The calendar has rolled over, meaning it’s time to provide an update on my reading over the last year. For my previous lists, you can see what I read in 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016.

	Title	Author	Date Completed	Pages
1	Clanlands	Sam Heughan & Graham McTavish	01-Jan	352
2	Lean Out	Tara Henley	03-Jan	336
3	Moon of the Crusted Snow	Waubgeshig Rice	05-Jan	224
4	Sovereignty	Ryan Michler	12-Jan	266
5	Eat a Peach: A Memoir	David Chang	14-Jan	304
6	Neverwhere	Neil Gaiman	19-Jan	480
7	The Office: The Untold Story…	Andy Greene	24-Jan	464
8	Angels & Demons	Dan Brown	30-Jan	736
9*	Meditations	Marcus Aurelius	07-Feb	256
10	The Practice	Seth Godin	23-Feb	272
11*	The Righteous Mind	Jonathan Haidt	12-Mar	528
12	A Clash of Kings	George R.R. Martin	29-Mar	1040
13	Hold Me Tight	Dr. Sue Johnson	26-Apr	320
14*	To Pixar and Beyond	Lawrence Levy	26-Apr	272
15	Cool Sex	Diana Richardson & Wendy Doeleman	30-Apr	128
16	Mindfuck	Christopher Wylie	10-May	288
17*	The Massey Murder	Charlotte Gray	24-May	336
18*	On Immunity	Eula Biss	21-Jun	224
19	At The Existentialist Café	Sarah Bakewell	30-Jul	448
20	Learn Like a Pro	Barbara Oakley & Olav Schewe	05-Aug	160
21	The Great Influenza	John M Barry	05-Aug	560
22	The New Father	Armin A. Brott	07-Aug	336
23	Effortless	Greg McKeown	07-Aug	272
24	Can’t Even	Anne Helen Petersen	13-Aug	304
25	The Happiness Hypothesis	Jonathan Haidt	13-Aug	320
26	Switch	Chip Heath and Dan Heath	16-Aug	320
27	The Bully Pulpit	Doris Kearns Goodwin	22-Aug	912
28	Saving Justice	James Comey	22-Aug	240
29	An Elegant Defense	Matt Richtel	27-Aug	448
30	Infinitely Full of Hope	Tom Whyman	06-Sep	218
31*	The Black Count	Tom Reiss	22-Sep	432
32	Think Again	Adam Grant	01-Oct	320
33	Lives of the Stoics	Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman	03-Oct	352
34*	A Knock on the Door	Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada	06-Oct	296
35	Our Own Worst Enemy	Tom Nichols	07-Oct	256
36	A Storm of Swords	George R.R. Martin	11-Oct	1216
37	How Ike Led	Susan Eisenhower	17-Oct	400
38	Braiding Sweetgrass	Robin Wall Kimmerer	29-Oct	408
39*	Social Empathy	Elizabeth Segal	05-Nov	256
40	Noise	Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein	09-Nov	464
41	Finding Your Element	Ken Robinson with Lou Aronica	12-Nov	320
42	The Storyteller	Dave Grohl	14-Nov	384
43	Why We Make Things and Why It Matters	Peter Korn	16-Nov	176
44	For Small Creatures Such As We	Sasha Sagan	18-Nov	288
45	Courage is Calling	Ryan Holiday	24-Nov	304
46*	The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work	John M Gottman and Nan Silver	06-Dec	288
47	Mr. Dickens and His Carol	Samantha Silva	08-Dec	288
48	The Ghost of Christmas Past	Rhys Bowen	14-Dec	272
49	Why We Sleep	Matthew Walker	19-Dec	368
50	In A Holidaze	Christina Lauren	20-Dec	336
51	Christmas Every Day	Beth Moran	24-Dec	408
52	A Christmas Carol	Charles Dickens	24-Dec	112
			Total	19308

This year was a huge step up in the number of books I got through. In 2020 I came in at 38 books, whereas I settled into a good groove and managed 52 books for 2021, or a book per week on average. The big months were January (8 books), August (10 books), and October through December (7 books each month). 2020 was a tough year on everyone as we made the pivot to pandemic life; I was also preoccupied with my wife’s pregnancy and later the birth of our son. For 2021, things settled and we found new normals to operate within. I still relied heavily on audiobooks, but I found that where I made the majority of my reading progress during my work commutes in the before-times, I now find time while walking the dog and doing chores around the house to squeeze in a listen.

I’m also happy to see I continued my trend started in 2020 to move away from predominantly reading self-help and business books. While they are still sprinkled throughout, I embraced more fiction, memoirs, books on history, and discussions of complex social issues.

My book club was down slightly over last year, coming in at 9 books for the year. We also celebrated a birth and added a new member which is exciting. In the table above, the asterisked numbers denote book club entries, but I have included them collected below:

1. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
2. The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
3. To Pixar and Beyond by Lawrence Levy
4. The Massey Murder by Charlotte Gray
5. On Immunity by Eula Biss
6. The Black Count by Tom Reiss
7. A Knock on the Door by Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
8. Social Empathy by Elizabeth Segal
9. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John M Gottman and Nan Silver

And to round out the post, here are my top five reads of the year in chronological order:

1. Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice (this book was so good, I bought two copies and mailed them to friends as gifts – one going all the way to Scotland!)
2. The Great Influenza by John M Barry (if history doesn’t repeat itself, then at the very least it rhymes, and so learning about the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919 helps to contextualize our experiences over the last two years)
3. How Ike Led by Susan Eisenhower (I took so many notes reading this book and will revisit the lessons of Dwight Eisenhower often)
4. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (this was my first proper introduction to Indigenous ways of knowing, and my worldview has been made richer for it)
5. Why We Make Things and Why It Matters by Peter Korn (a beautiful memoir and reflection on the nature of making, craft, art, and finding your calling within a career)

2021 was a great year of reading for me. Despite feeling adrift in the monotony of the pandemic (or languishing, as Adam Grant claims it), I found exploring both ideas and fictional worlds to be immensely rewarding. My horizons have expanded and I’m looking forward to continuing this exploration into the new year. I’m intending on tackling more biographies, books on history, and works of fiction. I’ve also decided to explore another genre – comic books! With all the great media being adapted from comic books (and now that I have disposable income), I’m intending on diving into some of the celebrated collected volumes that I missed out back in my Wizard reading days.

Happy New Year!

Stay Awesome,

Ryan