Books I Read in 2021

6 min readJan 2, 2022

I’ve been publishing a books roundup since 2015.

I can’t believe it’s 2022 and, as far as I can tell, no one has improved Goodreads and nothing has really replaced it. But at least we have bookshop.org now.

Hopefully this list can help you find some good books!

10 Books I Particularly Liked and Why

Severance
by Ling Ma
In a post-apocalyptic world, a good rule of thumb is that cabbies in Bushwick are super nice and anyone who likes carrying a gun is insufferable.

And The Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
by Randy Shilts
In the old days, liberals and conservatives could BOTH be in denial about a pandemic.

If I Had Your Face
by Frances Cha
If Sex in the City was set in South Korea, they’d have way more plastic surgery and be way more skeptical of capitalism.

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story
by Michael Lewis
You can like government services and still be depressed about how much the CDC has been screwing up!

Orange World and Other Stories
by Karen Russell
I was sad that climate change wiped out Miami, but at least a couple people learned how to navigate by echolocation.

Klara and the Sun
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Artificial friends would judge us even more than our real friends.

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
by Patrick Radden Keefe
Every generation has their own robber barons profiting way too much off opioids. How does this keep happening?

The Hate U Give
by Angie Thomas
I liked the scene where all the entitled rich kids pretended to protest for Black Lives Matter as a pretext for skipping class, but all of the conscientious kids struggled with how to do the right thing.

A Visit from the Goon Squad
by Jennifer Egan
I used to think that kids were odd but became more normal when they grew up. But the opposite happens — teenagers are bland and old people are more comfortable being total weirdos.

Crying in H Mart
by Michelle Zauner
I can’t decide which part of this book is more heartbreaking — the part where she loses her mom, or the effects it has on the rest of her family relationships.