january
Song of Roland ⭐⭐⭐ (U)
Angelou: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Grant: The Patriot's Handbook ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Bailey: The American Spirit, Vol. 1 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (U)
Stanley: Living in His Sufficiency ⭐⭐⭐
Genovese: Roll, Jordan, Roll ⭐⭐⭐⭐
McClay: Land of Hope ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
february
Benge: Eric Liddell: Something Greater Than Gold ⭐⭐⭐
The Romance of Tristan and Iseult ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Gaskell: Ruth ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Austen: Sanditon (B) (U) (read a few pages)
Mann: The Magic Mountain (B) (U) (read a few chapters)
march
Montgomery: Anne of Green Gables ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Dreher: Live Not by Lies ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Dickens: Nicholas Nickleby (B) (read a 1/3)
Tuchman: A Distant Mirror (B) (U) ⭐⭐⭐ (read a 1/3)
Lane: The Discovery of Freedom (B) (read a 1/4)
april
George: Becoming a Woman of Beauty and Strength: Ester ⭐⭐⭐⭐(U)
Douglass: My Bondage and My Freedom ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Bernstein / Woodward: All the President's Men ⭐⭐ (U)
Austen: The History of England ⭐⭐ (U)
Taylor: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry ⭐⭐⭐
Hardy: The Trumpet Major ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Levitin: Journey to America ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Shakespeare: Taming of the Shrew ⭐⭐⭐
may
Levy: Year of Goodbyes ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ali: Infidel ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Coffin: The Boys of '76 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Schaeffer: How Should We Then Live ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (R)
Malory: Le Morte d'Arthur, Vol. 1 (B) (read a few chapters)
june
Somerset: Of Human Bondage ⭐⭐⭐⭐
july
Reagan: The City on a Hill ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (U)
Bronte: Jane Eyre ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (R)
Frankl: Man's Search for Meaning ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Dante: The Inferno ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ballard: The Midwife's Tale (B) (U) ⭐⭐ (read half)
august
Williams: Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Shrier: Irreversible Damage ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Fukayama: The End of History and the Last Man ⭐⭐⭐ (B) (read half)
september
Epic of Gilgamesh ⭐⭐
Angle: The New Nation Grows ⭐⭐⭐ (U)
Golding: The Lord of the Flies ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (R)
Tanaka: Attack on Pearl Harbor ⭐⭐⭐ (U)
Marrin: Hitler ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Hardy: A Laodicean ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Sparks: The Notebook (B) (U) (read one chapter)
october
Bloom: The Closing of the American Mind ⭐⭐⭐ (U)
Richards: Money, Greed, and God ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Homer: The Iliad of Homer ⭐⭐ (U)
november
Hillenbrand: Unbroken ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐(R)
Coffin: Sweet Land of Liberty ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Homer: The Odyssey ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Tolkien: The Hobbit ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (R)
Bliven: Invasion: The Story of D-Day ⭐⭐⭐
Asimov: How Did We Learn About Nuclear Power? ⭐⭐⭐⭐
december
* * *
total books read: 59
total books reread: 7
total books bailed: 9
total books un-shelved: 20
* * *
favorite fiction read of 2021
favorite non-fiction read of 2021
favorite juvenile book / read to my kids 2021
I've done The Unread Shelf Project for 2 years now, and it's been so helpful! The first year really was just me getting a handle on my book stash and figuring out how to let go of books by admitting I'm not going to read them after all. This year, I got better at not buying nearly so many books, while also letting go of more books that I bought simply because "they look good" and not because I actually know I want to read them. It's such a learning process! But I really want to have my unread books down to what I feel are a manageable number by 2030, and this is definitely helping.
ReplyDeleteUm, anyway, I love a bunch of books you read this year. Jane Eyre, Anne of Green Gables, A Christmas Carol, Taming of the Shrew... good stuff!
Hi, Rachel,
DeleteYou've done really well with your unread shelf. I thought I saw that you were almost done; so what is the manageable number that you are aiming?? Also, I really did some soul searching this year over books I had on my unread shelf for years, and I was able to admit I wasn't going to read them ever; while it was easy to detach from them, I still thought it sad that I wasted money on these books and they just sat overlooked for years. So when you tell me you eliminated such books, too, it makes me feel better knowing you had a similar epiphany. Whitney (at the Unread Shelf) encourages this.
