The Top 10 Books I Read in 2021 – Alyanna Denise Chua

In the midst of yet another year marked by collective anxiety and disillusionment, I clung to stories for solace, strength, and happiness. I have yet to articulate what it feels like to so thoroughly lose myself in a book — to be so consumed by a story that you don’t feel hungry until it’s 9:00pm, you don’t feel sleepy until it’s 3:00am, and all your worries fall away. That feeling is invaluable, and I love returning to it.

I’m happy that I was able to read 64 books this year — many of them were fantastic, and a few of them were so exceptional that I lost myself in them. So, in no particular order — save for my best fiction and nonfiction picks — here are the 10 best books I read in 2021. Each book has reminded me why I love reading so much.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk

The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller

The Stranger, by Albert Camus

Quiet, by Susan Cain

Why We Sleep, by Matthew Walker

FICTION

1. The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco

“We know things better through love than through knowledge.”

This book was unlike anything I’d ever read before. Immersing the reader so thoroughly in the religious climate and political turmoil of 14th century Italy, The Name of the Rose masks its philosophical queries under the guise of a murder mystery. At turns thought-provoking and hilarious, and with a poignant ending that’s difficult to forget, The Name of the Rose is ultimately an insightful novel into the elusive nature of truth.

From reading this novel, I realized that I enjoy stories that center the human aspect of historical events normally populated by dry facts. What I mean is that I’d already learned about the historical power of the Catholic church and the role of priests in politics through various textbooks, but it was refreshing to read about the human stories that populated those times in The Name of the Rose. I hope to read more historical fiction set in the distant past like this.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE – Book Analysis: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco or a full review of the book in my April wrap-up.

2. Call Me By Your Name, by André Aciman

“What did I want? And why couldn’t I know what I wanted, even when I was perfectly ready to be brutal in my admissions?”

When I think about this novel, the first thing that comes to mind is its beautiful, heart-wrenching prose. I enjoyed reading Elio’s extensive, introspective musings, for they were able to articulate some of the thoughts and emotions I’d been mulling over during the time I’d read this book. Its sentences are powerful, its insights sharp and honest; I felt relief not in what the book taught me — for that is not the point — but for using language to concretely lay bare what had been jumbled, amorphous things.

I think that my experience in reading this book points to what can be so scary and thrilling about reading — books truly impact you differently based on what you’re feeling or thinking at a certain point in time. This is why critique and praise are so subjective. In my case anyway, Call Me By Your Name impacted me profoundly.

3. Normal People, by Sally Rooney

“For a few seconds they just stood there in stillness, his arms around her, his breath on her ear. Most people go through their whole lives, Marianne thought, without ever really feeling that close with anyone.”

My experience of reading Normal People was even better this second time around. I found myself utterly consumed by Marianne and Connell’s story, just like how Marianne and Connell are consumed by each other.

Since reading it, I often find myself trying to figure out what makes this novel so good at what it does — how its prose is detached and cold, yet moving and intense at the same time. Events unfold quietly, and the reader is made to witness human love and communication at their inevitable limits.

READ MORE – Book Analysis: Normal People by Sally Rooney or a full review of the book in my April wrap-up.

4. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid

“You do not know how fast you have been running, how hard you have been working, how truly exhausted you are, until someone stands behind you and says, ‘It’s OK, you can fall down now. I’ll catch you.’”

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is one of the most emotionally moving books I read this year — so moving that I cried and got teary-eyed at multiple points in reading Evelyn’s story. Here, intimate relationships are plagued by public opinion, soulmates take the form of both lovers and friends, and relationships are forged with different utilities in mind. This is a world of brilliant glamour, but also of crushing despair. In the end, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo urges us to think about the things that really matter.

5. The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton

“In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.”

The Age of Innocence is the biggest surprise of the year, for I didn’t know that it was a satire before reading it. Putting upper-class New York society under a microscope, Wharton thus uses anthropological language to, at turns, poke fun at and critically observe that society’s customs and social norms. Perhaps this book endeared me so much because of Wharton’s heavy use of anthropological and ethnographic tools in telling this story.

This book also reminds me so much of Jane Austen’s rendition of comedy of manners, for aside from its elegant and playful prose, The Age of Innocence makes sharp and compassionate observations about the conflict between individual desire and societal demands. In the end, it articulates a unique perspective on culture that I hadn’t encountered in any novel before — specifically, how culture is arbitrary and transient, but also powerful and real.

