2021 Best Books

Apr 222022
 

I use the Goodreads rating system: five stars = “it was amazing” and four stars = “really liked it:”

Five Stars

  • Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain by Fintan O’Toole
  • Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum

Four Stars

  • Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskell
  • Frederica by Georgette Heyer
  • Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
  • This Is Happiness by Niall Williams
  • The Ex by Alafair Burke
  • Ramona the Brave by Beverly Cleary
  • Ellen Tebbits by Beverly Cleary
  • Persuasion by Jane Austen
  • The Nine Lives of Pakistan by Declan Walsh
  • Rebecca by Daphne duMaurier
  • Carolina Moon by Jill McCorkle
  • Grant Takes Command by Bruce Catton
  • The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
  • City of the Mind by Penelope Lively
  • The Last Secret by Mary McGarry Morris
  • Laidlaw by William McIlvanney
  • Homeland Elegies by Ahktar Ayad

2020 Best Books

Jan 032021
 

My 2020 reads according to their GoodReads rankings:

Five Stars = It was amazing

  • The Crofter and The Laird by John McPhee
  • In the Highlands and the Islands by John McPhee
  • Becoming by Michelle Obama
  • The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors by Juliet Barker

Four stars = Really liked it

  • The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope
  • England’s Hour by Vera Brittain
  • Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
  • Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout
  • The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects by Deborah Lutz
  • Lucky Us by Amy Bloom
  • I’ll Be Gone in The Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara
  • Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
  • Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
  • The Cactus League by Emily Nemens
  • Cotillion by Georgette Heyer
  • The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell
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