Like everyone I have a lot to do. I try to be creative and I read and I also have to work and I am the harried hostess of many worries. Nevertheless, tardy as it is, here is the list of 71 books I read last year — essays, nonfiction, fiction, poetry, the uncategorizable “other.” I feel unproductive if I’m not reading

I was especially impressed by memoirs last year, so here are some I found particularly worthwhile. First, I think the most memorable book of the year for me overall was I Remain in Darkness by Annie Ernaux. This is a slim book about the decline and death of Ernaux’s mother. I found it devastating, possibly because I also have a beloved and elderly mother. Second, Tove Ditlevsen’s Copenhagen Trilogy deserved the hype it got. It was remarkable but also unassuming. My daughter recommended it to me, and after reading it I bought it for my mother, who also loved it. So much of 2021 was spent inside reading.
Last, I found Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts challenging and also beautiful and honest and I was glad I read it. Reading should also challenge you, though I confess to using it as an escape too.

In fiction my two favorites were Silas Marner by George Eliot, which sat on my shelf for decades unread and was such a good, affirmative story. I also really enjoyed Pew by Catherine Lacey. As with the memoir The Argonauts, I spent the first couple or few pages skeptical but was finally soon won over. Oh and sorry but the Because of the Lockwoods was also fun and well-written fiction, but I was already a Dorothy Whipple fan.

I keep a list with the dates I finished the book because I’m a data geek. Not really. I just like the immediacy of a date and whatever surrounds it, imagining the season and circumstance, etc., because whatever is happening to us at that time, in that weather, affects our reading.

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (Jan 3)
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (Jan 24)
Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey (Jan 27)
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones (Feb 7)
Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin (Feb 13)
Margery Kempe by Robert Glück (Feb 21)
Feebleminded by Ariana Harwicz (Feb 25)
Mothers Over Nangarhar by Pamela Hart (Mar 7)
Holy Smokes by Evan Nicholls (March 17)
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf (Mar 17)
Berta Isla by Javier Marias (Mar 27)
The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen (Apr 4)
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (April 9)
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (Apr 12)
Extracting the Stone of Madness by Alejandra Pizarnik (Apr 13)
Foxlogic, Fireweed by Jennifer K. Sweeney (Apr 16)
11.22.63 by Stephen King (May 5)
Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Marias (May 26)
Wade in the Water by Tracy K. Smith (May 27)
White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia by Kiki Petrosino (May 29)
Ghost of by Diana Khoi Nguyen (Jun 2)
Objects of Hunger by E.C. Belli (Jun 7)
Every Eye by Isobel English (Jun 7)
A Dark Dreambox of a Different Kind -Alexander Starr Hamilton (Jun 27)
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (Jun 28)
Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski (Jul 1)
Dorene by Barbara Noble (Jul 2)
Greengates by R.C. Sherriff (Jul 7)
There, There by Tommy Orange (Jul 16)
Reincarnations & Other Stimulants by Ken Craft (Jul 17)
Pew by Catherine Lacey (Jul 22)
God of Nothingness by Mark Wunderlich (Aug 1)
Concordance by Susan Howe (Aug 3)
Bough Down by Karen Green (Aug 3)
Elise Cowen: Poems and Fragments (Aug 5)
Poema de amor/Love Poems by Idea Vilarino (Aug 5)
Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles (Aug 8)
Shade of Blue Trees by Kelly Cressio-Moeller (Aug 16)
Book of No Ledge by Nance Van Winckel (Aug 16)
Bonfire Opera by Danusha Lameris (Aug 18)
Returning the Sword to the Stone by Mark Leidner (Aug 21)
The Fever Poems by Kylie Gellatly (Aug 22)
A boot’s a boot by Lesle Lewis (Aug 26)
One Eye’d Leigh by Katherine Kilalea (Aug 29)
What Pecan Light by Hannah VanderHart (Aug 31)
Wild Milk by Sabrina Orah Mark (Sep 10)
The Address Book by Sophie Calle (Sep 14)
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman (Sep 15)
Because of the Lockwoods by Dorothy Whipple (Sep 23)
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli (Sep 28)
Sonne From Ort by Christian Hawkey and Uljana Wolf (Sep 28)
I Remain in Darkness by Annie Ernaux (Sep 28)
High Wages by Dorothy Whipple (Oct 2)
Apollo by Melissa Ginsburg (Oct 4)
Dear Weather Ghost by Melissa Ginsburg (Oct 5)
Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple (Oct 8)
Silence by John Biguenet (Oct 10)
The Stalin Front by Gert Ledge (Oct 17)
Awakenings by Oliver Sacks (Oct 20)
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (Oct 24)
Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon (Oct 28)
The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch (Oct 31)
Arkady by Patrick Langley (Nov 3)
Silas Marner by George Eliot (Nov 8)
Vain Shadow by Jane Hervey (Nov 16)
The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (Nov 21)
Beauty Breaks In by Mary Ann Samyn (Nov 25)
Mariana by Monica Dickens (Nov 29)
Chapel of Inadvertent Joy by Jeffrey McDaniel (Dec 20)
Adam Bede by George Eliot (Dec 25)
Being Here Is Everything by Marie Darrieussecq (Dec 29)