Melody's 2021 Reading
I've been looking forward to this post all year. With each book I began, I wondered if it would merit a mention in the year-end summary. And here we are, even as I realize I didn't blog about anything else during 2021. I'm not sure how I feel about the radio silence; I had plenty of things I could have blogged about. But sharing one's opinion online is no longer the fun and fancy free experience it was in my earlier blogging days.
I digress. Let's talk about books.
In 2021, I read 49 books. I almost read 50, except that on December 31, I forgot to listen to the very last podcast episode that took me through the Bible in a year. (So now I'm just that much more ahead in 2022.)
This is definitely a more balanced split between fiction and non-fiction than in 2020, though still more fiction than I thought I was reading this year. I tried to alternate back and forth, but sometimes you need a couple novels to compensate for some particularly heady foray.
My average rating on Goodreads was 4.0 (out of 5) stars. Lower than in 2020, and I felt that. I read a lot of good books this year, but it seemed like there were fewer wow moments (which we'll definitely talk about below). For reference, four stars on Goodreads means I "really liked" the book. Three stars means I "liked" it, but five stars means I "loved" it.
Non-Fiction
I have found it difficult to categorize the non-fiction I read this year, but a good way to sum it up is that I was reading to better understand myself, to better understand the world and people around me, and to better understand how we got to be where we are.
Before we talk categories, let's give awards.
This book gets mentioned a lot on various podcasts, but I always assumed it would be long and with very small print. Not so! It's an engaging read and not too long, full of anecdotes and connections that I couldn't have made on my own. While it contains various cultural information that comes in useful while reading the Bible, it is less about understanding other cultures (in Biblical times, or present-day) and more focused on helping you recognize the "goes without saying" elements that form your cultural foundation...and how that affects your Biblical study. For example, western Christians are very good at remembering that the prodigal son ends up feeding pigs because of his poor choices. But our global counterparts have us beat in recalling the other reason he ends up in such a dire situation (yep, there are two causes). If you aren't aware of the "cultural blinders" you wear, you'll find yourself missing such things throughout the Bible.
Another engaging read! Given that my husband is a data scientist type of person, I hear a lot about good data and bad data. You can get bad data in a myriad of ways. "Sample size" is important (100% of a group of one person is not useful information at all), but "sample representation" is also important. Bad sample representation is like going to a dog park to ask if people prefer dogs or cats. Or, in the case of Invisible Women, it's only considering the male perspective when designing something for everyone (or, worse yet, designing something for women) and ending up with the "universal male." Perez talks about everything from the introduction of safer stoves in third-world countries (only men were interviewed in the design process...even though women do more of the cooking in these regions) and everyone's favorite...crash-test dummies (to start, women and men have different skeletal frames that react differently to seat-belts and other safety features). That's just the beginning; once you read this book, you'll start to notice all the places where "male" is considered default. Given that gender is roughly a 50/50 split...you'll also start to wonder why.
Remember when I mentioned that the above books were engaging and short? I was easing you in, because this one is neither. It is incredibly boring and dry, and I had to renew it to finish (a rarity for me). Ironically, this book was written to be a more accessible version of some other dry and boring book! (Oof.) But my goodness, was Rise and Triumph absolutely fascinating. It was nothing like what I expected but instead served as something like a philosophical history, answering questions I never thought to ask, such as, "When did we begin seeing our personal desires (hopes, dreams, etc...) as our identity?" "When did we begin to care about 'finding ourselves'?" "What did Nietzche mean when he said God was dead?" "Why do we idealize rural life?" "Why is sex such a huge deal to, like, everyone these days?" I really want to re-read this one and take good notes, because there is some excellent stuff here that helps one understand exactly how we got to the place we now are as a society...without whining about it.
Alright, on to categories.