Well, sooo... for about 10 years, I tended to just buy books that I wanted to read that the library didn't have, and stick them on a bookcase in the basement. And then never read them because I had small kids. Until it got to where there were so many, they kind of weighed on my conscience and I was having a hard time enjoying reading anything from them because seeing all those unread books made me feel guilty. So I brought most of them up from the basement and put them on three half-size bookcases (3 shelves each) in my bedroom, sometime in 2019. And my goal is to get them to where I only have one half-size bookcase of unread books anymore, not three that are partly double-stacked. Which would be about 100 unread books still, but MUCH better than what I'm at right now, which is just over 500 :-o Yes, it's terrifying.
DeleteThe wasting money thing makes it VERY hard for me to let go of books too, but happily, I did buy most of these used, many of them for less than a dollar at library book sales and such, so that makes it easier. I'm also working on accepting that when I buy a book, I am NOT also buying the TIME it takes to READ the book. I have unshelved probably a hundred books over the two years! But I also keep buying books, and people keep giving me books for gifts... it's a learning process. Good luck with yours! And don't feel bad about feeling bad about unloading books because... the point is to concentrate on enjoying the books we read, regardless of number, right?
Wow! 500! But you are making great progress, too. When I started this in 2019, I had close to 200 unread. I'm only around 110. :/ I think your outgoing rate is better than mine. I also got majority of my books at used books sales at the library. Great deal, of course. Just wish I wasn't so impulsive.
DeleteDo agree that it is more important to enjoy the reading experience. God will provide the reading time.
I have actually started to see some visual results from my efforts, in that a whole pile of books on the floor in front of my TBR shelves is now gone. Will the next year bring an actual emptying of a shelf? Here's hoping!!!
DeleteYes, you can do it!
DeleteA great year for you! I was lucky to get past 10. Ugh! I bailed on A Distant Mirror too but I was enjoying it, it was just that it was taking up too much time. I plan to read it at some point. And it looks like neither of us picked up Ivanhoe.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see you read more than your reviewed. I hope 2022 is even a better reading year for you.
Wow, Cleo. You probably are super busy with a thousand other projects. But nothing wrong with that. Sometimes I don't have to be busy to miss reading. If the world is distracting, I may not even have the mindset to read. I am trying to overcome that.
DeleteBut, yeah, A Distant Mirror was in part interesting, but not enough to hold me. It's huge, and I was not willing to commit that much. And I completely dumped my medieval theme this last year. Instead I just started pulling different books off my shelf that I felt like reading at that moment.
P.S. That's another thing...I really would have loved to review all that I have read, but 3/4 of the year I did not blog, and this last 1/4 I was trying to catch up. A lot of these books I read with my kids, too, and I often find it difficult to review these. There are so many of them. I hope to get better about it next year.
DeleteYour reading this year is pretty impressive, Ruth!
ReplyDeleteIt's a pity you didn't finish Nicholas Nickleby, I found it quite hilarious - the funniest from Dickens so far.
I see that you wasn't too impressed with Iliad, but quite enjoyed Odyssey. I might try to get on with Odyssey anyway, then.
I bailed on Le Morte d'Arthur too years ago, it's too flat, right?
Good luck with 2022, hopefully it'll bring more joy in your personal and reading life. <3
Hi, Fanda. Thanks. I actually read about 1/3 of Nicholas Nickleby. (I initially thought it was a 1/4.) So I got through a good chunk of it. I sometimes was enjoying it, and other times I struggled through it. I didn't want to totally dislike it, and that is why I had to stop. I hope to return to it one day. So I did not discard it.
DeleteI think I disliked the bickering of the gods in the Iliad, but it also could have been the translator. And I especially enjoyed the story of the Odyssey, but I also found the translator very effective.
I don't even remember why I quit Le Morte d'Arthur. You're right. May have been flat.
Some great titles here...a very productive year. See ya in 2022 :) (I know you're gonna be pretty busy)
ReplyDeleteThanks, Joseph.
Delete