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Favourite books read in 2021

The top six books include fiction, children's, to non-fiction.
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How do you judge a book? 

A majority of readers flout that old truism to ‘never judge a book by its cover’ and end up doing just that!  Others depend on a friend’s recommendation, a lauded prize-winner or the latest from of a favourite author but even so, not as many as admire the cover and then end up getting the book.  

Sometimes that choice is spot on, others not so much!

As the end of the year looms, I thought I would tell you about my favourite reads during the last twelve months. I have a foolproof method for doing just that, you see.  It is as quick and individual as judging a book by its cover but a lot more reliable.  

Of all the books you read this year - and during ‘COVID  lockdown’ there were probably quite a few – I bet at least a couple spring back to mind complete in their world and characters.

That I believe is a good book; one that has lodged itself so securely in your psyche it floats to the top like cream, which is exactly what it is - your very own personal cream of the crop.  Lucky author! 

So, instead of reviewing a single book this month, I give you my six favourite reads of 2021.  I have already reviewed a couple of my offerings.  Not all the books are newly published but begged, bought or borrowed simply because they sounded like ‘a good read’; the ultimate accolade for a book.  So here goes!

JULIET by ANNE FORTIER published by Harper Collins in 2010:

On the death of her beloved aunt, modern-day American Juliet has left nothing but an ancient key, unlike her twin sister who inherits the aunt’s entire estate.  Yet it is this key that tumbles Juliet into a fast-moving and vertiginous journey, first to a deposit box in Siena, Italy and then to uncover the troubled past of 14th-century Guilietta – yes, you’ve guessed it – Shakespeare’s famous heroine. 

JULIET is beautifully written, unexpected at every turn and definitely unforgettable.


THE BOY WITH NO BOOTS by SHEILA JEFFRIES published by Simon Schuster in 2015:

This book took me back to my English childhood in the West Country, even though it is set well before my time.  As I read this charming story of a poor woman and her young son with an unusual talent, I found myself trudging by their side along the muddy lanes bordered by hedges filled with drooping pink and purple fushia blossoms and inhaling that same sweet, cloying smell of an old-fashioned farmyard that I can so easily recall.  Sometimes it is the sense of place so beautifully created that makes a book unforgettable and then again, this one has a twist at the end that had me intrigued to learn more.


THE ROCK FROM THE SKY by JON KLASSEN published by Penguin Random House in 2021

This picture book by prize-winning children’s author and illustrator Jon Klassen is aimed at four to eight-year-olds.  It offers the kind of oddball humour that children love in this story of an armadillo, a snake, and a turtle trying to decide which of them has the best spot in a world when unknown to them, a huge black rock is falling from the sky.  Told in five very short chapters, I find this picture book stays with me for its dry wit and that deadpan humour that for me conjours up Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.


PERIL by BOB WOODWARD and ROBERT COSTA published by Simon and Schuster in 2021.

I know what you are thinking!  What is a political book doing in this list?  Because it is utterly unforgettable that’s why; factual, sober, sometimes even a touch dry, this 400+ page tome provides a fascinating and sometimes shocking narrative of the transition from the 45 th  President Donald Trump to the 46 th  President Joe Biden during what the dust jacket calls ‘one of the most dangerous periods of American History’.

Back in the 1970s I devoured All the President’s Men, by Woodward with Carl Bernstein about the infamous Nixon Watergate.  I still have a huge admiration for this master of non-fiction, on this occasion ably co-authored by acclaimed reporter Costa.  Their research appears first class, the writing equally so and I suspect it will be a long time before PERIL clears my mind.  It is like watching the first two acts of a three-act play.


GREEN GHOST, BLUE OCEAN by JENNIFER SMITH published by Pottersfield Press in 2020.

It matters not a wit if you have ever sailed, are a ‘white-knuckle sailor’ like me, or an old hand on the tossing deck of a yacht.  This is an unforgettable rollicking adventure story about a couple who decide to set sail for the wide blue yonder.  Their odyssey adds up to fourteen years of sailing 40,000 nautical miles (74,080 kilometers) across various oceans to wherever ‘there’ happens to be at the time.   In this honest, sometimes hilarious, sometimes terrifying account of living the dream aboard ‘a steamer trunk with a mast’, the author and her husband Alex (Nik) Nikolajevich provide glimpses into a life so many dream of and few accomplish. What is more they take us along for the ride, without our having to get so much as our feet wet.  Oh, and the author grew up here in Oakville, where her father taught at Appleby College.


MISS BENSON’S BEETLE by RACHEL JOYCE published by Doubleday in 2020.

I cannot resist finishing off this list of my most memorable reads of 2021 with this extraordinary novel, which I cannot wait to finish – once I get this submitted!  Billed as a classic tale of adventure and friendship this is far from the ‘cosy’ read involving the two women of a certain age that I had envisaged.  How can you put down a book whose first line is, ‘When Margery was ten, she fell in love with a beetle’.  From there the story wrenches its way from the Natural History Museum in London, England to New Caledonia, a Pacific island about 1,200 kilometres (750 miles) east of Australia.  There Miss Benson and her assistant suffer all manner of woes in pursuit of this golden beetle and indeed find themselves pursued.  Miss Benson’s trials, tribulations and triumphs are at once hilarious and poignant and I cannot wait to see how the book ends.  It will be a long time before I forget this one.


And that readers, is my take on unforgettable books of 2021.  Have fun making your own list and pass it along to a friend, why don’t you?


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