Caro’s 2021 Reading Review & Awards

A summary of books read, reading lessons learnt and my recommended reads.

Female authors recommended to me from a Facebook call out for help in early 2021. Image: author’s own.

Hooray! It took only (!) five years to achieve a gender-balanced reading year in 2021; 12 books by males and 12 books by females (and one by an Association of Poles). Yeah but… I have to read 16 more books written by females to redress the accumulated imbalance from previous years.

Imperfect reading overview 2017–2021. Image: author’s own.

Gender imbalance is common across the arts, not just literature. Try to become aware of it then make efforts to address it.

Women: Right to Enter Stage Left?

My biggest reading lesson of 2021 was the joys of reading aloud to my partner, which started on a camping trip when he’d forgotten his book. The bedtime habit continued and for our second book, we ambitiously launched into the longest (and oldest) book of the year, Don Quixote, its 1376 pages took us over four months! What’s good for little people is often good for bigger people too…