2021 a Year in Books

What I read in 2021, the comprehensive list.

How to read this list:

*  = Recommend
** = Really recommend
NC = No comment (or, really, do not bother)
RR = Re-read
F = Fiction
NF = Non-fiction
P = Plays

No, I won’t be posting purchase links, I suggest you purchase a copy of whatever sounds interesting from your favourite local second hand book shop (most of the – good ones anyway – have been in print for some time, I have found books that age well, well, age well). Enjoy.

Previous lists can be found here and here.

1. The Machine Stops – EM Vorster (F **)
2. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carol (RR F*)
3. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh (F*)
4. The Death and Life of Great American Cities – Jane Jacobs (NF**)
5. The End of History and the Last Man – Francis Fukuyama (NF)
6. Machete Season – Jean Hatzfeld (NF**)
7. The Boys on the Boat – Daniel James Brown (NF**)
8. The Watchmen – Alan Moore (F**)
9. You Can’t Go Home Again – Thomas Wolfe (F*)
10. The Sovereign Individual – James Dale Davidson & Lord Reese Mogg (NF*)
11. The Huron – Voltaire (F*)
12. Zadig – Voltaire (F*)
13. Arcadia – Tom Stoppard (P**)
14. The Will to Power – Henry Hazlitt (NF*)
15. A Book of Burlesque – HL Menken (NF**)
16. The Constitution of Liberty – FA Hayek (NF**)
17. Progress and Poverty – Henry George (NF*)
18. Slouching Towards Bethlehem – Joan Didion (NF**)
19. Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino (F*)
20. Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson (F*)
21. Hermes – Michel Serres (NF)
22. Minority Report – ML Menken (NF)
23. It’s Me Eddie – Eduard Limonov (F)
24. Basic Income and Sovereign Money – Geoff Crocker (NF) author’s surname is fitting
25. Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keys (F**)
26. The Fifth Elephant – Terry Pratchett (F**)
27. Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote (F**)
28. What we Cannot Know – Marcus du Sautoy (NF)
29. The Wisdom of Crowds – James Surowiecki (NF*)
30. Prince: Purple Rein – Mick Wall (NF)
31. Adults in the Room – Yanis Varoufakis (NF)
32. The Rationalists Guide to the Galaxy – Tom Chivers (NF*)
33. The Starseed Transmissions – Ken Carey (NF/F)
34. Klara and the Sun – Kazuo Ishiguro (F*)
35. Watermarks – Lenka Janiurek (NF)
36. The Future of You – Tracey Follows (NF**)
37. Confessions – St Augustine (NF**)
38. Rattling the Cage – Brent Meersman (NF)
39. War and Peace and War – Peter Turchin (NF*)
40. QED – Richard Feynman (NF*)
41. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe (F*)
42. The Importance of Being Ernest and Other Plays – Oscar Wilde (P**)
43. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway (F*)
44. Lenin on the Train – Catherine Merridale (NF)
45. Aesops Fables – Gavin Weston (F**)
46. Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun – Wess Roberts (NF*)
47. Player Piano – Kurt Vonnegut (F*)
48. Confronting Inequality – Michael Nassin Smith (NF)
49. No Time Like the Future – Michael J Fox (NF*)
50. A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived – Adam Rutherford (NF)
51. Spiritual Enlightenment, The Damnedest Thing – Jed McKenna (NF)
52. Checkov’s Plays – P*
53. Pyramids – Terry Pratchett (RR F**)
54. Iraq+ 100 – Hassan Blasim (F*)
55. The Story of Philosophy – Will Durant (NF**)
56. Hustling, Happiness and a Blowup Doll Named Percy – Dale Hefer (NF0
57. Homage to Catalonia – George Orwell (NF)
58. H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness – Ivan Illich (NF*)
59. Suicide of the West – Jonah Goldberg (NF)
60. A Manual for Creating Atheists – Peter Boghossian (NF)
61. How to Have Impossible Conversations – James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian (NF*)
62. The Hard Problem – Tom Stoppard (P**)
