My 2021 Year in Books

Here are books I read in 2021 in no particular order with a small review.

Books on the "World of Warcraft" universe

In 2021 I read quite a lot of books on the World of Warcraft universe - 10, which is around 40% of all the books I read last year. What can I say - I love the game and I loved the books!

The first one I read was "Rise of the Horde" by Christie Golden. I loved it so much that I read it in one night, despite it being a Tuesday and I had to work the next day. I wrote my review on the book on my Russian blog, but it is only in Russian.

There were a few more books that I quite enjoyed: the "War of the Ancients" trilogy by Richard A. Knaak, "Arthas" and "Before the Storm", both by Christie Golden - they are full of action and they really help understand the universe and plot of the game. But even those who don't play the game but love good fantasy would enjoy reading these books.

I should also mention that I am not done with the books on WoW, I will continue reading them, fortunately, there are still quite a lot of them.

"Death on the Nile" and "Murder on the Orient Express" by Agatha Christie

I must admit that I hadn't read anything by A. Christie before I read these two books, which is strange for me as I like good detective stories, and Christie is considered a classic mystery novels writer.

I came to read "Death on the Nile" when I saw the book in a small library in the apartment I rented a few months back. And again it was a book that I read in a day, it was a very easy read with an interesting plot.

Both the books are featuring the one and only Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, who investigates quite intricate murder cases. Both are captivating but tragic stories.

I have bought three more books by A. Christie which are waiting for me in 2022.

"Zen in the Art of Writing" by Ray Bradbury

Bradbury is famouse for his sci-fi stories and novels, I love them myself. But this is not a typical book by the author, it is non-fiction, some may even say it is a self-help book, where the author shares his experince while writing his novels, and gives some insights into how to motivate yourself to write. I would say that this book may be motivational not only for writers but for everybody who suffers from lack of motivation in what they do. Great read!

P.S. I wrote my review on the book on my Russian blog, if anyone's interested. :)

"The Little Paris Bookshop" by Nina George

This is a book about love, tragedy, travel and books. I already mentioned somewhere that books about books are always my top priority for reading and my expectations for these books are usually really high. In this book, there are quite a lot of books, but the main story is not book-related - it is about tragic love. I won't say what was the tragedy about not to spoil the plot, but I must admit I couldn't relate at all to how the main caracters behaved, so it spoilt the impression of the book for me. But at least I noted down some books and places to visit, mentioned in the book, for my future reads and travel plans.

"War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy

I decided to read "War and Peace" as part of my ongoing challenge - top 100 books of all times as published in American news magazine "Newsweek", where this Russian classic ranks the first. Besides, I wanted to give the book another chance - I started reading it when I was a school-girl but I gave it up quite soon. I doubt there are a lot of people who have never heard about this book, so I won't tell what it is about. What I will say, however, is that this book was the most challenging book of all the books I read in 2021, moreover it was one of the most challenging books I have ever read, along with "Ulysses" by James Joyce and "The Lord of the Flies" by William Golding - from my experience, of all the books I read, these two were the hardest to read. So after reading "War and Peace" myself, I now praize those who did the same - I consider it as quite an achievement.

P.S. Here's my review of the book on my Russian blog.

"The Night in Lisbon" by Erich Maria Remarque

This is the first book by Remarque I have ever read and I must say I was hooked, already added several books by the author into my TBR list.

The events in the book are happening during World War II. The novel is a story within a story, so there are two narrators. One is a guy who is in desperate need for a US visa to escape from Europe, and the other is the one who is ready to give him that visa if he listens to his story, which is full of tension, mystery, love and danger. Sounds captivating, right?! And it surely is!

"Love is Eternal" by Irving Stone

The book tells us a story about the life and death of one of the most famous US president Abraham Linkoln. However, the main character in the book is his wife Mary Todd, and all the events are shown and told from her perspective, which I found quite interesting while reading.

All in all, the novel covers the period of around 25 years, starting from the episodes of Mary's life in her early 20s, when she lived in Kentucky with her family, and finishing with some time after Linkoln was assassinated.

