My Top 10 Books of 2021

everybody rick here and today we're going to talk about my top 10 favorite books of 2021 which is always the most fun video to make but before we get to that i have a question for you i just realized yesterday that i crossed the 5 000 subscriber threshold so that means i'm going to be doing a 5 000 subscriber thank you video so i'm looking for q a questions if you have something you'd want to know something about books something about my life something about this channel something about 2021 or plans for 2022 ask me whatever you want to know in the comments below and i hope to get to it in my 5k video that i'll probably be recording in the next week or so so without further ado let's get to the books but before we do that i have one thing to disclaim these are books that i read in 2021 they are not necessarily books that came out in 2021 and number 10 on that list is probably the most surprising book that i read all year that is storm by george stewart i've been describing storm as middle march if it was about a weather pattern this book is about 280 pages long and all it does is chronicle the effects of a storm that lasted for 12 days in 1935. we inhabit the people and the places that are affected by this storm from air traffic controllers to people that are fixing the roads from meteorologists to flood supervisors to the storm itself a lot of attention is paid to the character of the storm itself and it's a book that if someone had described it to me i don't think i would be all that interested in it or at least not at this length i'd be interested in it and maybe a short story or a novella if you told me 300 pages about a storm i don't know if i would have loved it but i got this book in a as the first book from an nyrb subscription that i got and it was the biggest best surprise of the year i absolutely loved this book it was just such a different experience and george stewart is able to write about ecology and geography and then the people who inhabit those things so well it was just it was so gripping and lovely and just a great like sunday afternoon book okay book number nine is maybe the most confounding confusing but exhilarating book that i've read all year and that's the magus by john fowles this is a book that gets harder and harder to talk about the further and further you are from it so i will for sure link this video up here but also in the description below and i'm gonna i've talked about all of these books at length in videos throughout the year so i'm going to link them throughout this video but this is a book that's just it's just about atmosphere and the experience that val's takes you on the character at the center of the story is a young man named nicholas irf he accepts a teaching position on this remote greek island and while he's there he meets this eccentric bizarre millionaire and gets kind of taken into his home and his circle and the 600 plus yeah 650 page odyssey that you go on with nicholas as he is confused and you are confused as to what is going on what this millionaire wants from him who he is what his goals are is he good is he bad is how powerful is he what is he able to accomplish and how and why has he set nicholas at the center of this bizarre game he is playing throughout this novel it's it's unlike anything i've read maybe ever it's it was so unsettling but in the best most exciting way when i finished it i still wasn't really sure about a lot of things that had happened or how i felt about them but what i did know was that this was one of the more gripping reading experiences i've had in a really long time i just i had such a hard time putting this book down for its entire 650 pages okay book number eight is a book that came to me fairly late in the year and that is a dream of a woman by casey plett this is a canlet collection of short stories that also has a novella kind of running through it so the novella is split into sections so the book is structured as a short story then a piece of the novella then a short story then back to the novella and a short story and so on this is a book that centers transgender women in really interesting emotionally psychologically physically gray areas i think it talks about the trans experience in a way that a lot of people haven't been exposed to it's real it's honest it's raw it doesn't sugarcoat things it's not trying to put this really positive spin on every part of the trans experience and at the same time it's it's funny it's entertaining it's emotional i think casey plett has established herself with this book as like a real like legitimate name in the canlit scene i think this is just the start of what's going to be just a blistering career for her i was i was extremely impressed by this book book number seven is in one person by john irving this is my first john irving that i've read in a number of years and it was just so lovely to come back to him because owen meanie is is one of the great books of all time but the world according to garp is one of my favorite books of all time it's probably a top 10 book of all time for me and this book reminded me so much of garp in so many ways in just the best ways it wasn't like this carbon copy but it shared a lot of similar themes and it was just this beautiful reminder of the place that john irving has in my reading life this is a book that explores the the life and the bisexuality