Authors Pick The Best Books of 2021

hello hello how are you doing i'm continuing on looking at some of the best books of the year lists and today it's really fun uh lists group of lists actually of authors that have been recommending their best books of the year and i always find this really fun to peruse you know especially if it's an author i really like seeing what they have really enjoyed over the past year obviously authors have much more idiosyncratic choices than than critics and often they'll be picking backlisted books or books just on specialty subjects that they're interested in and yeah it's really interesting to see if i agree with them or don't agree with them and then if i don't agree with some of their choices if that slightly changes my opinion of the author themselves you know there's always the the risk of that um so yeah obviously um a lot of different newspapers and publications will get authors to recommend some of their best books of the year so i'm just looking at a few and uh and i'm just looking at some select authors um that i'm especially interested in from these articles so i'll put links down in the description below to all of these articles if you wanna have a good long look through um to see if there's other because yeah there's there's lots more recommendations which i'm not gonna talk about because uh then this would go on forever but i'm gonna pick to pick out some pick up pick out pick out some very particular choices um starting off with uh the new statesman and a number of different authors that they selected and first off uh hilary mentel and her choices for the year and she first off picks a memoir by musa akwanga called one of them which is about a young black man that went to study at eaton university i'm a very privileged elite university that's predominantly white and produces a lot of politicians and how he was realizing that he was the recipient of a lot of privilege from going there but that actually his feelings about the larger consequences for society um because of this very elite institution um are are very different and hillary mintel comments uh that uh it sheds light on the present disconnect uh between those who govern and those who suffer the consequences and uh she also recommends a new short novel uh called small things like these by claire keegan which i just read recently and really agree with it's it's such a powerful novel about an irish town in the mid 80s and a sort of secret within that town and and she um writes that uh that it wastes not a word and i i completely agree it is such a short book um but it is so powerful next there is bernardine evaristo and it's also really interesting to see in looking at different lists from different publications if there's the same author there and if that author is recommending the same books or different books um if they use it as an opportunity to pick out different books and it's there there are some of these authors there and bernadine uh appears on more than one list and she recommends different books across the different lists uh so yeah the first book she recommends is um well she actually recommends two collections of poems um first one i've never heard of called c plus nto and other and othered pro poems poems poems sorry i'll i'll put up a cover of this so you can see what it actually is and this is by jo joelle taylor and uh yeah i'd not heard of this before she um says that uh she's produced one of the most astonishing and original poetry collections of recent years that it's partly autobiographical exploration of the lives of butch lesbian counterculture and uh so yeah it's um interesting to get that suggestion from bernie di nevaristo um because i read uh evaristo's memoir this year um in which she talks quite frankly about her sexuality and uh yeah so um that that's really interesting and she also recommends poor by caleb femi um which is a poetry collection i've been really wanting to get to reading this year and yeah just haven't got to yet and um she she says that it zooms in on the lives of young black men on the south london housing estate of his own childhood so yeah i'm hoping to read that at some point then there is damon gallagher the winner of this year's booker prize i'm so has been probably much in demand for for blurbs and quotes and to give to books um to help promote them and uh he is somebody that also appears on multiple lists but recommends the same books and uh so i have a feeling that this is very much a just sort of copy and paste for him that he probably sent to multiple publications and i don't really blame him for that because you know not everyone wants to spend the time like writing out endless recommendations and um yeah i'm sure he's much in demand but anyway the the first book um he recommends uh is also keyan's uh novel so um you know as i say with these lists it's interesting to see which books pick up pop up multiple times i'm having really trouble with p words today pop up multiple times to be picked picked in multiple anyway and yeah um and clark keegan's novel's been yeah appearing a lot recently and uh so yeah which i i really agree with and uh he um he says he describes is absolutely exquisite um her work is exceptional and he also recommends burnt coat burnt coat by sarah hall um yeah we're having really trouble speaking today um which i've not read yet um but he um says she's a marvelous writer and she used the scenario of an unnamed plague and the lockdown it sets to create a psychological mystery and uh yeah it feels like we have been getting a lot of lockdown novels and we'll probably continue to be getting them um as more writers you know respond to the events of the the past almost two years now and uh which is i think completely natural now this recommendation from lucy hughes hallett is really interesting because she was one of the judges of the international booker prize this year and in her recommendation she sheds a little light on books that didn't make their list but which she thought should have um so uh yeah she um