2021 Book Roundup
I did this for 2020, so naturally, I’m making a list of my favorite books that I read in 2021.
I finished my Goodreads challenge (106 books total when my goal was 100 thank you very much) and got through 32,018 pages of romance novels and nonfiction books (no other genres) and like last year, while I still can’t rank my favorites, I can definitely pick them.
Non-Fiction:
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez
I’ve always been supremely logical to a fault, and my feminist sensibilities have always been rooted in materialism rather than appeals to pathos, which is why I’m also very good with numbers. I decided I was a feminist when I found out that women weren’t paid the same as men for doing the same job, and of course because of my lifelong fixation with freedom and in turn, bodily autonomy. I really enjoyed Invisible Women because it gave women the opportunity to question why the world was made for men like I used to think I was simply imagining that the world was biased towards men and I was gratified to find out that no, I’m totally right.
The Destruction of Hillary Clinton by Susan Bordo
We can argue until the cows come home about whether Hillary Clinton should have even ran in 2016 given how polarizing she was (I lean towards no but there’s no way in hell Bernie Sanders would have won either), but I found this book fascinating and well-written, and Susan Bordo just gets it (and breaks it all down in this podcast).Open Book by Jessica Simpson
I already wasn’t a huge fan of John Mayer, but reading this book made me really abhor him and I’m very annoyed we share the same birthday. He just seems to have zero redeeming qualities (“Daughters” isn’t that good!!) and is apparently fundamentally incapable of not being an asshole to women he dates, and his treatment of Jessica Simpson, which was literal gaslighting and not just in the online way, made me see red. He made her feel worthless and stupid when she’s clearly neither of those things and I’m genuinely glad she’s doing much better now than she was before.This Town by Mark Leibovich
This excerpt about Paul Ryan made me choke laugh like it’s not wrong.My Body by Emily Ratajkowski
I have mixed feelings about Emily Ratajkowski (do not get me started on how much I hate #HotGirlsForBernie) but I did enjoy this book. As someone that isn’t Emrata hot, I appreciated that Emily was willing to question and criticize her past self, and grapple with simultaneously reaping the benefits of being conventionally beautiful but also slowly becoming aware that her beauty doesn’t actually belong to her due to the nature and very existence of the patriarchy.
Fiction (aka romance novels because I still don’t read non-romance fiction):
The Earl Takes All by Lorraine Heath
This book is truly bonkers like it involves a man taking the place of his twin brother who died by gorilla attack as an earl and the husband of his brother’s pregnant widow, who he’s always been in love with, so that she doesn’t lose the baby. Shenanigans and #TrueLove ensure and I’m not sure what it says about me but this book is easily my favorite novel by Heath, whose work I generally like minus The Viscount and the Vixen, which I LOATHED since I despise active and intentional perfidy.Duke of Midnight by Elizabeth Hoyt
I’m a big Maiden Lane fan (TV miniseries when???) and Duke of Midnight is my favorite entry in the series. I don’t usually enjoy uptown-boy/downtown-girl romances due to the inherent unequal power dynamic that comes from the patriarchy coupled with the class difference between the protagonists that I find hard to ignore but this book somehow works extremely well (unlike Julia Quinn’s An Offer from a Gentleman, which is the worst Bridgerton book by far).West End Earl by Bethany Bennett
West End Earl somehow manages to hearken back to the romance novels of old without the insanely problematic elements (for lack of better word), and I tore right through it. The book reminded me of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in the best way possible, like it’s the story of the twin sister impersonating her brother and falling in love with her employer, what else could it be? And, the relationship between Phee and Calvin felt so organic like it made perfect sense that he'd love her when she was Phee since he already loved her when she was Adam so of course he'd love her when she was Phee.The Lady Gets Lucky by Joanna Shupe
Joanna Shupe’s Wicked Deceptions trio, especially the first and second books, are some of my favorite romance novels ever since Shupe makes the women in the series do genuinely morally ambiguous things to the extent I don’t even blame the men for their reactions! There are real consequences to the characters’ actions and real stakes to their conflicts, and that’s why I wasn’t a huge fan of The Heiress Hunt, the previous book in the Fifth-Avenue Rebels series but I really liked The Lady Gets Lucky since like the Wicked Deceptions books, there are real stakes to this novel, and Kit and Alice are both supremely likable and I was really rooting for them the entire time.
Bombshell by Sarah MacLean
Sarah MacLean once said, I'm really interested in the way that the world views women as dangerous. That's something that romance has spent a lot of time over the last 50 years exploring — this idea of woman as some kind of danger to the world, as some kind of cataclysmic experience. People have to take care around women,” and that lives rent-free inside my head. I like the idea of women being determinators in the way only men are usually portrayed as being, and I really like the idea of women acting and not just reacting, which is why I liked Bombshell as much as I did, and I’m really looking forward to whatever MacLean writes next.