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...