first off she picks off uh the the book a perfect cemetery um by federico falco which she calls a collection of haunting witty stories by the argentinian writer and also felipe claudel's dog island which i don't think i have heard of she calls it a parable about modern migrations that is also the kind of detective story that mikhail bouglikov might have written visionary and darkly humorous but she also recommends as her favorite novel of the year um a backlisted book um which was newly reprinted this year called oh caledonia by elizabeth barker which is a gothic scottish story and that i've been really wanting to read as well there's the author mark hadden um who recommends the prophets uh by robert jones jr which i also agree with is is such an excellent uh moving really epic sweeping story um that i found so involving and emotional um he calls it a gripping luminous novel about the many tangled lives of a louisiana plantation centering on two enslaved teenage lovers samuel and isaiah reviews invoking tony morrison were absolutely justified and he also recommends a non-fiction book which i think sounds really interesting called the idea of the brain by matthew cobb which he describes as a thrilling history of our rapidly expanding understanding of the brain and yeah i would really love to to read more books sort of exploring the the brain and neuroscience and and the the whole crazy science of that ali smith has some recommendations um which gives me a little heartbreak looking at alice's name because i just found out recently um because of ongoing issues to do with the pandemic i'm not going to be able to do an event which was planned for early next year where i was going to be interviewing ali smith in a live event at a literary festival and i was so looking forward to it so excited about it um but uh it's yeah it's totally understandable that uh people are delaying physical events because um yeah things are still so uncertain um so hopefully it will actually happen at some point um but yeah that's that's an event that i was really looking forward to next year which uh yeah is uh is just gonna be delayed but anyway um so of course uh ali recommends some slightly more obscure books and she um says uh a look at my life which is a memoir by eileen agar um and she describes it as hard to get and i did go look online to see if copies of this would be um available is from 1988 and i couldn't find a copy for much under a hundred pounds and so uh yeah it'd be very expensive to try to get a copy of this book i mean i might have a look in some libraries um if uh if we wanted to read it but um she um describes it as um a as what a book uh spirited funny candid as irreverent textured and cornucopic as her art it begins head first i tumbled out of my mother in december 1899 then it ends the book ends with i hope to die in a sparkling moment which is a fantastic way to begin an end a book um yeah she really knows how to sell a book ali smith does and um she also mentions jennifer kiki's brilliant uh the the mirror and the palette which reveals an until now hidden history of women's self-portraiture and is pretty corny copic itself um she she seems to really like that that word at the more moment cornea copic describing the word cornucopia um as an adjective but she picks out as her book of the year a uh poetry collection called 40 names by a young afghani poet parwana fayaz and quotes a line from it which is no one ever wanted to know what the real story was as clear as unruined water as courageous as a poet can be in these times as haunting as the brutal history it records and as marvelously summoned as the lives it celebrates it's a calm reclamation and a toward a force wow then we have a recommendation from nicholas sturgeon the first minister of scotland and a wonderful lover of literature actually she has interviewed ali smith at the edinburgh book festival before which i wish i could have seen um i'm sure it would have been an amazing event and uh nicholas sturgeon recommends a great circle by maggie shipstead um which of course i'm very happy about and completely agree with um she describes it as an epic tale of daring and adventure which it totally is and um she also recommends uh the magician by uh callum toybin and which uh the which i've been meaning to read uh for ages about the life of thomas mann and uh she describes it as another masterpiece uh the rise of nazi germany and the horrors of the second world war are viewed through the eyes and experiences of the complicated and multi-layered writer and nobel prize winner thomas mann historical fiction at its best i also want to mention that calm toybin just recently won the david cohen prize for literature which is sometimes termed as the uk nobel prize because it awards an author for their body of work rather than you know just a single book and it's quite a lucrative prize but yeah there'll be more recommendations from toy bin and soon actually why not just jump to his recommendations right now um so toy bin recommends uh some poetry um derek mahons the the poems from 1961 to 2020 which were published a year after the poet's death and he says that it displays a rich talent formalist and casual witty and melancholy minimalist and expansive he also recommends claire keegan's novel uh small things like these so yeah yet another recommendation uh for that book um he also recommends the works of guillerme uh doosan volume one which i've not heard of before but um he describes this as it containing three short engrossing novels that center on sharp and acute descriptions of gay sex the sensibility and inner world of the protagonist emerging richly by implication this is a great book for gay boys on a winter night i love that description i'm gonna have to get a copy of that there's also recommendations from gary young who was the chair of judges for the portico prize this year um which i i just talked about in a video recently um he recommends nada for muhammad the fortune men which i i really loved this book he describes it as an elegant