Brent's Top 11 of 2021

 Last year, I had my highest book count since 50B started, and didn't even write a year end wrap-up. As much as I've enjoyed reading these last few years, writing about it has been a challenge. And yet that's not because there's not plenty to say, or plenty to learn. As Chris mentioned in his year-end, it seems that the more I read, the more there is to read, both fiction and nonfiction. For the first time, I think, I have two nonfiction books in my top 10, and 6 are from non-American or non-white writers. And I think that's pretty cool. No way would that have happened without this project.

Honorable mentions:

On Social Justice - St. Basil the Great
In a year marked by many Christians vocally opposing CRT and economic justice, these essays outline a radically Christian approach to economics that dates  to the earliest days of the Christian church.

Queer Theology - Linn Tonstad
If economic justice dates to the earliest days of the church, the battle for full inclusion of sexual minorities is still raging in many quarters. Eschewing the discussions of whether this should be, Tonstad lays out a bold, sometimes bracing, vision of queerness in the church. I followed this up with her more in-depth God and Difference but I think this left the deeper impression.

Some Do Not - Ford Maddox Ford
This should probably be in my top 10, but with three volumes to go, it's only part of a story. But the slow-paced, realist-modernist style of SDN really worked for me--I don't recall every plot point but I can conjure the way it made me feel even now.

Treasure Island!!! - Sara Levine
The funniest book I read this year, with perhaps one exception, Levine's little novel starts out as a farce but becomes something more deep and complex without ever losing its wit, even though it gets harder to laugh.

Death in Her Hands - Ottessah Mosfegh
This strange little book starts off like a Cozy Mystery--an old woman finds a strange note, and tries, alongside her faithful dog, to solve the mystery. But as it goes on it becomes more akin to Auster's New York Trilogy, an existential mystery that may be unsolvable, or might not exist at all. Supposedly this is Mosfegh's weakest novel and if that's so I have some good stuff to look forward to.

Ok, I couldn't get this down to 10 so here's my top 11 for the year, order is mostly ceremonial until the top 3.

11. The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code - Margalit Fox
No question, this was the most fun I had reading a book this year. Nonfiction, Fox follows three codebreakers as they attempt to unravel the mystery of an ancient script over the course of 60 years. A marvel of exposition, and plenty to think about re:epistemology and perspective--I read this in a couple days and wished it was longer.

10. Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
The last book I read this year and one of the best. Wharton is a realist's realist, and every character she writes, whether they get a few lines or half the book, lives and breathes in ways most others do not. Ostensibly about adultery, it's really about the way social structures create an illusion of order and, yes, innocence that doesn't really exist, and the ways that illusion damages the people in its orbit, especially those without any real power.

9. Taking Care - Joy Williams
Joy Williams is one of our best living writers (along with Gerald Murnane and Marilynne Robinson) and this short story collection captures her uniquely madcap style in short form. Unfortunately I read this very early in the year and didn't review it, but lines and ideas from it have come to mind over and over. Read The Quick and the Dead first, but read this too.

8. Dreamer - Charles Johnson
Last year I read Johnson' Middle Passage, which was alternately horrifying, hysterical, and fantastical, but this novel, about a young man working with MLK Jr who meets and befriends Chaym Smith, MLK's strange, violent doppelganger. The premise is even more fantastical than Middle Passage, and at times it crackles with an energy akin to Ishmael Reed's racially-charged fantasias. Something about Johnson's style really gets under the skin, and he also knows how to end a book.

7. The Memory Police - Yoko Ogawa
Ogawa's bestseller about fascism and memory is like nothing else I read this year. Told in short, crystal clear vignettes, this story of a mysterious government that slowly outlaws objects and removes them so thoroughly that the populace forgets they ever existed is haunting and ambiguous in the way only the best science fiction--if this is science fiction at all--is. It hit even harder in a year where the powerful first redefine then remove books that challenge their hegemony--what better way to remove something from existence?
 
6. Distant View of a Minaret - Alifa Rifaat
A moving and often upsetting collection of short stories set in Egypt, these narratives, mostly about poor women dealing with abusive or uncaring men, is an indictment of patriarchy and a blazing cry for justice. Rifaat was a devout Muslim and as such her characters don't have the option to leave, or seek out sexual or emotional satisfaction elsewhere--strikingly for someone weaned on American and European literature, they never even consider this course of action--the tension between moral belief and personal happiness drives the pathos in every one of these,

5. The Story of my Teeth - Valeria Luiselli
The other contender for the funniest book I read this year, Luiselli's book is a celebration of the absurdity and beauty of a blue-collar life, exemplified by an auctioneer who specializes in selling famous teeth. It's often said that fiction captures truth better than nonfiction, and Luiselli makes a strong case that absurdity captures some truths more effectively than realism. Much like Hilary Leichter's Temporary, the absurdity here highlights the absurdity of the real world by attempting to outdo it before looking back and realizing that that isn't really possible

4. Memoirs of a Porcupine - Alain Mabanckou
Ok, this one was funny too. Something of an extended Congolese fairy tale in epistolary form (the titular porcupine is recounting his life to a baobab tree), this "memoir" tells the story of an evil animal double, the porcupine, as he serves his master Kibandi and his evil human double, who looks just like him but has no face. As Kibandi gives the porcupine more and more macabre tasks, he begins to question his mission, his life, and his eventual end. Though it's sometimes disturbing, the overarching ideas of destiny, moral choice, and the value of talking it out with a really old tree are just a pleasure to read.

3. Queering Wesley, Queering the Church - Keegan Osinzki
This is the book I recommended the most this year. Though both Tonstad books I read were very engaging and thought-provoking, as someone who grew up and was formed by Wesleyan doctrine, this was the one that hit the hardest. Osinzki's re-readings of Wesleyan doctrines, especially Christian Perfection, in ways that both integrate and validate queerness moved me to tears more than once. So many people I wish would read this book likely never will--but I'm glad I did.

2. A Strong Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes
Any other year this would have been number one. A completely sui generis novel, this story of a family dispossesed by a hurricane and their subsequent adventures on a pirate ship has a premise that sounds like a Disney movie but plays out like David Lynch by way of Wes Anderson. And if that sounds unbearably pretentious and twee, well, this is one of those books that a capsule can't do justice to.

1. The Radiance of the King - Camara Laye
When I finished Radiance, I knew it was going to be my #1 of the year, even though I read it very early on. It follows a British expat as he journeys through Africa, seeking audience with "the king" so he can be reunited with his countrymen. It's an uncomfortable, often hilarious indictment of colonial attitudes and narratives, dipping its toe into surreality but never quite losing the earthiness than makes it so effective. And the ending is the most moving thing I read this year somehow, a real emergent moment of stepping out of colonial darkness into the light, an indictment of Conrad and all those who followed him, a revelation of the light at the heart of Africa.

And that's it for this year. I've really enjoyed seeking out more world lit, and I can't wait to dive deeper next year,