3 Book Recommendations from Books I Read in 2021

Hello there! There is light snow outside my dorm room window and I’m wondering how it is that I didn’t know that it snows at Oxford. I’ve never lived in a city where it snows, although it did snow once (in the nine months) when I lived in Reims, France. But enough about snow because this post is already very long overdue! Ideally, this book series will go up in February or March, so there’s always 2023 for me to actually try and post on time. Here’s hoping.

Twenty twenty-one was an unusually good reading year for me, mostly because I didn’t work for the first ten months of it. Out of the 20-book reading goal I set for myself on Goodreads, I read 31- yay me! While I read a variety of genre’s last year, I still mostly stuck to my favorites: thrillers and mysteries. Fortunately, my top three book recommendations (and top three favorites overall of 2021) are not all thrillers, though, so I’m sure you’ll find something you will enjoy also!

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman will probably go down as one of my favorite books ever. The story follows Eleanor Oliphant on her day-to-day life and her often funny observations of the world around her. While it is not a mystery novel, very quickly the reader will catch on that there is something amiss in Eleanor’s life outside of the main storyline. As we get to learn more about Eleanor throughout the book, one begins to wonder what else is afflicting her that perhaps she’s not telling us about.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a book that made cry, made laugh, and then made me cry some more when I realized it was a memoir. A touching account of her upbringing with an alcoholic father and an emotionally absent mother, Jeannette recounts her and her sibling’s childhood (and adult) lives in an open and transparent way that doesn’t fish for sympathy, which is tricky to do given the things her family went through. I spent most of the book frustrated with her parents, yet couldn’t entirely abhor them because of the way Jeannette never seemed to. There are funny moments interlaced between the sad ones so don’t think it will be an entire sob-fest, but be aware that some of the topics might be a bit delicate for some.

The Girl who Played with Fire (Millennium #2) by Stieg Larsson, translated by Reg Keeland. I went back and forth between the second and first book of the series, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, as they are both quite good, but ultimate decided on book two because of the backstory to the characters introduced in book one. A perfect mystery thriller, Millennium magazine is about to publish a story on sex trafficking when the two reporters working on the story are murdered. The fingerprints of book ones’ unlikely protagonist are found on the murder weapon, which begins to unlock a crazy twist of events that will keep the reader guessing until the very end. Highly recommend the Millennium series if you haven’t read it already!

And there we have it. Would love to hear if you’ve read any of these and what your thoughts are! If you haven’t read any of these books, did any catch your attention that you now plan to look into? Let me know in the comment box below! Until next time.