2021 reading list
I don’t have a great track record when it comes to TBRs, but this year I’m trying to outsmart myself by filling up my list with every book I bought in 2020 but didn’t read, plus a few I have read but am planning to reread. The final list is actually longer than my reading goal. This is mildly embarrassing.
Books are listed in alphabetical order by author surname, and will be crossed out as I finish them.
Updates
- 1/2/21: It’s not even the third of the year and I’ve already added three books. Pray for my soul.
- 1/4/21: All future additions are going under bonus TBR because this is ridiculous.
- 1/6/21: After some thought on how to handle the bonus TBR, I have decided that for every three TBR books I finish, I get to read one book from the bonus TBR list because sometimes you just have to reinforce your plans with bribery. My original thought was to dip into the bonus TBR at random, but I tend to respond well to bribery, so for now we’ll give this a try.
Currently Reading
- A Game of Thrones – George R.R. Martin
- Aphasia – Mauro Javier Cárdenas
- The Curse of Chalion – Lois McMaster Bujold
TBR
- The African Trilogy – Chinua Achebe
The Travelling Cat Chronicles – Hiro ArikawaLife After Life – Kate AtkinsonA God in Ruins – Kate Atkinson- A Ladder to the Sky – John Boyne
- Daughter of Black Lake – Cathy Marie Buchanan
- The Curse of Chalion – Lois McMaster Bujold
- Paladin of Souls – Lois McMaster Bujold
- The Hallowed Hunt – Lois McMaster Bujold
- The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
- Aphasia – Mauro Javier Cárdenas
- Dragon Springs Road – Janie Chang
- The Library of Legends – Janie Chang
- Bestiary – K-Ming Chang
- Piranesi – Susanna Clarke
- Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates
- The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
- The Binding – Bridget Collins
- All Who Go Do Not Return – Shulem Deen
- The Death of Vivek Oji – Akwaeke Emezi
- Silence – Shūsaku Endō
- The Office of Historical Corrections – Danielle Evans
- The Woman in the Water – Charles Finch
- Outlander – Diana Gabaldon
- Transcendent Kingdom – Yaa Gyasi
- The Library of the Unwritten – A.J. Hackwith
- The Archive of the Forgotten – A.J. Hackwith
Strange Candy – Laurell K. Hamilton- The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts – Joshua Hammer
- The Mercies – Kiran Millwood Hargrave
- Beowulf: A New Translation – Maria Dahvana Headley
- The Silence of Bones – June Hur
- Black Leopard, Red Wolf – Marlon James
- A Brief History of Seven Killings – Marlon James
- Little Gods – Meng Jin
- The Stationery Shop – Marjan Kamali
- The House in the Cerulean Sea – TJ Klune
- The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson
- Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things – Jenny Lawson
- The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin – Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Three-Body Problem – Cixin Liu
- The Dark Forest – Cixin Liu
- To Hold Up the Sky – Cixin Liu
- The Paper Menagerie – Ken Liu
- The Kingdom of Back – Marie Lu
- The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter – Margareta Magnusson
- The Lost Vintage – Ann Mah
- Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
- A Game of Thrones – George R.R. Martin
- Deacon King Kong – James McBride
- Migrations – Charlotte McConaghy
- Echo North – Joanna Ruth Meyer
- A Secret History of Witches – Louisa Morgan
- Harrow the Ninth – Tamsyn Muir
- World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments – Aimee Nezhukumatathil
- A Promised Land – Barack Obama
- Becoming – Michelle Obama
- Hamnet – Maggie O’Farrell
- The Housekeeper and the Professor – Yōko Ogawa
- The Memory Police – Yōko Ogawa
- There There – Tommy Orange
- Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind – Kermit Pattison
- Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why – Alexandra Petri
- The Forgotten Kingdom – Signe Pike
- A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II – Sonia Purnell
- Eartheater – Dolores Reyes
- Blindness – José Saramago
- The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue – V.E. Schwab
- Space at the Speed of Light: The History of 14 Billion Years for People Short on Time – Becky Smethurst
- An Unkindness of Ghosts – Rivers Solomon
- The Bone Shard Daughter – Andrea Stewart
- The Book of Eels – Patrik Svensson
- The Color of Air – Gail Tsukiyama
- Vinegar Girl – Anne Tyler
- Kristin Lavransdatter – Sigrid Undset
- On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous – Ocean Vuong
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents – Isabel Wilkerson- The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration – Isabel Wilkerson
- Braised Pork – An Yu
Bonus TBR
- The Bear and the Nightingale – Katherine Arden
- Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
House of Salt and Sorrows – Erin A. Craig- Pet – Akwaeke Emezi
- Frantumaglia – Elena Ferrante
- The Eyre Affair – Jasper Fforde
- Legally Correct Fairy Tales – David Fisher
- American Gods – Neil Gaiman
- Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea, and The Deep Origins of Consciousness – Peter Godfrey-Smith
- The Familiars – Stacey Halls
- The Odyssey – Homer
- The Age of Orphans – Laleh Khadivi
- The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories – H.P. Lovecraft
- A Clash of Kings – George R.R. Martin
- Death Need Not Be Fatal – Malachy McCourt
- Earthlings – Sayaka Murata
- Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
- Look at the Harlequins! – Vladimir Nabokov
- Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
- The Snowman – Jo Nesbø
- Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs
- The Words – Jean-Paul Sartre
- Once Upon a River – Diane Setterfield
- A Dictionary of Maqiao – Han Shaogong
- The Liar’s Dictionary – Eley Williams
- The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
Finished
- The Part About the Dragon Was (Mostly) True – Sean Gibson
- Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents – Isabel Wilkerson
- Strange Candy – Laurell K. Hamilton
- The Travelling Cat Chronicles – Hiro Arikawa
- Life After Life – Kate Atkinson
- House of Salt and Sorrows – Erin A. Craig
- A God in Ruins – Kate Atkinson