{"id":3495,"date":"2021-12-31T19:57:25","date_gmt":"2021-12-31T18:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/?p=3495"},"modified":"2022-01-09T12:02:14","modified_gmt":"2022-01-09T11:02:14","slug":"books-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2021\/12\/31\/books-of-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Books of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

One final look back before I turn to face 2022. Following a practice\u00a0started last year<\/a>, I have maintained a thread of tweet-sized reviews<\/a> of the books that I read in 2021 \u2013 all of them.<\/p>\n

\"211231-Books-of-2021\"<\/a>

The Twitter thread<\/a> of the books I read in 2021. Click on the image to see the high-res version.<\/p><\/div>\n

There are only eighteen in total, a singularly unimpressive tally \u2013 fewer even than I managed in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. The only thing I miss about my commute is the loss of a regular slot for reading during the working week. Although life settled into a wearisome rhythm while working from home, the time gained from not taking the bus and train into London was not recovered for reading. Clearly, I lack discipline.<\/p>\n

Even so, there was a decent level of diversity within my 18 titles \u2013 around 36% were written by women and 31% by Black or minority ethnic authors. I like to think I’m not too old to have my mind broadened. However, only three of my reads were novels and while my non-fiction selections demonstrate \u2014 I hope \u2014 a reasonable breadth of interest, most of those are rooted in history, and scientific history at that.<\/p>\n

So much for numbers. Quality should usually trump quantity and this year’s titles have afforded me a great deal of pleasure and insight. While I have long been a fan of Marilynne Robinson, Jack\u00a0<\/em>seemed to take a while to reach the deep resonances that I recall from the opening pages of\u00a0Gilead<\/a>,<\/em> the first instalment of her Iowa novels. Zora Neale Thurston’s\u00a0Their Eyes Were Watching God<\/em>, written over eighty years earlier, was a fresher and more impactful encounter.<\/p>\n

As for this year’s non-fictional forays, Obama’s A Promised Land<\/em> and Power’s\u00a0The Education of an Idealist<\/em> both provided terrific insights into the challenge of trying to do some good in the world through politics (as did Michael Barber’s more practical tome,\u00a0Accomplishment<\/em>). I was also gripped by Ananyo Bhattacharya’s prodigious biography of John von Neumann (The Man from the Future<\/em>) and by\u00a0Spike<\/em>, Jeremy Farrar’s and Anjana Ahuja’s blistering account of the Covid-19 pandemic, while Matthew Cobb’s\u00a0The Idea of the Brain\u00a0<\/em>gave a fascinating and sobering view of our faltering attempts to understand that most precious organ.<\/p>\n

The most important book I read this year was Shon Faye’s\u00a0The Transgender Issue<\/em> which brought much needed cool-headedness \u2013 and a human heart \u2013 to a topic that seems only ever to be debated in screams on social media.<\/p>\n

But my favourite of the year has to be Ian Dunt’s\u00a0How to be a Liberal<\/em>, a rich and thoughtful exploration of the development of liberal thought over the past several centuries. It’s a strand of thinking that seems to be under relentless assault from the populists who have taken centre-stage for the moment, but Dunt’s book ably demonstrates that its roots run deep. So we might still hope for another flowering.<\/p>\n

Happy new year, everyone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One final look back before I turn to face 2022. Following a practice\u00a0started last year, I have maintained a thread of tweet-sized reviews of the books that I read in 2021 \u2013 all of them. There are only eighteen in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}