The Best Books of 2021 (according to the NY Times)

hello hello how are you doing i am back today with another best books of the year list this time it is the new york times have published their 10 best books of the year it's a combination of fiction and and so i thought i would go through this uh list to give brief descriptions of all ten books and if i have any personal thoughts about them uh personally i've only read two and one third of the books um one of the books i really liked one of the books i didn't like so much and then uh the book that i only read a third of um it's it's complicated i'll get into it when i when i start talking about it but i love all of these best books of the year lists in the lead up to christmas like it feels like in december more and more come out every day it's sort of like an advent calendar and you know speaking of advent calendars i just got this advent calendar recently of it's a tea advent calendar for a different kind of tea every day of uh the month and um or up until christmas of course um then now this isn't meant to be an advertisement for pakka tea um it's literally just a friend of mine got me this calendar and um which is really cool because i love tea and all different kinds of tea and so it's really fun to try all the different kinds um actually also fortnum mason do a advent calendar for tea which i got for my eldest nephew because he's a really big fan of tea and so today i've i've made my cup and the the tea for today is feel new i i don't know what new person i am supposed to be after drinking this cup of tea um but it's a clean fusion of aniseed fennel and cardamon and it smells really delicious and lovely so i'm i'll be sipping this while talking about these different books okay so getting into all of the different books now um so first off there's the novel how beautiful we were by imbolo embiu and this is a novel set in a fictional african village and is told from a number of different points of view of the villagers as their location is infiltrated by an american oil company that kind of wreaks havoc in the local community and they do note in this new york times article that this isn't your standard david and goliath story um i feel like we get a lot of these stories about like big evil corporations and then local people um that get uh negatively affected by this and um it's it's meant to be a really involving um story dynamic story um about this this community and how it changes over time and the many different perspectives of of people in this community and this is a novel i really want to get to reading now one of the reasons i like following these lists is there are some books which appear over and over again and you know if this amount of readers and critics rate a certain book really highly it is probably one that you want to get to reading and one book that keeps coming up over and over again and which readers here on youtube keep personally recommending to me is intimacies by katie kitamura and this is a novel about an unnamed translator working in the hague who is translating um for war criminals that are facing justice and so a very serious subject but it's also about her personal life and her intimacy with a man whose marriage may or may not be over um so it's these levels of the political and personal um but also about the levels of our communications with each other um how much of that is sincere and how much of it is coercive and this sounds like such a good book and yeah i just keep hearing so many good things about it that this is a novel that i don't have a physical copy of yet but i'm gonna go out and buy one soon because i know i want to read this another novel i keep hearing about and which i'm so eager to read but which will take some time because it's quite a long novel is the love songs of w.e.b du bois and uh by honore fanon jeffers and this is a debut novel the author is a celebrated poet and it was you can see chosen for oprah's book club uh this year um it hasn't actually been published yet here in the uk it's going to be published at the beginning of 2022 but it has come out in the united states and so many people have been talking about it it's it was a finalist on some awards and uh yeah i've just been hearing such great things about this book which sounds like such an epic following the story of a young woman in the late 20th century in america but also looking back um to native american history and african american history to show the formation of the country and how this history still reverberates in the present day no one is talking about this by patricia lockwood and this novel was nominated for multiple awards this year including the women's prize and the booker prize and i've been talking about it so much because of that even though i read it earlier this year and i had very mixed feelings about it i i really enjoyed some aspects of it and the first half of the novel is is really funny um but the the second half of the novel the more emotional poignancy of it just didn't really quite work for me although as i i said recently when i went to hear patricia lockwood read at a at the booker prize readings um her reading was really emotionally impactful and the way she spoke about this novel uh was really intelligent and dynamic and so made me you know want to think about it again and and because it is such a highly praised book it is a book that i think is worth a second look when we cease to understand the world by benjamin labitot and this novel uh which was shortlisted for the international booker prize this year i think is extraordinary and so striking and thoughtful and moving tells the stories of a number of different scientists and mathematicians throughout a century as they make a number of discoveries but the the personal problems that they encounter um because of their commitment to making new discoveries but also because they have peculiar personalities which um almost seem to go hand in hand with uh you know this scientific insight that they have into the world so it's it's gives us sort of different way of looking at the world you know really changing your your perspective on things um through the discoveries they made but also through the examples of of their lives and um how he twines these stories together is so fascinating it moves more from non-fiction into fiction where at first he's giving straight forward