December 20, 2021
The year is winding to a close and before I get absorbed into the hungry gelatinous mass that is the holiday season for jolly consumption I wanted to quickly share a brief list of my favorite reads from 2021.
Note that some or many of these titles were not actually released in 2021, but simply titles I read in the past year.
Additionally, it’s worth noting my reading was down in 2021. Primarily because I was swamped with writing projects, having finished a couple novels, a half-dozen short stories, and worked on edits for four novels, three of which are coming out in the next year-and-a-half, the other one is being shopped. So point being most of my free time was writing, versus reading.
I also read more advance books for blurbs than I have EVER read. Honestly, I probably agreed to too many titles, as I just couldn’t get to them all for the authors or publishers when they needed them. Overall, I read nine novels for blurbs or paid reviews, and probably didn’t get to another half dozen, which is a bummer but there’s only so much time in a day and it just didn’t work out.
Normally, I read between 80-100 books a year. In 2021, I only read 68. Which is crazy and also makes me kind of sad, but this was such a busy year for me on the writing front it just ate me up (in a good way).
At the top of my TBR pile for 2022 are story collections by Brian Evenson, Yan Ge, Jeffrey Ford, Ellen Datlow (ed.), among others. I’m excited to read novels by Eric Rickstad, Scott Carson, Herve Le Tellier, Peter Heller, Gus Moreno, Christopher Buehlman, Grady Hendrix, Cynthia Pelayo, Zoje Stage, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Adam Nevill, Jason Mott, Derek B. Miller, Violet Kupersmith, Angela Slatter, Polly Schattel, Amor Towles… and on and on (see my problem?).
So, all that said, here are a handful of books —the best of the best— read in the last year that I highly recommend you picking up and adding to the top of your towering TBR pile:
The Queen’s Gambit - Walter Tavis
The Kingdom - Jo Nesbo
The Dark Side of the Room & Criterium - Tyler Jones
Rookfield - Gordon B. White
Without Remorse - Tom Clancy
The Nightingale - Kristin Hannah
Later & Billy Summers - Stephen King
Moon Lake - Joe Lansdale
Ghoul ‘n the Cape & Pearl - Josh Malerman
Dark Across the Bay - Ania Ahlborn
Falling - T.J. Newman
Come With Me - Ronald Malfi
Two for the Money - Max Allan Collins
Recursion - Blake Crouch
The Seven Variations of Sydney Burgess - Andy Marino
Morbius - Brendan Deneen
Come Closer - Sara Gran
Chasing the Boogeyman - Richard Chizmar
Razorblade Tears - S.A. Cosby
Cloud Cuckoo Land - Anthony Doerr
And lastly (drumroll?), my favorite novel of the year was easily Five Decembers by James Kestrel (aka Jonathan Moore). A hybrid noir/war novel that is written so elegantly and powerfully that the 450-whatever pages go by in a blur. In the acknowledgments, the author mentions the original manuscript was over 750 pages and I felt a physical pang of sorrow I wan’t able to read those other 300 pages, that’s how good this book was. As always, your mileage may differ, but for me it was story perfection. Silver medals to The Kingdom, Cloud Cuckoo Land, Razorblade Tears, The Nightingale, and Malerman’s epic, Ghoul ‘n the Cape.
That’s it! Hope you enjoyed this breakdown, and I sincerely hope I’ve increased the height of your TBR pile. Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and I look forward to more great reads in 2022!
Your pal—
-PF
*Header artwork by Claudia Caranfa, from the cover of Five Decembers (Hard Case Crime).