The books I read, 2021 edition

[image: the books I read in 2021]

One of the nice, slightly creepy, features of my Apple Books app is that it keeps track of everything I read. Which means that at the end of the year I can look back and reflect on my reading activity for the previous twelve months, perhaps learning something new about myself in the process.

Last year I read 19 books, which break down into 12 novels and 7 non-fiction, and right there is an interesting observation. Most people peg me for someone who either doesn’t read fiction at all or for whom fiction is secondary to readings concerned with science and philosophy. Well, folks, there goes the empirical evidence to contradict you!

Let’s start with the novels, then (in alphabetical order by author):

La Signora del Martedi` (no English translation), by Massimo Carlotto
La Verita` dell’Alligatore (The Master of Knots), by Massimo Carlotto
The John Cheever Audio Collection, by John Cheever
Veronica, by Mary Gaitskill
Less, by Andrew Sean Greer
The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig
Qualityland, by Marc-Uwe Kling
Nemesis, by Philip Roth
Wrath of the Furies, by Steven Saylor
M (English translation to be released in April ‘22), by Antonio Scurati
Creation, by Gore Vidal
Julian, by Gore Vidal

Two authors have two entries each. The first was a mistake, the second a delight. I read La Signora del Martedi` (The Tuesday Lady), by Massimo Carlotto by chance, having found the book during one of my regular scans of recent Italian literature. I read Italian books both to keep up my language skills and, obviously, because I have an interest in modern Italian culture. Carlotto is often hailed as the master of contemporary Italian noir detective novels, and La Signora del Martedi` is, indeed, an intriguing, well written story with an unusual setup. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to check what else Carlotto had written. That was the mistake. La Verita` dell’Alligatore (The Master of Knots, in the English version) is horrible, one of the cheesiest and most cliched books I’ve read in my entire life. Oh well.