portrayal of life in the racial cultural hub of cardiff's tiger bay in the early 50s eschewing a simple morality play for complex vivid characters it centers on the plight of mahmoud matan who finds himself in the shadow of the hangman's news for a murder he didn't commit he also recommends the windrush betrayal by amelia gentlemen which he says sat on his shelf for far too long because i thought i knew the story i didn't at least i had not sat with it beyond the news cycles for the length of time necessary to witness the full scale of the injustice unfold in a single narrative thread a book that keeps you informed and makes you angry i'd really like to read that because yeah i'd i'd really like to know more about the the windrush generation is as well alif shafak recommends a couple of books that i've not heard of before and so she first starts with hope not fear by hassan akad and she describes it as an extraordinary story that deals with the urgent issues of our era including the syrian war systematic torture and dehumanization ongoing in countries where authoritarianism has taken hold she also recommends a book called burning the books by richard avenden which i think maybe i've seen in some bookstores when i've been looking around but um uh who's the director of the beaudelaine library she says this fascinating and moving book should be read at schools and translated into languages all around the world in a digital age that abounds with snippets of information this is a glorious celebration of physical libraries and nuanced knowledge the author melvin bragg also recommends the the magician and he says that this recreates as biographical fiction the life thoughts and achievements of thomas mann it is dark beautifully constructed and i think as near as one author can get to entering the mind of another and he also recommends clara and the sun by kazuo ishiguro which he says boldly sets out to create an artificial friend she is a robot with brilliantly realized human observations and convincingly emotions it's wonderful and yeah i completely agree it is so wonderful and it's the the really tricky thing about it is you often forget that this girl narrator at it at the center of the book isn't human and um and you continuously forget that and um and what that that says about emotions and and and our humanity itself also the writer rose tremaine has some recommendations um she recommends damon gal gets the promise and she says that he is the most worthy winner of the booker prize we've seen for many years his novel the promise turns around the pledge made by the swartz a white south african family to grant ownership to a of a small house on their land to their long-suffering black made salome the pledge is never kept and the lives of the neglectful quarrelsome swartz fall into ruin the book trembles in the hand with its political relevance i i think i'm able to hold this book pretty steady but yeah i completely agree that uh but yeah what this book says um yeah is still very relevant especially in south africa right now as damon gallagher insisted when he won the booker prize tremaine also recommends for a gripping reread which is wonderful to see you don't see enough recommendations of rereads that people have done over the course of the year she says arnold wesker's the birth of and the death of zero master the story of how a production of wesker's play the merchant masterpiece or dud was assassinated on the new york stage and yeah that sounds like a really gripping story now i'm going to move on to some recommendations that were in the guardian observer from different authors i'm starting with ishiguro himself recommending first some fiction and then some much more politically engaged uh non-fiction um so he starts off with recommending mariana enriquez's uh the dangers of smoking in bed which is a collection of short stories from uh which he describes as having uh disturbed adolescents ghosts decaying ghouls the sad and angry homeless of modern argentina is the most exciting discovery i've made in fiction for some time which is quite a big statement to make um i i don't totally agree with that i didn't find those stories quite as effective they're they're really creative and engaging and some of them are quite moving but yeah as as a whole i didn't completely love that collection but uh but yeah there you go um then he also recommends um yeah some non-fiction like i said so horrifying in another way jonathan calvert and george aberthnots failures of state is a brilliantly presented indictment of the uk's fumbling attempt to meet the kovich challenge read alongside jeremy farrar's more personal spike the virus v the people and michael lewis's compelling the premonition we see a disturbing common trait emerging in our country and others the unwillingness to prioritize people's lives over ideas and engrained structures then bernardine varisto also has the section in in this but um she recommends some books different books um than she recommended before and here she picks um some nonfiction choices as well and uh so um she's also been um thinking about a lot about british history and uh global history and culture and identity beyond the often distorted dishonest and pumped up myth-making that has long prevailed um so she says history is an interpretation of the past in these three books each one powerfully persuasive and offering new ways of seeing are in conversation with each other um which yeah a really interesting idea of books and conversation with each other which is totally true and you know if you read a lot then yeah you see that more and more often um so she recommends empire land how imperialism has shaped modern britain by satnam sangera the new age of empire how racism and colonialism still rule the world by candi andrews and green unpleasant land creative responses to rural england's colonial connections by karine fowler so those are some really interesting recommendations from her then there's a recommendation from wale soyinka who's published this great big novel um which i