last year with this list saved as a draft and never actually published it. But here we are! It's been a trillion years since I've read these, so I really had to dust off my memories to give you a quick reaction! There are some really great ones here though. An asterisk simply denotes a book that is a re-read. You can find my lists for previous years here: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013.

Top Recommendations

I read a lot of other great books but these were my favorites. All are middle grade except the last two. But if that's not your thing, peruse my fiction/nonfiction section for others.

• Beginners Welcome, by Cindy Baldwin
• All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team, by Christina Soontornvat
• We Dream of Space, by Erin Entrada Kelly
• Just Like That, by Gary Schmidt (but you have to read the companion novels first)
• Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson
• Anxious People, by Fredrik Backman

Fiction

• The Things We Cannot Say, by Kelly Rimmer (Good book! WWII in Poland so of course it’s sad!)
• The Island of Sea Women, by Lisa See (About women on the Korean island Jeju and the art of free diving; really enjoyed this one!)
• Anxious People, by Fredrik Backman (One of my favorites this year!)
• The Martian, by Andy Weir (I loved this one. It has too much bad language though, as a content warning. But great science fiction that feels so plausible.)
• The Magic of Ordinary Days, by Ann Howard Creel (Liked this one))
• The Four Winds, by Kristin Hannah (Hmm. Kinda hated it but liked it enough to read it? Author has better stuff and I would never read this one again. I could list my issues but don’t want to get into it!)
• *Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë (Classic for a reason! Great read.)
• This Light Between Us: A Novel of World War II, by Andrew Fukuda (Great book! WWII—Japanese-American experience and French Jewish experience)

Nonfiction

• Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson (Of course very, very good!)
• The Soul of an Octopus, by Sy Montgomery (You have to be feeling the subject of this one, but I really liked it! It was beautiful in a way I didn’t expect.)
• 999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz, by Heather Macadam (Very well done!)
• The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia, by Andrei Lankov (I’m always interested in North Korea and really wanted to understand its politics better, so I liked this one. Would be a little boring if you weren’t really wanting to know.)
• The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag, by Chol-hwan Kang (Oh goodness, this one is sad and hard! Very interesting though!)
• Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, by Sheryl Sandberg (Liked this one; thought provoking. Deals with grief but it’s applicable to all.)
• A Night to Remember, by Walter Lord (About the Titanic—classic, great read!)
• American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI, by Kate Winkler Dawson (Liked this one a lot! Really fascinating stuff if you’re interested in crime at all.)
• My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me, by Jason Rosenthal (His wife was Amy Krouse Rosenthal, a fabulous children’s author; she died of cancer. Good book!)
• Live Your Life: My Story of Loving and Losing Nick Cordero, by Amanda Kloots (Lost her husband to Covid, so tread carefully if death/covid/grief are trigger topics.)
• A Walk in My Shoes: Questions I’m Often Asked as a Gay Latter-day Saint, by Ben Schilaty (Very good!)
• The Woman They Could Not Silence, by Kate Moore (Oh my goodness! This one is wild! I liked this one a lot.)
• Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz, by Richard Newman (Alma Rose was a famous musician and led the women’s orchestra at Auschwitz—I was very interested in this topic so that made it a good read, but full disclosure is that I heavily skimmed the first 60% that went into her family’s backstory/history because it was too much info.)
• The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit, by Michael Finkel (Interesting topic, and great when it talked directly about the hermit—but would be better as a long Atlantic article because all the chapters about what makes people seek solitude were a boring effort to make it book length.)