of a man for 60 or 70 years of his life it won the lambda award the year it came out 2013 i think for its presentation of bisexuality and while i think it can be easily kind of categorized as a as a bisexual story i think it is much more about just desire and love and passion and trying to sort all of those out at different stages of your life it's about loss it's about politics it's sweeping and funny and tragic and beautiful just the very precise alchemy of what it is to to read a john irving novel book number six is the book that i've covered most recently on this channel and that's the little stranger by sarah waters i am not a horror thriller mystery reader by any stretch of the imagination but i couldn't believe how much i enjoyed this book and how kind of gripped i was with it at the same time this is a historical fiction it's about family it's about jealousy it's about a ghost it's about class and struggle and man's inability to come to terms with not having the things that he wants in his life when i say man i don't mean like mankind i mean men specifically how hard some men find it to to not have the things that they want and the lengths that they will go to get those things if they've been denied them and those stories usually don't appeal to me because they're often so just gross and awful but sarah waters was able to tell this story in a way that was just really interesting okay book number five was certainly one of the best books that i've read this year but it was the most uncomfortable book that i've read this year for sure that's disgrace by jan kutzy this is the folio edition so doesn't really say what it is on the front this is like almost universally considered one of the best books of all time let alone um the last 25 years it deals heavily with sexual assault and race and class in south africa it is a book that i would never just tell someone to read i think you have to go into this book really knowing what it is what you're getting into and you have to be in the mood to confront some of these issues and some of these themes but this is a book i think you have to really deep dive into it if you're curious at all i would suggest you uh you watch the video where i talk about this specifically i talk about it for like 20 minutes it's a book i think you really have to deep dive because it's easy to gloss over or misinterpret some of the things that could see is trying to do so i really tried to take the time to unpack this and explain why it's such a great book and why it shouldn't so easily be filed under like gross male desire book number four this year it's a book i just absolutely loved matrix by lauren groff this is such a huge departure i think for groff in terms of time and place this takes place in a 12th century convent but in terms of the themes that groth loves to play with feminism non-conformity power powerlessness they're all there and maybe to like her apex powers this is my favorite lauren graf book that i've read for sure it's incredibly evocative it's so unpredictable the imagery she uses throughout this book is is fascinating and i usually don't do this because i prefer to use my own words when i talk about a book but there's a sentence on the inside of this that i think just describes why you should read this book so well and it says equally alive to the sacred and the profane lauren groff's matrix is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world okay on to the top three and book number three is my favorite can lit novel of the year and i feel bad about this one because when i read it i didn't declare it what i thought to be the favorite for the the giller prize i may have even undersold just how much i love this book and i never made a dedicated video about it and i just feel bad about it because i just i've grown to love this book so so much that's astra by cedar bowers this book is just it's so good and it makes me so mad that it wasn't more recognized by the giller prize this year this is one of the most unique portraits of a human being i've i've ever read in my whole life this book is split into 10 chapters in each of those chapters examines this woman astra from a different person in her life so she's not the narrator of this book even though she is the central figure of every chapter of this book and what i loved about it is just seeing how one person can be interpreted so differently by just different people in their life depending on the sides of her that she shows them combined with their own biases and what they want out of her this book is just so harrowing for me as a person who so often tries to give everyone around me the version of me that i think that they want i hate when people do not like me i don't like not being able to control that narrative it's so self-destructive it's awful it's the worst quality that i have for me personally and i'm hoping now that i've learned that the back half of my life feels entirely different because it's it's really sad to to kind of self-abandon yourself for that much of your life but astra is a person that i think is herself throughout this book and in each of these kind of different chapters and it's terrifying for me to watch that because this is exactly what i'm afraid of when i try to give people the versions of or this is why i try to give people the versions of me that i that i want them to have because people can so drastically