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Best Books of 2021

It’s hard to believe that 2021 is already over.

In 2021 I read 100 books, but I didn’t do a breakdown by genre this year. I do think I read nearly 50 poetry books last year, which is a lot. I found that I struggled to concentrate on fiction last year. But reading poetry was easier and calming.

Not all of the books I read in 2021 were reviewed last year. I lost some of that reviewing mojo.

There are some books that I couldn’t review last year because they are in the running for the local festival and others have an embargo. You’ll see those reviews throughout 2022, but they will be tagged as “read in 2021.”

What books did you find easier to read last year? Did you struggle with your reading?

Here’s my Best Books of 2021 (though not all were published in 2021): Links go to my reviews of the books.

Nonfiction:

Children’s/Kids:

Fiction:

Poetry: (originally there were at least 12 top books on my list – I’ve narrowed that down to these 6)

Please share your Best of 2021 lists in the comments.

Dialogues With Rising Tides by Kelli Russell Agodon

Source: the poet
Paperback, 96 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Dialogues With Rising Tides by Kelli Russell Agodon is a phenomenal collection and likely one of the best I’ve read this year. You probably won’t read on if that’s all you wanted to know, but please take the time to explore this amazing book with me.

I love that each section of this collection has calls to the sea from “cross rip” to “breaksea.” The opening poem, “Hunger,” calls to the changing tides with “We are all trying to change/what we fear into something beautiful.” There are so many things to fear in the world from the political climate to the climate’s rapid heating and change and the breakdown of society. How do we change our hunger into something beautiful? Agodon further explores this tension in “String Theory Relationships” in which she tells us what we all know — “everyone wants a window or aisle seat and no one wants to sit//in the middle. Call it deniability. Call it the flashlight you keep/by the door never works in emergencies. We are all connected//

Magpies Recognize Themselves in the Mirror (pg. 8)

The evening sounds like a murder
of magpies and we’re replacing our cabinet knobs
because we can’t change the world but we can
change our hardware. America breaks my heart
some days and some days it breaks itself in two.
I watched a woman have a breakdown
in the mall today, and when the security guard
tried to help her, what I felt was all of us
peeking from her purse as she threw it
across the floor into Forever 21. And yes,
the walls felt like another way to hold us
and when she finally stopped crying
I heard her say to the fluorescent lighting,
Some days the sky is too bright. And like that
we were her flock in our black coats
and white sweaters, some of us reaching
our wings to her and some of us flying away.

If this poem doesn’t scream America and humanity, I don’t know what does. There are all of us who watch and those of us who act, and those of us who fly away from pain, emergencies, and the struggle. But part of this stems from the fact that we cannot plan for the apocalypse, as Agodon so aptly notes comes to the party “uninvited with a half-eaten bag of chips.” (“I Don’t Own Anxiety, But I Borrow It Regularly”). These are all in the first section of the collection, and you’ll be floored by not only her imagery but her keen observation of human reactions.

Another powerful poem, “How Damage Can Lead to Poetry,” in this collection tackles a family history of suicide. “Damage creates the thought/of brokenness: my ocean never has enough/songbirds, my life never has enough//song. It’s morning and there’s a whisper in my family/history—I know the suicides, the stories/of strange deaths: brother choking/on a balloon, sister tripping on the church steps/and hitting her head so perfectly//her arteries became a celebration. Bastille Day, New Year’s Eve. And she was. And he was. Gone.//” (pg. 16) Agodon also tackles bigger questions like why we choose to kill what we do, whether that’s an animal, a person, a relationship, her lines boil it down to fear. Because as she says in “Hold Still” she would not kill a butterfly for a million dollars, but “things that frighten us/are easier to kill.”

Dialogues With Rising Tides by Kelli Russell Agodon asks us to look closer at our own actions and reactions to buck social norms, like keeping our emotions tight to our chests, and reach out more often to those around us. We are all connected, we are all affected by the “rising tides,” and we all could use a little more understanding and love, including love of ourselves. This is a must-have collection.

Also, read “Queen Me” in The Los Angeles Review.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Poet:

Kelli Russell Agodon is a poet, writer, editor, book designer, and co-founder of Two Sylvias Press, living in the Seattle area. Her collection of poems Hourglass Museum was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and was shortlisted for the Julie Suk Award honoring the best book of poems published by a small press. She is also author of the bestselling The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice, which she co-authored with Martha Silano. She was the winner of ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Award in poetry, and her work has appeared in The Atlantic, New England Review, and O, The Oprah Magazine. She is a co-director of Poets on the Coast, a writing retreat for women. Visit her website.

