The books that forced me to confront some hidden truths.
2021 was the first year I ever actively counted the number of books I was reading or aimed to reach a specific number. Of the hundred, I read I had so many favourites and books I will without doubt return to. These aren’t the same as the tomes that have impacted me the most.
The first that comes to mind is My Dark Vanessa. A book that pulled me in so fast I found it impossible to look away from no matter how much I wanted to. Kate Russell told a story that needed to be out in the world starting conversations and exposing truths that have been long covered up both within ourselves and in society at large.
If you’d like to read more of my thoughts on this book and the points it raises, this is one of the articles I am most proud of in 2021.
‘My Dark Vanessa’ explores the ‘How’ and ‘Why’, and most of all, ‘are we complicit’?
The next was The Song of Achilles. A book which while it took me back through the landscapes of my favourite childhood escapism of the mythology and legends of Greece, it confronted me with the stark reality of the modern fiction world and that we so rarely see non-heterosexual couples that it is almost shocking when we do. As a person from a ‘minority’, it hit me how easily I had lived with the hetero-normative world in books simply because it reflected my own life and didn’t affect me but if I am going to ask for a greater diversity of characters, that has to mean all forms of diversity, not just skin colour and ethnicity.
by Madeline Miller
The ‘new to me’ writer I became closest friends with was Matt Haig. I’d seen his name mentioned numerous times but after being drawn to How To Stop Time, I then devoured The Midnight Library, and Notes on a Nervous Planet.
He speaks with such self-deprecating honesty about living with anxiety and depression but somehow manages to be light and hopeful, seeking to create understanding and empathy in his readers rather than pity. I came away from his books feeling like a lightbulb had been switched on for the first time when listening to friends and loved ones try and express the situation inside their minds, but he also urged me again and again to consider my own purpose and what I was rushing around for.
by Matt Haig
My favourite book moment of 2021 was the book binge that finished my year off. Cold weather outside and kindle unlimited my dealer of choice filling me up with trashy, laugh-out-loud romantic comedies and supernatural escapism… just perfect. Those 13 books in 14 days (I needed to reach my 100) also reminded me that sometimes fiction is just fiction. It doesn’t need to change your life, make you think, or teach you anything. It can simply be indulgent fun to disappear into, so every month of my 2022 will be sure to have a little of that in it. What about you?