Books I've Read So Far in 2021

 It's been a fairly busy year for reading here. Though I had a spell where I didn't read anything for weeks (couldn't read, actually, due to eye surgery), when I got back to it, I really knuckled under to make up for lost time on my stack of books, both physical  and e-books.

Back in 2016, I started a book log, at first just noting the titles and authors of everything I read. Then I gradually developed a little system of flagging my favourites with tiny symbols beside the entries. The past two years, I've even been rating the books out of 5. The reason I even began this log was that I had set a goal of reading thirty books that year, and naturally, jotting down titles helped me to track my progress. That first year, I exceeded my goal by one book. I felt good about that, but found it a bit tougher to meet that same target the following year. I can't recall why that was, but I'd guess those were probably longer books or just plain heavier reading.

Then the following year, I was able to meet that magic number of thirty, beating it by one book yet again. But 2018 brought much lower output, due to both bigger books of slower reading and some false starts - books that I lost interest in and simply didn't finish... so I couldn't tick them off as completed in my log. The same thing happened in 2020, and I just had to accept the fact that a goal of twenty books was much more achievable than thirty. Gotta factor in my other interests, like a great deal of movie watching and review writing, record collecting and listening among them.

I think I should exceed twenty books read by the end of this calendar year, based on where I am now (completed sixteen). I'm currently getting into a creepy horror-mystery called Drood, by Dan Simmons. It's perfect for the Halloween season, and I'm enjoying it a lot.

This year, I took a bit of a deep dive into the fictional crime and legal thrillers of Toronto author Robert Rotenberg, snapping up all of his books and rapidly devouring them. With this kind of stuff, nobody's re-inventing the wheel, but it's the nuances of characters and attention to detail on the police and legal procedural side that makes these books stand out. Rotenberg is a more than capable writer, imbuing his characters with very relatable human flaws and strengths, and building a setting that allows the reader to be absorbed into his realistic world of law enforcement and detection. I'm a fan.

Here are the books I've read so far this year:

A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles - by far the best I've read in a long time. Rated 5/5

Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles - just about as excellent as the Gentleman novel above.  5/5

The Guilty Plea, Robert Rotenberg - second in his Ari Greene series. Canadian crime fiction!

Child of God, Cormack McCarthy -  good; not quite as engaging as McCarthy's Border Trilogy

Movie Freak, Owen Glieberman - non-fiction, a movie critic's life story, funny and revealing

Strangle Hold, Robert Rotenberg - third in the very likable Greene police detective series

Limelight: Rush in the 80's, Martin Popoff - book 2 in this expansive band biography trilogy

Life Itself, Roger Ebert - another movie critic's memoirs... the most famous of all, right? Great!

Stray Bullets, Robert Rotenberg - solid crime thriller in the continuing Greene adventures

Fall of Hyperion, Dan Simmons - sequel to modern sci-fi classic Hyperion; nearly as good

Heart of the City, Robert Rotenberg - an even better entry in the Greene cop-law series

The Rose Code, Kate Quinn - loosely based on real WWII code breakers, great fun

The Innocent, David Baldacci - solid thriller from this best-selling author

The Hit, David Baldacci - follow-up to The Innocent, not quite as effective but still good

Downfall, Robert Rotenberg - the formula works, so the author sticks to safe ground. Good.

Testimony, Scott Turow - well-written characters and unique story hooked me from start to finish

Drood, Dan Simmons - fictional horror-mystery tale of Charles Dickens (in progress)

Driven: Rush in the 90's and In The End, Martin Popoff - final instalment in the trilogy biography of Canadian rock music legends Rush (in progress)