YA/Middle Grade

• Beginners Welcome, by Cindy Baldwin (Such a beautiful book!! One of my favorites this year!)
• Three Keys, by Kelly Yang (Sequel to Front Desk; this was well done!)
• When My Name Was Keoko, by Linda Sue Park (Korea during WWII. Great book!)
• The Blackbird Girls, by Anne Blankman (WWII/Chernobyl. Good book!)
• A Wish in the Dark, by Christina Soontornvat (Such a great book! Fantasy.)
• The Trials of Morrigan Crow (Nevermoor, #1), by Jessica Townsend (Fantasy, first in a series. I liked this one and so did my kids!)
• Franklin Endicott and the Third Key, by Kate DiCamillo (Another great addition to the Mercy Watson universe—I added this one just because I read it by myself, not with kids.)
• Return of the Dragon Slayers (Dragonwatch, #5), by Brandon Mull (Great ending to the series!)
• Nest, by Esther Ehrlich (This book was so sad! Deals with grief and suicide—more about the girl’s journey through grief than what actually happened. Well done but heavy.)
• The Beatryce Prophecy, by Kate DiCamillo (Love this one!)
• The Honest Truth, by Dan Gemeinhart (Very very well done! Deals with cancer.)
• Half a World Away, by Cynthia Kadohata (Liked this one! Deals with international adoption/trauma.)
• Kira-Kira, by Cynthia Kadohata (Beautiful book! Japanese American family. Deals with illness/grief.)
• Gone to the Woods: Surviving a Lost Childhood, by Gary Paulsen (Memoir from a great author! Wow, what a tough childhood. Good book.)
• All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team, by Christina Soontornvat (This one is sooooo well done! Loved it!
• Savvy, by Ingrid Law (Fun books! Lighthearted and well written.)
• Scumble, by Ingrid Law (Sequel to Savvy; same)
• Just Like That, by Gary Schmidt (If you haven’t read or had your kids read Gary Schmidt books after all these years of me obsessing, just stop and read them all!! This book was so beautiful. I sobbed but it lifted me back up. Read The Wednesday Wars first because this is a companion novel and it will be more meaningful.)
• *Okay for Now, by Gary Schmidt (Read!!)
• *The Wednesday Wars, by Gary Schmidt (Read!!)
• *Pay Attention, Carter Jones, by Gary Schmidt (Read!!)
• You Go First, by Erin Entrada Kelly (Beautiful book! Love her stuff so much.)
• We Dream of Space, by Erin Entrada Kelly (Loooove this one!)
• Blackbird Fly, by Erin Entrada Kelly (Excellent!)
• The Land of Forgotten Girls, by Erin Entrada Kelly (Great book!)

 

Series

Zion Covenant series, by Brock & Bodie Thoene (For teens/adults. If you’re even the slightest bit interested in the European events that led up to WWII or in historical fiction, these are EXCELLENT. I’ve read them all 20 times—of course you have to start with the first one. Highly, highly recommend this series. Madeline read it as a seventh grader and really liked it too. And I read it in sixth grade. So you don't have to be super old.)

• *Warsaw Requiem (#6)
• London Refrain (#7)
• Paris Encore (#8)
• Dunkirk Crescendo (#9)

Zion Chronicles series, by Brock & Bodie Thoene (For teens/adults. This series is also great, although not as great as the Thoenes’ other series. This one takes place in Jerusalem in the late 1940s.)

• *The Gates of Zion (#1)
• *A Daughter of Zion (#2)
• *The Return to Zion (#3)
• *A Light in Zion (#4)
• *The Key to Zion (#5)

Wings of Fire series, by Tui Sutherland (Middle grade. If you have a kid who likes fantasy, dragons-type stuff, this is a fun series! I honestly got a little obsessed with it.)

• The Dragonet Prophecy (#1)
• The Lost Heir (#2)
• The Hidden Kingdom (#3)
• The Dark Secret (#4)
• The Brightest Night (#5)
• Moon Rising (#6)
• Winter Turning (#7)
• Escaping Peril (#8)
• Talons of Power (#9)
• Darkness of Dragons (#10)
• The Lost Continent (#11)
• The Hive Queen (#12)
• The Poison Jungle (#13)
• The Dangerous Gift (#14)
• Darkstalker (Legends, #1)
• Dragonslayer (Legends, #2)
• The Winglets Quartet (Winglets, #1–4)

Yearbook series, by Ally Condie (YA. I like this series a lot. It was Condie’s first series, centers around some LDS kids growing up in Washington, and she doesn’t promote it now. But it’s so well done, and I feel it’s such an authentic slice of high school life.)

• *Yearbook
• *First Day
• *Reunion