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My 2021 Year in Books
The year 2020 felt like it never really ended. Chaos and confusion just rolled into the next month, and then the next. And here we are, setting off on 2022.
I do most of my reading while on flights, blissfully disconnected from the internet and away from a computer screen. There hasn’t been much of that these past two years.
Mood shapes reading and reading shapes mood. Here are the books that had the most profound effect on me and my thinking.
As a quick list
- Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts
- The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson
- Under a White Sky, by Elizabeth Kolbert
- When We Cease to Understand the World, by Benjamín Labatut
- The Sovereign Individual, by James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg
Beneath these top 5, a give a few honorable mentions.
My top 5 books of 2021
Shantaram: A Novel
Shantaram is the kind of novel that makes you see humanity in even the most wretched person, but without saccharine platitudes or pithy moralizing. The story is set in 1980s Bombay and is based on author Gregory David Roberts’ life. Roberts was a convicted bank robber and heroine addict, who…