more straightforward accounts of um some of these individuals lives and then moves more into slightly fantastical territory where he's sort of creating stories around them um to kind of suit the the mood of the story and the the ideas which um he's putting across about our how we perceive the world and our perspective on on history and so it's such an interesting book a short break for a sip of tea next is the copenhagen trilogy by tove ditlifsin now these books were actually published earlier in the uk than they were in the u.s they were first written and published in denmark in the 1960s and 70s but they've only just recently been translated into english and brought out in english and so they did come out in the uk first in three different volumes but they were published as one single volume in the united states called the copenhagen trilogy so it first starts with childhood and then goes into youth and then the third book is called dependency and um there are different translators for the different books um so that's kind of interesting but this is the series that i've only read one-third of because i only read childhood about this very autobiographically um inspired writing about the the author's childhood um as someone that was very interested in wanting to become a writer but has a very difficult family situation and expectations placed upon her in her childhood and how she struggled to to become her own person and her own writer and it follows that journey on that deals a lot with uh substance abuse and um and uh familial uh abuse and um so i loved the first part of this and uh was really drawn into it but it was quite like hard going and so i felt like i needed a break from it and so i just didn't go back and read the other two parts of this trilogy but i do really want to because i think it's extraordinary writing um and and i'm eager to see more about her development and what happens in her life but i know she had quite a tragic life and um in that she struggled with substance abuse and um and had some really bad relationships with with men and so i almost like don't want to find out what happens next and because i i know it's not going to be good but at the same time i know the writing is really excellent in this so i do want to read more of it so that is why i've only read so far one third of this trilogy how the word is passed a reckoning with the history of slavery across america by clint smith and this is a non-fiction account by the the author who's a poet and a journalist as he travels across america visiting different tourist sites that are key to the history of slavery and the repercussions of that in the present day and he interviews a number of people i mean including tourists and tour guides and uh local historians and and activists um to reckon with this past and and how it reverberates into the present day and it sounds like such a striking and original account um so i'm i'm quite eager to read this nonfiction and i'm really grateful to lists like this since i read so many novels to point me in the direction of some good new non-fiction invisible child poverty survival and hope in an american city by andrea elliott and in this non-fiction book the author spent a long time with a homeless new york school girl and her family to understand their lives and their processes and their how they they struggle um to try to reckon with uh homeless shelters and courtrooms and welfare offices um in order to to survive and so in doing this very intimate uh portrait of of a family and a girl's life i'm speaking to larger issues about poverty and addiction homelessness in america today so it sounds like quite a powerful book on juneteenth by annette gordon reed this book is a blend of history and memoir looking at the author's experiences growing up in the state of texas and sort of looking aside from the current heated political debates in surrounding the the state and looking at um a more personal history of of that state and uh her own experiences um being uh the first black girl and in integrated school and um her family history um looking back to the 1800s when some of her ancestors were slaves in the state red comet the short life and blazing art of sylvia plath by heather clark and this is a biographical account of the writer sylvia plath who committed suicide in 1963 when she was only 30 years old and she is obviously a much discussed and written about uh author but in this biographical account heather clark tries to reclaim sylvia plath as a great writer and on the the artistry of her prose um and cement her place in uh literary history um whereas she's often suddenly been depicted as as a kind of eccentric mad woman and um through her relationships with uh with ted hughes and um so so much has been written about that but this is focusing more on her literary output and um this is quite a big book i've i've heard such amazing things about it it's a book that i've had lots of personal recommendations for so it is one that i do really want to read but need to make the time for but i am hoping to to read some of these books um before the end of the year and we'll see how timing goes but i'd love to hear in the comments below um if you've read any of these books and would particularly recommend any of them uh or are there other books which aren't included on this list that you think really need to be included in the top books of the year let's keep the conversation going and recommendations going because i love hearing all of them and i'm looking forward to seeing more best books of the year lists so i will speak to you again soon thanks for watching bye bye for now

Channel: Eric Karl Anderson

Views: 5,767

Keywords: booktube, best books 2021, Top fiction 2021, Best fiction 2021, NY Times best books 2021, book reviews 2021, best books of the year, How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue, Intimacies by Katie Kitamura, Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of WEB Du Bois, No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood, When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut, How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith, The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen, Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott

Id: yyF-v2MoubQ

Length: 14min 15sec (855 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 03 2021