Adulting is about becoming a better grown-up. (And yes, I actually read the book this year: Becoming Better Grown-Ups: Rediscovering What Matters and Remembering How to Fly by Brad Montegue.) Why Do I Feel Like This?: Understand Your Difficult Emotions and Find Grace to Move Through (Peace Amadi) is actually the non-fiction runner-up this year. There are a lot of books out there about personal growth and managing emotions in a healthy way, but few of them come from a balanced Christian perspective with full acknowledgement of Jesus' authority in your life...and the benefits of growing in maturity and maybe even going to counseling. Amadi leans into both with ease and grace.
I enjoy self-help reading immensely, but sometimes the best way to get better at life is to live it. Some years, I intentionally leave self-help off the book list. Given the high percentage of self-help in 2021, I may be exploring other topics in 2022.
Current Events is really about social issues, but both the words 'social' and 'issues' feel charged these days, so I figured I'd settle for a more bland category name. It's important to me to go beyond the social media outrage of both sides, and so I chose some deep-dives. When Thoughts and Prayers Aren't Enough: A Shooting Survivor's Journey Into the Realities of Gun Violence (Taylor S. Schumann) and Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man (Emmanuel Acho) both tackle some tense subjects and are written by Christians who understand multiple sides of the issue at hand.
That said, you can't understand the present without understanding the past, and so I supplemented my exploration with History. History books, with all their lengthy detail (how dare you be so thorough), take a lot out of me, so there were only three this year. Yet they were all marvelous and enriching. I highly recommend Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (David W. Blight) and The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History (John M. Barry).
Fiction
Alright, alright, I'll give a Harry Potter book an award. (We can blame it on how much mediocre fiction I read this year, and how I limit a series to one award each.) Much like how the Academy refrained from giving the Lord of the Rings films many Oscars until Return of the King (and then threw eleven at them), here is a shout-out to Rowling's final book and an acknowledgement of the series as a whole. I have a lot of criticisms of the series, as anyone who asks quickly discovers--and no, it's not that they're all witches and wizards--but it is still true to say it is a masterpiece. I really appreciated the integration of a mythos in Deathly Hallows...a new reveal of magic in an already magical world.
This is the fourth in the Lightbringer series, and no, it is not the kind of series where you can start in the middle. Introduced to this series by a friend, I read the entire series from start to finish this year; this is adult sci-fi/fantasy, and the books are long. (The series finale was the longest book I read the whole year.) Since The Blood Mirror was my favorite book, it gets the mention. (I've since learned that The Blood Mirror is most people's least favorite of the five-book series. I could just hair-toss and claim that I'm just "not like other girls," but I think the real reason is because The Blood Mirror is the most-character driven book in a very plot-driven series. I prefer character-driven books, but it's typically not what people reading a plot-driven series are looking for.) The Lightbringer series is an epic saga full of twists and turns taking place in a unique world full of magic, fully developed cultures, and a host of motivated characters. I don't want to say too much for fear of spoiling it, so I'll just say this: if you are saddened by the lack of original content out there and dying for something new, novel, and rich, look no further. Read the Lightbringer series (especially if you think Christian fiction is dead).
I am a sucker for YA, and I am especially a sucker for fairy-tale retellings. Thorn is a YA retelling of The Goose Girl. You would think, given that there is already a magnificent YA retelling of The Goose Girl (The Goose Girl, by Shannon Hale), that I would have a high bar when reading another one. You would be correct, and yet Thorn still blew me away. I am so pleased to have discovered Khanani as an author; her website states that she is "writing mighty girls and diverse worlds," and that is 100% accurate in the best way. Thorn (and its sequel, Theft of Sunlight) is both gentle and gritty, both sweet and sincere. Nothing about it is a copy, and everything about it is delightful. An instant favorite for me.
I was going to write more here about how my fiction reading connected to my non-fiction reading, but it got too long and will have to be its own post.
I was going to conclude with some notes on how I manage to read so much (so they tell me) in a given year, but that also got too long and will have to be its own post.
So I'll just sign off here. If you're curious, you can see all the books I read in 2021 (with some stats) and keep up with my 2022 progress.
Also, if this inspires you, let me know! It brought me joy to learn that my 2020 post inspired someone (shout-out to H!) to read more, and it would be cool if this one does the same. :)
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