misinterpret who you are based on their own biases and needs and wants and blind spots and seeing people judge her i think improperly in some places because of who they are and who they want her to be it's just like that is that is so scary to me it drives me crazy as a human being that someone can come along and just decide what you are based on who they are so i as a person really try and control that narrative for people and it's it's awful i'm not saying you should do it i'm saying you shouldn't do it but this this is why i do it because this is the consequences that at least half the people in your life are going to judge you wrongly or poorly or not like who you are or wish they can change things and it's lovely to see astra just be astra in spite of that so i find this very inspiring meanwhile it does scare the living crap out of me at the same time man that was a diatribe i didn't expect to get into a bit of a therapy session you're welcome okay this next one we're gonna call it 3b this is kind of a bonus selection it's not a novel so i didn't want to put it on this list with everything else but it's so good i just i didn't want to bring up all the books that i love this year and not talk about that and this is the descender series of graphic novels by jeff lemire they're so heavy i don't know if i can hold this the whole time these are the two deluxe editions that i read and yeah it's this is this it's instantly one of the the best graphic novel series that i've ever read in my whole life i love jeff lamar i just worship at the at the altar of jeff lemire this story and book is what i've been looking for for years out of a comic book series or graphic novel series and somehow i don't know why this is the case but there's not a lot of great sci-fi fantasy in comics it doesn't make any sense it seems like the perfect vehicle and and the the creators would be really into it the audience will be really into it and yet there's not a lot of great ones and and this is just such a fantastic science fiction story the whole series encompasses just 32 issues so it's easy to read it has wonderful characters it has fascinating philosophy the ending will blow you away it features a boy it features a brother and his mechanical dog it features a mad king it also has a soldier and the soldier's daughter and the fool there's also a freedom fighter and it's all told on this just massive galactic scale and it puts such an interesting spin or twist on the whole machines coming to destroy mankind science fiction trope by asking the question what if the machines were here first and humanity appears to be the ones who have come to start the war but but the story's been twisted over time i don't want to say anything more it's too good to spoil but just if you love graphic novels read descender and it ha it's so good that there's a sequel series called ascender which i'm waiting to read until they put these deluxe editions of it out and it's just oh it's pained me all year waiting for this because i want to see where the story goes so badly it's so good read it please okay book number two was my favorite book in this guy's catalog at least so far it was my favorite um buddy read i did this year i did it with uh leo from a little book life thank you so much leo this was fantastic and that is nobody's fool by richard russo i am currently on a quest to read through richard russo's entire catalog i am now five books in and nobody's fool is for sure my favorite russo that i've read so far it's so so so good this is just like i've described it i think that as like the vibe of of the gilmore girls but if it was about like a crotchety 65 year old man this is just like a brilliant chronicle of small town east coast life it's so wonderfully and tragically illustrates that the chains that we are born with through our family and the efforts it takes to drop those chains throughout your life and how more likely it is for you to add links to that chain as you go and then you give that chain to your kids and it's just the cycle continues and it's so tragic but russo talks about it and the process of trying to break those changes so beautifully in this book but it is oh my god this book is so funny holy hell it's funny like richard russo he's like a playwright he who became a novelist every novel he writes has just that whip crack dialogue that you see in a play but he does it for like 500 pages yeah like it's i don't know how he can be this witty for this long it just blows my mind brusso to me is just like has the perfect ingredients of what a literary fiction writer should be his books are rich and meaningful and deadly serious but he does it with like a wit and a charm and a grace that makes the whole thing so enjoyable i've heard russo say in an interview when you're writing the darker things get the funnier you should be or the funnier you need to be like it's pure mark twain like if your book is going to be about violence or bigotry or injustice like you do well as an author to go into it armed with a little bit of humor and richard russo does that as well as any writer i've ever seen and finally my number one book of the year if you've been around this channel i don't know how much of a surprise this will be another book that i feel so badly that i didn't do a dedicated review of and i probably should before the end of the year and that's appleseed by matt