The Best Books of 2021. 

How quickly time flies between Covid 19 variants! Yes, we’re here again with the previous year's best reads. I reviewed 102 books last year (a record since I started Blogging) with a pair of DNFs. As tradition demands I’ll split Fiction and Non-Fiction with, as usual, the best of the best in BOLD. I’ll then do a summary and some stats to finish off.   

Fiction: 

The Rising by Ian Tregillis 

Thunder at Dawn by Alan Evans 

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger 

Clarissa Oakes by Patrick O’Brian 

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kessey 

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 

Spontaneous by Aaron Starmer 

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller 

Dominion by C J Sansom 

Munich by Robert Harris 

A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute 

The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry 

The Afghan Campaign by Steven Pressfield 

All Involved by Ryan Gattis 

Glory in the Name by James Nelson 

Non-Fiction: 

Parisians – As Adventure History of Paris by Graham Robb 

Bitter Freedom – Ireland in a Revolutionary World 1918-1923 by Maurice Walsh 

The Opium War by Julia Lovell 

The Boxer Rebellion by Richard O’Connor 

Our Man in Charleston – Britain’s Secret Agent in the Civil War South by Christopher Dickey 

Our Man in New York – The British Plot to Bring America into the Second World War by Henry Hemming 

The Berlin Wall (13 August 1961 – 9 November 1989) by Frederick Taylor 

How Music Got Free – The Inventor, The Mogul, and The Thief by Stephen Witt 

The Last White Rose – The Secret Wars of the Tudors by Desmond Seward 

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot – A Memoir by Kim Barker 

Munich – The 1938 Appeasement Crisis by David Faber 

I think that’s a pretty good mix. Mostly history and historical (as often always here) but a few other things too. I’m pleased that I managed NINE classics – after going for five – and I’m pleased that the majority certainly lived up to their reputation. Some of the classics (listed above) turned out to be some of the best books of the year. 

Throw some numbers at me... 

Another thing that pleased me in 2021 was the age range in publication dates. I just managed to squeeze in a 2020 book in the final days of 2021 and this meant that, overall, the age spread was 109 years – which is pretty good (for me at least!). I’m not sure if that’s able to be replicated this year. Most, as usual, are post-2000 but the long tail back to 1911 has quite a few entries along the way. The book size and average book length remain untouched since August with the largest size remaining at 690pp and the average record remaining at 338pp. Presently the average is 337pp and I expect it will hit 340pp within a month. My target remains 350pp. I think that the book length record *should* fall by Easter. Other reading plans to follow...  

 

 

“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.” ~ Ulysses S. Grant

 

 

Just Finished Reading: Down to the Woods by M J Arlidge (FP: 2018) [472pp]  

The New Forest National Park, within easy reach of Southampton, is a magnet for holiday makers as well as anyone who just wants to get away from the city and walk in some of its 200 square miles of natural beauty. With summer just around the corner and tourist bookings already rising the discovery of a body was the last thing the industry needed. When details of the ritual killing exploded in the press things could hardly have been worse. Until that is a second body, also ritually killed was discovered. The fact that both victims had been abducted from campsites only made the panic worse. The pressure on the police was enormous – and not only from the tabloid press. But at least they had a solid Prime Suspect – a known radical environmentalist who had vowed to protect the Forest no matter what it took. The first victim had been involved in building work on the edge of the Park and had crossed swords with the local environmentalists before. But the second victim's links to the Forest was more of a mystery. Digging deeper Detective Chief Inspector Helen Grace’s teem found a link – but going back a decade or more to Southampton University. Could that be the link after all? When the third victim is found it became even clearer that the link, and the solution, to this series of crimes was buried in the past – if only they could uncover it in time to save more lives. 

