A year of reading // 2021

A favourite reading spot.

‘Reading fiction is not a solution to our political miseries. For that, organisation. active resistance, and hard rhetoric are required. But we need stories, too, good stories with nuance and ambiguity that disturb our habits of thought.’ — Siri Hustvedt.

Some of the books, fiction and non-fiction, that I enjoyed most this year:

• Assembly, by Natasha Brown
• Migrations, by Charlotte McConaghy
• Second Place, by Rachel Cusk
• The Liar’s Dictionary, by Eley Williams
• The Bass Rock, by Evie Wyld
• The Labyrinth, by Amanda Lohrey
• Intimacies, by Katie Kitamura
• The Island of Missing Trees, by Elif Shafak
• Matrix, by Lauren Groff
• Letters from Tove, by Tove Jansson, edited by Boel Westin and Helen Svensson & translated by Sarah Death
• The Copenhagen Trilogy, by Tove Ditlevsen
• Thin Places, by Kerri ni Dochartaigh
• Real Estate, by Deborah Levy
• Fifty Sounds, by Polly Barton
• Sara Berman’s Closet, by Maira Kalman
• Horizon, by Barry Lopez
• Orwell’s Roses, by Rebecca Solnit
• Small Bodies of Water, by Nina Mingya Powles
• Mothers, Fathers, and Others, by Siri Husvedt
• Taste, by Stanley Tucci