bell this book blew me away holy hell this is so good and it is spawned like a i'm sure will be a lifelong love affair with matt bell i've bought like i think four of his books since reading appleseed this book is weird it is challenging it is thought provoking it puts such a wonderful kind of science fiction twist on the idea of an eco novel and as i said i think in my instagram post uh when i first talked about this book i'm just i'm so happy matt bell's writing has come into my life that is how impactful i feel like this book has become for me i haven't found a new just like favorite writer in in a number of years i have like a handful of kind of the big writers i've discovered in my life or the big books i've discovered in my life and it's still too new for me to say that unequivocally that this this is on that list but the feeling that i was left with with this book and just how much more warmth i feel for the book the further i get away from it that that feeling just does not come along often for me this book operates in three different timelines one is in the 18th century one is the 21st century and one is the 31st century there's a central cast of characters in each of these timelines and you just follow the threat of this impending ecological disaster and then what happens after it and that's a story that i'm typically not too interested in but matt bell put such a weird interesting spin on it i just i can't this is this is a book that i can't really fully describe i just need to give it to a person and tell them to read it and experience it i said this in my initial chat about this book i think which was in a one of my wrap ups earlier this year this book to me feels like if jeff vandermeer and david mitchell got together for a beer and a pub to talk about how much they loved the books pier and essie and oryx and crake and then by the end of that conversation they decided they wanted to write an eco novel together that book would be appleseed i can't put it any better than that like that like i can't articulate it any more exact it's just this is a total vibes book and i just want you to experience them you might not like it it might not be your thing but take a swing at it i think it's worth venturing into this space to see if if it's something you like because if you can get anywhere close to the feeling that i have for this book it's worth the try so there we go that's my top 10 books of 2021 if you want to talk to me about what your books were or what your some of your favorite books were at the very least please put them in the comments below and i will remind you i'm going to be doing a 5k subscriber celebration video thing so if you have any questions for me put those in the comments below as well i would love to get to as many as i can the last time i did this i i got really drunk and when i made that video so i might do the same thing again i don't know that was really entertaining just to do that myself so we'll see so if you have any specifically drunk questions you want to ask me put those down there as well thank you so much for watching and while we're here it's the end of the year it's always fun to look back at the year that was this year it's harder to do that um this kind of on a personal note this has been one of if not the worst years of my life for a number of different reasons it's been a very challenging year mentally physically emotionally and one of the things that just have gotten me through or has kind of centered me through all this chaos has been you guys this channel being able to talk about the books that i love and then specifically these 10 books um this is it's been really fun actually to go back through and look at these and talk about them because this is kind of yeah the threat of of sanity that i've kept through through 2021 um and i'm sure you've had the same in your life because i don't think any of us are having an easier and easy time of it at this point so thank you so much for watching any of my videos this year thank you so much for watching this one if you're subscribed thank you so much it really does mean an awful lot i don't really care too too much about hitting targets or hitting big numbers or anything like that that's not why i don't think anybody should be doing this but hitting 5k was a pretty cool thing and yeah it's just a nice little nugget at the end of the year something to feel proud of and if you were a part of it if you're a subscriber um thanks a lot you brought some light into my world this year and i really really do appreciate it so hope you're having a great holiday season and i wish you well for the rest of it and uh start making your plans for 2022 because that's the favorite that's the best thing about the end of the year we get to make all our super big nerdy book plans and reading plans uh for january which i that's my favorite thing to do i think all here i'm terrible at doing them following through but i love making the plan and it's plan time so it just feels amazing so yeah my name is rick thanks so much for watching and i'll see you guys in a couple days bye

Channel: Rick MacDonnell

Views: 2,146

Keywords: Booktube, Book review, Top 10 Books of 2021, Best Books of 2021, Favourite Books of 2021, 10 Best Books of 2021, 2021 Reading Year in Review

Id: KQ4yAIJzti0

Length: 22min 18sec (1338 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 15 2021