Again, this was one of those books you pick up, read the back, think it sounds reasonable, and pop it in your basket. It actually turned out to be the 8th book in the DCI Grace series – not that it made a huge difference jumping in the middle. Overall, I can’t say that I enjoyed this read. It was, however, well-constructed. It kept me guessing right to the end although I did think that there were a few too many red herrings and it felt just a little overly contrived. The two things that really stopped me liking this book were the rather grisly nature of the crimes and the fact that I found it difficult to like any character portrayed in it. Whilst I had some sympathy for at least one of the victims, I honestly had more for the murderer. At the same time, I thought that the author spent far too much time on the personal lives of the police to the detriment of the overall story. Knowing that some of the officers were having trouble with their relationships or were worrying over their kids being bullied in school didn’t really add to the story or, at least in my opinion, make their characters more rounded or more sympathetic. It just didn’t work for me (although it might for others). I think a bit part of the ‘problem’ I had with this otherwise competent modern crime novel was a bleak tone that pervaded the whole narrative. It just felt too dark and dreary to get much of any pleasure out of. Reasonable if you don’t mind dark and heavy subject matter.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just Finished Reading: The Fifth Risk – Undoing Democracy by Michael Lewis (FP: 2018) [254pp] 

This was a bit of an odd one. I’d scheduled this one in as part of a short series of books about aspects of Democracy. From the subtitle and some of the comments on both the front and back cover I expected this to be a critique of the early days of the Trump administration and its now blatantly obvious attempts (however ineptly) to undermine American democracy. On reading it however, I found it to be very different.  

To be honest I still can’t decide exactly what this book was about. I can see the reason it was written. The author was clearly concerned about the chaotic first few months of the Trump Presidency. He outlines in graphic (and in other circumstances hilarious) detail how various government departments, who were well versed in managing transitions, waited (and waited, and waited) for transition teams to arrive to take up their new roles. When they not only failed to do so but actively rejected being contacted for clarification the panic set in. When new administrators did finally arrive the career civil servants were more often than not astonished at the disinterest displayed by their new ‘masters’ for the position they now held and the department they were now in charge of. Indeed, again more often than not, the new incumbents seemed singularly unsuited for their new roles and seemed far more interested in rooted out Obama appointed staff (or those who merely voted for him) than understanding the job requirements and present/future problems of the Department.  

Once this was done with the book then examined how various high/medium level staff had been ‘let go’ as no longer required despite years (or decades) of knowledge and experience – plus a fair few awards and international recognition for their work – without any attempt to fill gaps or engage in knowledge transfer. The new heads simply either did not care about such things or actively (at least it seemed to those involved) want to cause damage to the organisation for no good reason – even when the very real consequences were explained to them. All of the above may seem like I found this slim work disappointing in some fundamental way. Quite the opposite, in fact! Despite its misleading subtitle, I found this book difficult to put down. The author has a real talent of finding interesting people – in the Commerce Department and at NOAA in particular – and brining their vital (but often hidden) work to public attention. I’d definitely recommend this as an interesting read in general and especially if you’ve ever wondered what some of the US Departments actually did (generally *not* what you expect!)!  

One of the things I did find bizarre, although I was naturally aware of it after spending far too much time watching US TV excerpts on YouTube, was the idea of Department heads and hundreds of others being (generally) replaced with a new Administration. This seems to me to be counterproductive (although I can understand ‘why’ it happens). Here, in the UK, the Civil Service prides itself on being non-partisan and (generally again) Service heads are not replaced with each new government (as we’ve had multiple governments in the same year before now you can imagine what chaos that would cause!) much less the hundreds/thousands of lower posts. This means that people can accumulate decades of experience in a department which not only aids basic continuity but embeds some serious expertise throughout an organisation. Changing direction every 4-8 years and losing that built up experience/knowledge base can’t help but degrade the ability of any department to accomplish anything – especially anything that needs years in the planning and even longer in the execution.      

 

 Yup, pretty much how it happened......

 

Happy New Year, everyone! I do hope it's better than 2021... or 2020. Or at least a lot less apocalyptic. That'd be good!