63. If You Are an Egalitarian How Come You Are So Rich – GA Cohen (NF*)
64. The Future Starts Now (RR NF*)
65. The Illuminati Papers – Robert Anton Wilson (NF/F**)
66. The Almost Nearly Perfect People – Michael Booth (NF*)
67. Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Eaquivel (F*)
68. We Have Been Harmonised – Kai Strittmatter (NF**)
69. Love, Poverty, War – Christopher Hitchens (NF*)
70. Jingo – Terry Pratchett (RR F**)
71. When Money Destroys Nations – Philip Haslam and Russell Lamberti (NF*)
72. Seeing Like a State – James C Scott (NF*)
73. The Journalist and the Murderer – Janet Malcom (NF*)
74. Grey Eminence – Aldous Huxley (NF*)
75. Mortality – Christopher Hitchens (NF**)
76. The Tao of Pooh and the Te of Piglet – Benjamin Hof (F/NF*)
77. The Republic – Plato (NF*)
78. Freud – Breger (NF*)
79. Democracy Works – Grey Mills et al (NF)
80. Conflicted – Ian Lesley (NF*)
81. Neuroliberalism – Rachel Howell et al (NF)
82. The State of Siege – Albert Camus (P*)
83. Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonnegut (RR F/NF**)
84. The Revelations – Erik Hoel (NF*)
85. Spiritual Enlightenment – Jed McKenna (NF)
86. The Great Depression a Diary – Benjamin Roth (NF**)
87. The Wit and Wisdom of the Discworld – Terry Pratchett (NF*)
88. Fury – Salman Rushdie (F**)
89. The Burning Tigris – Peter Balakain (NF**)
90. The Beginning of Infinity – David Deutch (NF**)
91. Shawshank Redemption – Stephen King (F*)
92. Something Happened – Joseph Heller (F)
93. Popcorn – Ben Elton (F*)
94. Jane Austin, the complete novels in one sitting (F)
95. The Hedonic Imperative – David Pearce (NF*)
96. Dirty Money – Marina Adshade (NF)
97. Unintended Consequences – Clive Wills (NF)
98. Cultural Amnesia – Clive James (NF**)
99. Finding Common Ground – Wandile Shilobo (NF)
100. The Ordeal of Change – Erik Hoffer (NF*)
101. Future-Proof Yourself – Nikki Bush (NF)
102. Post Office – Charles Bukowski (F)
103. Cherry – Niko Walker (F/NF)
104. The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks (NF*)
105. Illusions – Richard Bach (NF)
106. Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future – Seraphim Rose (NF*)
107. Wanting – Luke Burgis (NF*)
108. Beyond Bitcoin – Simon Dingle and Steven Sidley (NF*)
109. Cultureneering – Ian Fuhr (NF)
110. Transcendent Kingdom – Yaya Gyasi (F*)
111. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks (F*)
112. Power – Michel Faucoult (NF)
113. The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levy (NF*)
114. The Daughter of Time – Josephine Tey (F**)
115. Othello – Shakespeare (P*)
116. The Aggravations of Mini Ashe – Cyril Kersh (F)
117. Enders Game – Orson Scott Card (F*)
118. Ra – qntm (F)
119. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe – Edward Albee (P*)
120. August : Osage County – Tracey Letts (P*)
121. The Contrarian – Max Chafkin (NF)
122. When Prophecy Fails – Festinger et al (NF)
123. Revolutionary Road – Richard Yates (F*)
124. Here be Dragons – Richard Mulholand (NF)
125. Leviathan – Thomas Hobbs (NF*)
126. Empires of Eve – Andrew Groen (F/FN*)
127. Empires of Eve Volume II – Andrew Groen (F/NF*)
128. The Green Reich – Drieu Godefridi (NF)
129. The Diversity Myth – David Saks and Peter Thiel (NF)
130. The Transhumanist Wager – Zoltan Istvan (F)
131. Snake Oil – Michael P Senger (NF)
132. Viral – Alina Chen and Matt Ridley (NF*)
133. Synthetic Worlds – Eduard Casonovra (NF*)
134. They Thought They Were Free – Milton Meyer (NF)
135. Possession – AS Byatt (F*)
136. Daniel Deronda – George Eliot (F)
137. Exit, Voice and Loyalty – Hirschman (NF*)
138. Better to Have Gone – Akash Kapur (NF**)
139. Maus – Art Spiegelman (F/NF*)
140. The Storyteller – Dave Grohl (NF)
141. Habibi – Craig Thompson (F**)
142. V for Vendetta – Alan Moore (F*)