Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die discussion

What were your favorite list books from 2021?


What list books could you have done without reading this year?

2021 Recap

My favorite 1001 reads of 2021:

The Once and Future King by T.H. White
A Woman's Life (Une vie) by Guy de Maupassant
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado
Solitude by Víctor Català
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky

My least favorite 1001 reads of 2021:

The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein
The Folding Star by Alan Hollinghurst
Cocaine Nights by J.G. Ballard
A House in the Uplands by Erskine Caldwell
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
The Monastery by Walter Scott
Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit by John Lyly

My faves for 2021 were:

Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon
H is for Hawk
Tipping the Velvet
A Fine Balance
The World According to Garp
The Cider House Rules
Rebecca

My least favorite books were:
The 120 Days of Sodom
Operation Shylock: A Confession
The Apes of God
Rabbit Redux
Cutter and Bone

Top:

The Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writings - Octavio Paz
Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol
The Sea of Fertility - Yukio Mishima

Bottom:

Quo Vadis - Henryk Sienkiewicz
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge - Rainer Maria Rilke
The Radetzky March - Joseph Roth

Top 3

Homo Faber
American Psycho
Cry, the Beloved Country

Flop 3

The Lord of the Rings
Nightwood
The Circle

My favourite was The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Least favourite was The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, which wasn't bad, just mediocre. I didn't read any real flops last year.

Best of 2021
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Voss by Patrick White
Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Worst
Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker
Falling Man by Don de Lillo

I didn’t much care for Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky but I suspect that’s down to my lack of understanding of Thor Russian political landscape at that time.

More good than bad so positive overall!

My favorite 1001 reads of 2021:

Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani
Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado
Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

My least favorite 1001 reads of 2021:

Dead Babies by Martin Amis
The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
Stone Junction by Jim Dodge
Reasons to Live by Amy Hempel

2021 Favorites:

- Unless by Carol Shields - My Review
- The Colour by Rose Tremain - My Review
- The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch - My Review
- Embers by Sándor Márai - My Review
- What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt - My Review
- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides - My Review

I did not have any of the 1001 that got less than 3 stars, so I had no "least favorites" this year.

SaraSian wrote: "Worst
Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker
Falling Man by Don de Lillo"

I completely agree with both of these.

My favorite was In the Forest.

My least favorites were The Magic Mountain and Reasons to Live.

I only read four in 2021, and there were no major standouts, but I did enjoy The Purloined Letter.

Worst was Vineland.

My Top 3 were:
The House of the Spirits
The Colour
The Birds

My 3 biggst disappontments were:
Surfacing
Pallieter
London Orbital

I read nine list books in 2021.

The best:
Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey - 5 stars

The worst:
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams - 2 stars

The rest:
Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories by Flannery O'Connor - 4 stars
The Shining by Stephen King - 4 stars
Beloved by Toni Morrison - 4 stars
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark - 4 stars
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson - 3 stars
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin - 3 stars
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole - 3 stars

Favorites:
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Momento Mori
Passing
Woman at Point Zero
Lord of the Flies
Journey to the West

Least Favorites:
The Summer Book
Miss Lonelyhearts
Love’s Work: A Reckoning with Life
Wise Blood

Favorites:
The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
The Grass Is Singing, Doris Lessing
Jazz, Toni Morrison

Really Enjoyed:
Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence
The Nice and the Good, Iris Murdoch
The Red Queen, Margaret Drabble

Could have done without (and wished I had):
The Wings of the Dove, Henry James
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, Italo Calvino
Invisible, Paul Auster