still have to uh get to reading at some point this year and uh he recommends uh aleph shafak's new novel the island of missing trees um which is a novel i really enjoyed and loved as well and which he says is tender and savage by turns in a greco-turkish cypriot historic setting the rigorous questioning of nation and identity given my incessant preoccupations made it a truly therapeutic literary meal which is a wonderful dis way to describe a reading experience then callum tobin is back with some more book recommendations and he says that he enjoyed hugo hamilton's the pages narrated with verve and ingenuity by an actual book a novel by joseph roth which got saved from the nazi bonfire and then takes on a picarex journey across the atlantic and back to germany i also enjoyed the social historian patrick joyce's going to my father's house a haunting meditation on ireland in england war and migration derry and manchester i admired the originality of his observations and his tone of melancholy calm wisdom and i love john mcauliffe's selected poems for the way that ordinary things are rendered and rhythm handled so deathly and artfully i get the feeling that callum reads a lot of poetry alif shafak is also back with some more recommendations and she recommends a couple of books that were listed for this year's wainwright prize um um and uh which i was following and and i read one of these books um which was anita sethi's i belong here um she describes it as an unforgettable journey sethi wrote this book after being the victim of a horrible racist attack on a train from liverpool to newcastle the genius of the author is how she takes the narrative of hatred and discrimination hurl deader and turns it upside down by going back to where she came from the landscapes of the north through long walks in nature as she finds a true sense of belonging connectivity renewal and hope so do we her readers i found it not only deeply moving but also quietly transformative uh yeah that's a wonderful way to describe that book which is yeah such an excellent memoir and also anita sethi um was just announced recently as one of the judges for next year's women's prize for fiction um so yeah it'll be really interesting to see um what she decides um for her choices like alongside the the other judges for that prize and she also recommends uh thin places by carrie nee dakte um her which he describes as a fabulous read that stayed with me this year and um so born in derry at the height of the troubles the author's voice is piercingly honest movingly heartfelt there is so much soul and knowledge and compassion it gave me shivers now sarah hall has some recommendations as well and first off she recommends sea state by tabitha lasley which is a book i talked about recently as it's currently shortlisted for the portico prize and she says it took her completely by surprise part memoir part investigation into oil rig culture part critique of gender and class dynamics it's incredibly compelling often dark as the drilled four product lastly infiltrates this masculine offshore industry with its dangers profit and comrader ship she also explores female loneliness and desire accommodation of a male designated world and the spaces where women hold power um yeah i think that's a really great description of it and i might as well pick up the portico prize since i keep talking about it and and i have all of the books right here um yeah i just happen to have them all here on a shelf next to me um so yeah these are the books and i talked about them in a previous video which i'll link below sarah hall also recommends the recently reissued uh novel mrs caliban by rachel ingles um which i've been really wanting to reread um because i read this when i was in my early 20s and absolutely loved it and she says rachel ingles work is is a work of true verve and imagination along with her suburban housewife and lab tested reptilian lover ingalls deathly wittily and rather incredibly liberates readers from the awfulness of convention to a state where weirdness and otherness are beautiful and right that is such an excellent way of describing this this novel which is so unique calabazouma nelson who wrote the wonderful debut novel open water um has a recommendation as well i believe he also has a new book out next year which is really exciting and he says i loved transcending kingdom yes i loved it too uh by yayasi the the story of a family of four who travel from guyana to alabama to make a new life for themselves through the course of the novel the family's history begins to unfold illuminating stories that have gone unspoken for generations it's a beautiful novel with not a word out of place yeah that is so right he continues that i also really enjoyed vanessa on dark neighborhood a collection of short stories from an unforgettable searing voice they occupy a hallucinatory landscape often veering into the surreal and each pulses with an electric energy i had started reading the short story collection but just couldn't really quite get into it i think i needed to be in the right mood so i do want to try it again lauren groff the author of matrix um has some recommendations as well and she starts with patricia lockwood i can't escape patricia lockwood can i so um she uh describes this as hilarious and subversive and that no one is talking about this sent me reeling everything about this book from its structure to its prose to the way it hits a reader unawares in the second half is a testament to lockwood's wicked genius she also recommends everyone knows your mother is a witch by rivka gauchon which is yeah a novel i keep hearing about um through these recommended lists and one that now i increasingly really want to read um she says flew a bit under the radar but it is a wise meditation on the kind of hysterical scapegoating we so often see in the age of the internet though based on a historical fact that the mother of astronomer johannes kepler was once accused of witchcraft um i hadn't heard that about this but um yeah that that's so interesting