For the past four years I have kept a record of my favourite books of the year. Partly inspired by the bookstagrammers of instagram, I’ve posted a picture of a stack of my favourite books from each year since 2017. It’s an interesting way to reflect on the character of the year, the ideas and imagined places which I was reaching for when I turned to the little worlds bound on my bookshelf in search of escape and retreat.
One of the things I have learnt over the years is how much my reading is driven by mood. Realising this has helped me to feel more relaxed about the ways in which my reading habits are constantly transforming over time. Certain books find you at the perfect moment, while others languish a while waiting for you to be ready for them. Sometimes all I want to do is read, during afternoons on the sofa, before bed, and on journeys, and sometimes all I want to do is binge some tv and spend my time finishing a jigsaw puzzle!
During the pandemic my approach to reading poetry collections completely changed: suddenly all I wanted to do was devour poetry books. Before this I had never been an especially good reader of the poetry books I had collected. Sometimes I read them cover to cover, but more often I would start a book, put it down, and ‘fail’ over and over again to return to finish it. In the early pandemic I picked up my poetry books much more frequently, first thing in the morning, or at lunch and after work, and I started marking little pencil stars in the contents list so that I could easily find my way back to those poems that had moved or amazed me. And along the way, I learnt how to be a better reader of poetry.
Here is my book list from last year, just in case you are looking for a recommendation and, as you’ll see, my current reading habits and mood mean that it is dominated by poetry books and non-fiction.
My favourite books of 2021
Poetry:
Suzannah V. Evans, Brightwork (Guillemot Press)
Pascale Petit, Mama Amazonica (Bloodaxe)
Jen Hadfield, The Stone Age (Picador)
Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Of Sea (Penned in the Margins)
Vahni Capildeo, Like a Tree, Walking (Carcanet)
Kayo Chingonyi, A Blood Condition (Cape)
New Poetries VIII (Carcanet)
Non-fiction:
Jean Sprackland, Strands: A Year of Discoveries on the Beach
Brenda Chamberlain, Tide-race (the subject of my current research, but also a dream memoir about life on Bardsey Island)
Rachel Carson, The Edge of the Sea
Maria Stepanova, In Memory of Memory, trans., Sasha Dugdale
Deborah Levy, Real Estate
Norah Lange, Notes from Childhood, trans., Charlotte Whittle
Fiction:
Elizabeth Taylor, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont
Monique Roffey, The Mermaid of Black Conch
Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob, trans., Jennifer Croft
Francesca Brooks 