Mailbox Monday #646

Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.

It now has its own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.

Velvet, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.

This is what we received:

Dialogues with Rising Tides by Kelli Russell Agodon, a lovely gift wrapped poetry book from the poet.

In Kelli Russell Agodon’s fourth collection, each poem facilitates a humane and honest conversation with the forces that threaten to take us under. The anxieties and heartbreaks of life―including environmental collapse, cruel politics, and the persistent specter of suicide―are met with emotional vulnerability and darkly sparkling humor. Dialogues with Rising Tides does not answer, This or that? It passionately exclaims, And also! Even in the midst of great difficulty, radiant wonders are illuminated at every turn.

What did you receive?

Hourglass Museum by Kelli Russell Agodon

Source: Purchased
eBook, 108 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Hourglass Museum by Kelli Russell Agodon creates its own gallery of art in which human interaction with artists’ work, ranging from Andy Warhol to Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keefe, is on display for readers to generate yet another level of interaction and interpretation. These poems are similar to the recursive style of painting in which a painter is seen painting himself inside of painting, etc., or something similar.

Agodon leaves readers with a number of verses to think on, including: “You said, Sometimes I still want to be needed, so I let our kitchen become a flood of time and you” and “To be master of your own fate means sometimes you have to rip up the instruction manual” and “to know the theme parks in our minds are really just a hall of mirrors.”

Even as she explores art that is recognizable, she’s also exploring human behaviors and how in some ways we self-sabotage and in others we seek solace and find little. I found many lines rang true, especially: “Poem: a form of negotiation for what haunts us.”

Hourglass Museum by Kelli Russell Agodon has an apt title in which human interaction with art is explored and the reality remains that our time is finite. She raises questions about societal norms, including the urge to thank fathers for taking their daughters by friends and teachers as if those fathers are not related to their children and not equally responsible for their care. Such innate reactions to simple acts of parenting bring this collection to life, grounding it in the personal.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Poet:

Kelli Russell Agodon is the author of Hourglass Museum (White Pine Press, 2014). She lives in the Seattle area and is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press. Visit her website.

Mailbox Monday #462

Mailbox Monday, created by Marcia at To Be Continued, formerly The Printed Page, has a permanent home at its own blog. To check out what everyone has received over the last week, visit the blog and check out the links. Leave yours too.

Also, each week, Leslie, Martha, and I will share the Books that Caught Our Eye from everyone’s weekly links.

Here’s what we received:

Louisiana Catch by Sweta Srivastava Vikram, which the publisher set for review. Pre-order this one at Barnes & Noble.

A grieving daughter and abuse survivor must summon the courage to run a feminist conference, trust a man she meets over the internet, and escape a catfishing stalker to find her power.

 

Pancakes & Pandemonium: a Humorous Culinary Cozy Mystery (Culinary Competition Mysteries Book 6) by Janel Gradowski, which I purchased.

Culinary whiz turned reluctant amateur sleuth Amy Ridley is excited to enter a cooking competition featuring her favorite breakfast treat—pancakes! But while she’s up to her elbows in batter, she’s hit with one unexpected twist after another. First her estranged mother shows up and then just as quickly vanishes again after barely saying hello. Then a vicious storm zeroes in on her small town of Kellerton, Michigan. There is damage everywhere, and one person is killed…but not by the storm.

Amy and her mother have had a strained relationship, but when Mom is tagged as the prime suspect in the murder of her former high school rival, Amy can’t help but get involved. Yes, her mother can be annoying, but she’s not a ruthless killer… is she? Aided by her charismatic husband, Amy sets out to find the truth. In a town without power and still recovering from the storm, she suddenly finds herself in a cat and mouse game where not everyone may make it out alive!

Hourglass Museum by Kelli Russell Agodon, which was a Kindle freebie.

Hourglass Museum offers a dazzling selection of poems inspired by artwork and artists that explores personal relationships and the struggle (emotionally, financially, and spiritually) of living a creative life. Agodon understands the importance of how art influences our lives and how we balance delicately realizing that we only have so much time to live and create. Hourglass Museum is a meditation in beauty, tenderness, and knowledge reaching far beyond most poetry that’s being written today.

What did you receive?