Life in the Cheese Drawer

i wish there were a t-word for books so my title could – WAIT. alliteration complete.

every year i set a reading challenge for myself on goodreads and this year’s was 55 books read. completed! and still going, actually. but i don’t think i’ll read a top book in the next week, so here are my top books i read this past year.

american dirt by jeanine cummins. i wrote about this book while i was reading it in january, so i will copy/paste what i wrote then: american dirt got a lot of mixed reviews last january when it was published. it was a big brouhaha because the author, while she does have some puerto rican descent and is married to an undocumented immigrant, got a lot of flack about writing about the mexican migrant experience when there are many mexican authors more qualified to do so.

so i avoided it when it came out, but then it got book of the year on goodreads, so has she been redeemed? i don’t know where we’re at with the drama, but i grabbed it from the library and am devouring it. this is a quick read and it’s from the viewpoint of the mexican migrant experience, which i think a lot of us could realize is no picnic.

world of wonders by aimee nezhukumatathil. i’m not a fan of reading poetry, and for some reason i like to think that don’t like reading a collection of short stories or essays. which is weird because there are two such books on my top 2021 list. i may have to assess my brain and tell it to pick up a collection more often.

anyway, aimee is a poet who wrote this collection of essays that connect her memoirs with the natural, especially obscure creatures, trees, not-obscure creatures. she grew up in the 80s, so i found that relatable, but from a first-gen, non-white family point of view. her writing is lyrical and lovely. this book is short and it’s illustrated. if you want a book that you can fall into and a get away for a bit, this might be it.

neither wolf nor dog by kent nerburn. i picked up this book after a recommendation from melissa, and what an excellent read. i learned more about native american indian life from this book than i ever learned in school, all 19 years of it.

kent is a white man, but like most things that are different to white people, the story needs to be told from a white person’s perspective so we can relate, and then relate. and then learn. he tells the story of the time he spent with a native elder who wanted his story told. turns out he needed kent’s story told.

thanks to this book, i read two other books this year focused on native lives, including the followup to this one.

quit like a woman by holly whitaker. this is my NUMBER ONE BOOK OF 2021!! i LOVED this book, even though it did not make me quit drinking. what she outlines can be applied to so many different aspects of women’s lives.

it was the only book i actually reviewed on goodreads this year. here’s what i wrote:

this book is required reading for ANY woman, whether you’re trying to quit alcohol, drugs, or anything else you’re addicted to. or, if you’re not trying to quit anything. her conversational (PG-13 rated) style of writing moves right along while she lays out why, as women, we need to start feeding ourselves and loving ourselves instead of losing our egos during any recovery process.

i have recommended this book to so many people.

the anthropocene reviewed by john green. ugh, john. you just make me feel.

i started watching vlogbrothers in the mid-2000s, and then started reading john’s fiction books. then hank’s fiction books. and continued to watch their 4-minute twice-weekly videos that cover the gamut of everything. and john’s videos are sometimes introspective and illuminating and hit you right in the heart.

so when he mentioned his new book release on vlogbrothers and his podcast of the same title, i downloaded a few episodes to check it out. he rates the current earth age on a five-star scale, from pennies to dr. pepper to scratch n sniff stickers to art and auld lang syne. his podcast (and subsequent essay in this book) on the capacity for wonder and sunsets just did it. he’d been holding hostage to a perfect rating, then this.

And so I try to turn toward that scattered light, belly out, and I tell myself: This doesn’t look like a picture. And it doesn’t look like a God. It is a sunset, and it is wildly beautiful, and this whole thing you’ve been doing where almost nothing gets five stars because almost nothing is perfect? That’s b.s. So much is perfect. Starting with this.

I give sunsets five stars.

billy summers by stephen king. what would a best-book list be without stephen king in it? and for those who say “dang i don’t like scary books,” you should read some stephen king because his books aren’t all scary. this one is more thriller/crime than any sort of scary. (tommyknockers this is NOT. yikes. that book scared me.)

king always keeps me engaged in his writing, especially his more recent stuff. this book is about a hitman for hire and his last job gone wrong. if you’re a king fan, you’ve likely already read it. if you enjoy thrillers but haven’t ever read king, this might be a good place to start.

malibu rising by taylor jenkins reid.

i hesitated to put this on my best of 2021 list. the story coalesces along a day’s worth of events and the backstory to fill them in. while the stories of the day and the frictions among them move the plot along, what i really liked about this book was the relationships that reid described and the closeness of the rivas siblings.

the writing is fantastic. i loved “daisy jones and the six” that she wrote, and that was the reason i picked this one up. the way she weaves a story is excellent.

 

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there you go! my top books of 2021. let me know if you’ve read any of these and what you think!