BEST: Less, by Andrew Sean Greer

“I think the saddest thing in the world is a twenty-five-year-old talking about the stock market. Or taxes. Or real estate, goddamn it! That’s all you’ll talk about when you’re forty. Real estate! Any twenty-five-year-old who says the word refinance should be taken out and shot. Talk about love and music and poetry. Things everyone forgets they ever thought were important. Waste every day, that’s what I say.”

I’ve recommended this book to people more than any other book in my top 10. That’s because Less has stuck with me; I return to it over and over again in my mind. Aside from its gorgeous prose, it packs original reflections on youth, aging, and success. Less is equal parts funny and tender, outrageous and sad. This book confronts our own impermanence, and the impermanence of everything and everyone else around us — a reminder that has made me feel more free.

Ultimately, this is the best fiction book I read in 2021 because it offered all the things I’d hoped to get from fiction to a tee: beautiful writing, a moving story, an enjoyable read, characters I cared deeply about, and ideas that broadened my own worldview.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE – A full review of Less in my June wrap-up.

NONFICTION

7. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, by Lori Gottlieb

“We can’t have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same.”

With the way I console the people around me, ask questions, and offer points for reflection, many people tell me that I sound like a psychiatrist. I would have to credit this book for making me appear like so, for Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is like therapy in a nutshell (though of course, this book cannot replicate actual therapy).

I think that out of any of the books listed here, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone may just be the book that the most number of people would appreciate. This book is like a crash course on understanding and communicating with people, which schools don’t often teach, but is so essential to know. It has personally given me important psychological tools to better myself and my relations with others, and that I still use to this day nearly one year after reading it.

8. Know My Name, by Chanel Miller

“Once you stripped everything of complex terms and formalities, the truth was solid and pure. It’s not okay, never okay, for someone to hurt you. There are no asterisks, no exceptions, to this statement.”

Know My Name is hands-down the most powerful book I read all year. Miller’s memoir uncovers the inhumanity and injustice of the justice system, the impossible standards that sexual assault survivors are benchmarked against, and ultimately the circuitous and at times unmanageable experience of healing from traumatic events.

I admire Miller’s deeply intimate and honest account of her experience, and inspired by her uncompromising and compassionate values. Her prose is also addicting to read, for it is simultaneously lyrical and direct. Emulating its title, Know My Name is ultimately assertive and brave in its quest to seek justice and elucidate truths. In the end, there is hope.

9. Say Nothing, by Patrick Radden Keefe

“Since the moment she locked eyes with the loyalist who beat her at Burntollet Bridge, Dolours had concluded that her fantasy of peaceful resistance had been naïve. I’m never going to convert these people, she thought. No amount of marching up and down the road would bring the change that Ireland needed.”

Say Nothing is a sprawling account of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. But far from just retelling the facts and figures of that moment in history, this book is more concerned with the intimate stories, personal motivations, and inner turmoil of the various actors involved. It’s a gleaming look into the human spirit when it’s pushed to the edge, and afterwards when it’s not given a space to reconcile with the past.

This is perhaps the book that confronted me with difficult questions the most — questions that remain unsolved in my mind. I still wonder whether violence can ever be justified in the struggle against colonization, especially when there are civilian casualties inevitably involved. But we must also consider that there are some forms of violence that are legitimized by the state and legislation, and many forms of violence other than the physical kind.

I encourage people who read the book to also read this article by Ed Moloney, one of the people who assisted Keefe with the book. It complicates the notion of authorship, and questions who gets to tell what stories and who gets to benefit from these stories.

READ ON – A full review of Say Nothing in my June wrap-up.

BEST: The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus

“People have played on words and pretended to believe that refusing to grant a meaning to life necessarily leads to declaring that it is not worth living. In truth, there is no necessary common measure between these two judgments.”

In this book, Camus lays out the tenets of Absurdism. This philosophical treatise is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, but it has radically and so thoroughly enriched my outlook on life that I now feel more at peace from having read it.

I’m sure that this book will impact people differently depending on their personal values and beliefs. For me, I feel heard by this book because it pressed its finger squarely on an existential puzzle I’d been contemplating eversince I embraced the indisputable reality of my agnosticism. In other words, it spoke to my soul.

In many ways, The Myth of Sisyphus has thus been my guiding post. Staring straight into the certainty of death and the meaninglessness of life, Camus compassionately urges us to do one thing — which is to say yes to happiness and to say yes to life. In its extensive confrontation with death, this book ultimately filled me with hope.

What are some of your favourite books from 2021? Let me know in the comments! I’m always looking for cool recommendations.

For full book reviews and more recommendations, check out the Bookworm section on my blog.