uh she says i loved this book uh intensely when i read it in the summer and have thought of it nearly every day through this strange autumn uh and she also says i've been thinking deeply about anagogo anagogical anagogical literature recently and very few living writers write so achingly toward god as kaveh akbar real faith akbar writes in pilgrim bell passes first through the body like an arrow each of the poems in this collection finds its target and yeah i remember reading about this poetry collection in another uh list and uh yeah it sounds excellent sanjeev sahoda author of the wonderful novel china room also has a couple of recommendations he says barbara and ren reich is an incisive diagnostician of societies and in had i known collected essays she is clear-eyed on the ways in which the american working class has been politically abandoned and culturally demonized much of the analysis applies to our own country on the novel front i could not recommend more strongly gwendolyn riley's my phantoms which he describes as flinty bracing exquisite and like i said in a previous video this is a novel i've been avoiding because i disliked gwendolyn riley's novel first love so much then there are some recommendations posted from authors on inews and which are really interesting um selection because i think the authors they they pick are especially interesting but also they have a fun way of structuring it where they ask the author to give a book recommendation and then a book that they want um for christmas um so that's that's a really fun way to put it of of books that these authors want to read which is you know sometimes more interesting than hearing about what they've actually read um so first off starting with natasha brown um for who wrote the amazing debut novel assembly and uh her book of the year is asylum road by olivia sudjik which is novel i also read at the beginning of the year and i thought was excellent she says that through a series of tense journeys and a close-up portrait of a relationship on the rocks the novel creates an eerily familiar reflection of our current moment one of my first reads of the year but it continues to haunt me and the book she wants for christmas is something by thomas hardy i've only ever read tests of the derby bills but after driving through the luscious green hills of hardy's wessex a few weeks ago i've been inspired to read more which is interesting because earlier this year i drove through thomas hardy country as well and yeah it was really inspiring to see the whole setting of these novels the wonderful author saree hustvet um her book of the year is one i've not heard of before it is white hot light 25 years in emergency medicine by frank holler it may be from last year but it shines out as one of the best books for our time of multiple emergencies and the book she wants for christmas is the folio edition of emily bronte's wuthering heights i have been reading a crummy paperback for years and i love that and i don't have the folio society edition of wuthering heights but i do have the one uh for the tenant of wildfell hall and yeah of course the photo society editions are so beautiful i mean look at this tori peters also has some recommendations author of detransition baby one of my favorite books of this year her book of the year is jackie s's daryl the adventures of a cuckold fetishist coming to know himself is part picaresque part philosophy part cultural criticism and entirely hilarious and heartbreaking and what she wants for christmas uh she says when people discuss writing about gender they often mean books by queer writers but ever since the best-selling out-stealing horses i've thought the norwegian writer per person or you probably pronounce that differently don't you i'm sorry writes about masculinity as well as anyone imagine hemingway without the preening his new novel men in my situation is now available in the uk but not yet in the u.s where i live and i'm jealous so yeah that's that's a book i should go out and get isn't it because i'm here in the uk and finally maggie shipstead uh gives her recommendation um which i think it's really funny that that she says i haven't been a big friends in head in the past but i was blown away by the depth of thought and empathy and the clarity of expression in crossroads um so yeah another recommendation for crossroads and what she wants for christmas um she says i think there's something fun about getting a cookbook for christmas and i totally agree with that and i've heard amazing things about the expansive inclusive black food edited by bryant terry which is the first i've heard about that book so i'll have to to look that up so those are all the author recommendations i'm going to point out like i said there's there's lots more author recommendations and if you want to read more of their thoughts about any of these books um yeah i'll put links below to these three different articles and i'm sure there have been more i might i'd love to find more articles like this if you've come across some articles with authors recommending their best books of the year uh um put them uh in the comments below um because yeah i'd love to to have a look at them uh but thank you for watching this and uh yeah um lots and lots more recommendations from this and uh yeah so i'm gonna keep looking through these lists and i will speak to you again soon bye-bye

Channel: Eric Karl Anderson

Views: 3,440

Keywords: booktube, best books 2021, authors recommend best books 2021, best fiction 2021, must read books 2021, bernardine evaristo, Colm toibin, One of Them – Musa Okwonga, Small Things Like These – Claire Keegan, elif shafak, Poor – Caleb Femi, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Burntcoat – Sarah Hall, O Caledonia – Elspeth Barker, The Prophets – Robert Jones Jr, The Idea of the Brain – Matthew Cobb, A Look at My Life – Eileen Agar, Great Circle – Maggie Shipstead, Ali smith, Derek Mahon

Id: Qbz1D1nnVfU

Length: 34min 51sec (2091 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 16 2021