Last month I asked readers of this blog–and my friends–to help build a list of books that got us through 2021. Now that December is upon us, I’m delighted to share it. It’s a little different than the bestseller lists, so maybe it will give you some new gift ideas–or new year’s resolutions?.

I wasn’t interested in the top-selling or most-read books of 2021. I just wanted to know what people most enjoyed reading in the year we’re about to lose.

Some of these were on my 2021 list too. But there were many surprises that truly expand my reading horizons. And, interestingly, quite a few of the books, even the many about dystopias, illness, and warfare, were packed with hope.

Reader Favorites in 2021

The top fiction books were:

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Kreuger

The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Sentence by Louis Erdrich

“The Sentence” is exactly what I lusted for, a real story about real human beings that still inspires and appeals to the better soul that is buried inside of us without being saccharine or trite. Add to Erdrich’s usual skill of building characters, a little bit of mystery, and revealing dialog, a story that largely takes place in a bookstore with a ghost! It’s almost decadent in it’s many gifts to the reader including basically being a name-dropping of best books and authors.

Lyn Horan

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Rosewater by Tade Thompson

The Golden State by Lydia Kiesling

“If pressed I’d recommend anything by James Lee Burke. His stories are sometimes disturbingly graphic, but his writing is magnificent. He writes mostly about New Iberia, Louisiana (though also about west Texas and Montana), and I was so enthralled by the descriptions that I made a trek to New Iberia (and have been back several times), just to see where his characters lived. I also discovered there’s a whole industry around JLB in New Iberia, “kind of like Hemingway in Key West. I can hardly wait for each of his new books, and his are about the only books I buy in hardback, as soon as they’re published. Most other authors, of which there are MANY that I love, I can either get at the library or wait until they hit paperback!”

Margo Keyser

The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V.E. Schwab

Recursion by Blake Crouch

Code Name Helene by Ariel Lawhon

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Walker

The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny

The Great Alone pulls a few sucker punches with pacing which is annoying, but it’s a good read with fun characters. And it’s well edited (except for the suckered punches – you’ll know when you get there).

Cara Rose

What We Loved in Non-Fiction

Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kemmerer.

The End of Average by Todd Rose.yhttps://www.amazon.com/Between-Two-Kingdoms-Suleika-Jaouad/dp/0399588582

Sapiens by Yuvai Noah Harari

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford.

Humankind: A Hopeful History contains a lot of scientific “truths” you’ve heard over and over may not be as true as you thought. The stories in this book are sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes inspiring, but every one of them worth reading.

Claudia O’Keefe

The Writer’s Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives by Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager.

Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman.

Code Name Madeline: A Sufi Spy in Nazi-Occupied Paris by Arthur J. Magida

It’s a treat to enjoy documented history that has the plot and prose of a novel.

Nancy Daffner, on Code Name Madeline

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr

The Peanuts Papers: Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life by Andrew Blauner