I liked reading the book, it gives a lot of information on Linkoln, his character, his career before becoming a president, certainly his time at the White House during the Civil War. It also describes their family life with Mary and their children, which was also quite interesting, as honestly, before reading the book, I didn't even know what was his wife's name or whether he was married at all. All I knew, was that he was the president who declared the abolition of slavery, but I didn't know anything that was before or after that. Now I can say that I know quite a bit about this prominent historical figure. And I definitely recommend to read the book, especially, if you are interested in history.

"The Georgian Beekeeper" by Robert O. Morris

This was the first book about Georgia that I read (I say the first, as I am currently reading another one, and I have several more on my TBR list).

It tells a story of a Georgian woman Ksenia, who lived through the Soviet times in Georgia and managed not only to survive but live quite well through those times thanks to her various skills, mainly in agriculture. By telling her story, the author describes how people in Georgia lived, their customs and traditions, which was exactly what I was looking for when I bought the book. At some point in the story though, one of the other characters of the book started to talk about how he could go into a trance state and leave his body to see what was going on in other places on Earth and people believed him (!), and for me it was really weird - it looked like the author suddenly decided to change the book genre from realism to fantasy. These episodes of trance states were strange to read and unfortunately spoilt my general good impression of the book, but I think the read was not in vain as I learned a lot about Georgian culture.

P.S. I also wrote my review of the book on my Russian blog.

"Homo Deus" by Yuval Noah Harrari

After reading "Sapiens", which described the history of humankind, I was intrigued to read the author's second book "Homo Deus", where the author tried to predict the human future. I already wrote the review on this book, so I will just say that my expectations of the book were too high - it seemed like a book about everything and nothing at the same time.

P.S. My full review in English on the book can be found here.

"Наполеонов Обоз" by Дина Рубина. Books 1 and 2 (out of 3)

The books are originally in Russian and they are not translated into English, as far as my Google research has shown, so I would translate the name of the series as "Napoleon's Wagon". I read two books and started the third one.

There are multiple plot lines in the book, the main one being the love story of a girl and a boy who were separated in the past.

I must say that when I was reading the first book I wanted to give up on it several times, as I found the style of the author to be incoherent and the plot was hard to follow. But at the end of the first book one side story was told which got me interested (the family story of the main male character Aristarkh). And so I continued to the second book, which was way more interesting, coherent and easy to follow. However, the second book didn't fully unravel the plot line I was interested in, so I started reading the third and final book, but I haven't finished it yet.

P.S. My review on the first book on my Russian blog is here.

"The Dark Archive" by Geneieve Cogman

It is the seventh out of eight books in "The Invisible Library" series. The series is about The Library - the organisation that collects unique books from different worlds to maintain balance between these worlds. The collectors are called librarians - people who love books but also possess a lot of other useful qualtites, e.g. they know martial arts, speak different languages, are masters of disguise etc.

The main character in the series is Irene Winters who is a librarian and in the series she takes on different missions usually to collect the book from some world or to do something else for the Library. But of course nothing is easy and each time the mission turns out a dangerous one. "The Dark Archive" tells about yet another Irene's adventure with full of action, mystery and suspence.

Honestly, I love this series and always look forward for the continuations. I am sad that there will be only eight books.

"The Magician's Nephew" by Clive S. Lewis

This is another book from my top 100 books challenge and it is the first in "The Chronicles of Narnia" series.

I haven't watched the film and I haven't read the books before, the only thing that I knew about Narnia is that you can arrive there through a wardrobe. And the first book actually gives a backstory on this wardrobe.

All in all, I liked the book, it reads easily and quite fast, but I cannot say that I was glued to it. But I plan to read the sequels and learn the whole story.

"Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982" by Cho Nam Joo

This was the last book I read in 2021, and I read it as part of my "Around the World in 195 Books" challenge, which I am doing together with a few other book lovers.

It is a book about the status of a woman in South Korea on the example of the main character Kim Jiyoung - a South Korean woman in her thirties telling a story about her childhood, teenage years, adolescence, adulthood. Although the book was easy to read, it addresses quite a difficult and controversial issue. I think everybody who is interested in the topic of feminism would find the book useful, maybe it will even make one look on some things differently.

My full review of the book in English can be found here.

Here's to more interesting and captivating books in 2022!