2021's Best Reads (According to L&L)

The winter holidays are fast approaching; it’s the season of gift buying and frantic preparation, followed (hopefully) by an opportunity to curl up with a good book. To help inspire your choice of reading material - or for those of you who are desperately looking for a last minute gift for the book-lover in your life - we asked everyone at L&L for their favourite reads of 2021. The resulting recommendations span everything from old classics to new writers, and cover a real variety of genres. We hope they provide some inspiration - let us know if you have any 2021 favourites of your own.

Kirk - Podcast Host and Contributing Writer

For the first time ever, I kept a list of the books read during the year. At the time of this writing, I'm at 128, with two weeks to go. 

Several books stand out for me, starting with a pair of books that I reread. The first was Dai Sijie's charming 2000 novel Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise (Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress). I knew Dai when he was a student in Paris in the late 1980s, and this wonderful novel shows the power that great books can have to a threesome of young people in rural China during the cultural revolution. 

I also re-read Julian Barnes' 2008 memoir Nothing to Be Frightened Of, which is one of my favorite books about life and death. In this memoir on mortality, Barnes discusses the loss of his parents, his growing up, and his becoming an atheist ("I don't believe in God, but I miss him," is how the book begins), and he deals with the subject often with the deadpan humor he is known for in his fiction. The audiobook is especially interesting, as it is read by the author. 

In contemporary fiction, I enjoyed Dave Eggars' recent The Every, about a tech company that creates apps that have profound effects on people's lives. A sequel to his 2013 novel The Circle, this novel acts as a warning about big tech and its pernicious effects. 

David Hockney's Spring Cannot Be Cancelled is an illustrated book, written with his friend and art critic Martin Gayford, describing how, just before lockdown, Hockney bought a house in Normandy, planning to create a series of iPad artworks as spring arrived. The book became a reflection on life, art, and pandemic, and its companion volume, The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020, is a lovely catalog for the exhibition of these works at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. 

Finally, I was entranced by Maggie Shipstead's Booker-shortlisted novel Great Circle, a novel of love and loss and adventure, focusing on a woman pilot in the early days of flying, and an actress portraying her in the present. It was a pleasure to discuss the novel with her on an episode of the Write Now with Scrivener podcast].

Ruth - Tech Support

P. Djeli Clark's A Master of Djinn returns readers to the author's steampunk version of Cairo circa 1912. In Clark's debut novel, the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities tasks dapperly dressed Agent Fatma el-Sha’arawi with investigating a murder. The novel mixes characters from Middle/Near Eastern mythology with pre-World War I global politics and magical machines. If readers enjoyed Clark's two novellas set in this world, this novel gives them more to explore. For readers looking to expand their fantasy reading list to include a more diverse worldview, Clark's book will offer a fresh take on speculative fiction.

David - Director, Sales

Following Bill Bryson’s thorough investigation into A Short History of Nearly Everything where he shines an elucidating light onto subjects ranging from spectacularly tiny quarks to the creation of the universe, he goes inward with The Body: A Guide for Occupants. Truth be told, I’m only marginally over two-thirds of the way through this journey, but I’m not anticipating any unsatisfying plot twists or a less than fulfilling ending. Bill’s books are always a joy to read whether his topic is Shakespeare or the quirks of Great Britain, and The Body is no different. Learning how to build a human (or the monetary worth of the elements that we’re comprised of), reading a footnote regarding 20/20 vision, getting a better appreciation of exactly where the heart is positioned (not that far left), or a starter on the immune system in these trying times (I’ll add another recommendation of Immune by Philipp Dettmer), when time permits The Body is a wonderful diversion. I’m looking forward to some downtime over the Christmas period and finally finishing the sections on conception and birth, nerves, pain and diseases. A cheery finale! Recommended stocking filler if you happen to have a sizeable stocking to fill. 

Ian - macOS Developer

Science Fictions: Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science by Stuart Ritchie (published: 2020)

The sciences - and academic psychology in particular - have been getting attention in recent years from people pointing out that various scientific 'findings' may not be so much 'found' as 'made up', sometimes deliberately but more often because of mistakes, short-sightedness and sharp practice. Ritchie, a psychologist, takes us on a tour of dodgy findings and over-interpreted results, as well as providing pointers about how the situation can be improved; these boil down to lessening the pressure to publish and educating scientists about how research methods can be used and abused. This isn't a dry read; it's punchy and filled anecdotes. Wait till you hear how far former social psychology professor Dederik Stapel went to make up his data. And, of course, it’s timely. If ever we need people to collect and analyse data correctly, it's now.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (published: 2021)

Clarke recently revealed that she has been living with chronic fatigue syndrome, which explains the relative dearth in her output since Johnathon Strange & Mr Norrell, a book that burst onto the scene in 2004 with praise from, among others, Neil Gaiman: "I loved the things she said and the things she did not say". Piranesi is not a sequel as such. This wonderful, slim book deliberately eschews painstaking world building for an intriguing and creepy tale of an amnesiac trapped in a sprawling, Georgian mansion--endless in all directions--that stands in an unrelenting sea. I won't say any more for fear of spoiling it. The book reminded me of Alexander Sokurov's film Russian Ark, Flowers for Algernon, and The Museum of All Shells from Richard Dawkins's Climbing Mount Improbable. And a certain Italian architect.

Billy Summers by Stephen King (published: 2021)

Being a Stephen King completist, I would be reading this whatever the reviews, but they happen to be stellar, and this is indeed a star turn. King has been writing high-quality genre fiction since he was a teenager and Billy Summers displays his absolute mastery of the thriller form while adding a satisfying and thoughtful post-modern spin. The setup is simple: nice-guy-but-is-an-assassin Billy Summers is persuaded to do one last hit on behalf of a criminal gang. As cover, he takes on the mantle of a would-be memoirist writing his life story, and finds friendship in the community where he lives in the months leading up to the hit. 

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (published: 1926)

I'd been saving this one for a while; it's the last of his works published in his lifetime that I hadn't read and, spurred on by the recent six-hour documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, I thought it was high time to read it. You either love Hemingway's prose or you hate it. I love it, and this book is full of it. The story follows a group of ex-patriots travelling from Paris to Pamplona, Spain, for the fiesta. Apparently, it's based on a real trip that Hemingway took in 1925 with some friends. I do wonder if they remained friends, given their thinly fictionalised and somewhat brutal treatment in this book. Still, it might rank as one of the high points of twentieth century literature; it's compelling, well observed, beautiful and bold, and seems to achieve Hemingway's aim of making the reader feel like they are living as the characters.