I’m starting off the new book year and looking back to share some of my 2021 reading highlights with you. Maybe you’re looking for a short book or a long book, a popular one or one you’ve not yet read, a book by an Oregon author—or something else. Here we go:

I read 36 books in 2021, equaling 9,197 pages! My average rating was 4.3 stars; I gave 5 stars perfect ratings to about 12, so not such a grumpy critic, was I!

The shortest book I read was “The Catalog of Small Contentments,” 120 pages by Portland poet Carolyn Martin. The longest was best-selling “The Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles. (576 pages.)

The most popular of books I read was “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro. Over one million readers on Goodreads shelved this book. The highest rated on my booklist was “The Point of Vanishing” by Portland-area author Maryka Biaggio.

All of my 36 books are reviewed on Goodreads; my first review of 2021 was “The Girl and the Bombardier” by Susan Tate Ankeny of Newberg, Oregon. I gave this book 5 stars. My last review of the year, also rating 5 stars, was “The Snow Child” by Alaska author Eowyn Ivey.

Other books I read in 2021 by Portland-area authors were “Claws for Concern” by Sheila Deeth, “One Long River of Song” and “Chicago” by the late Brian Doyle, “The Night Always Comes” by Willy Vlautin, “Fuzzy Logic” by Maren Anderson, “The Sound of Murder” by Cindy Brown, “Cat Conundrum” by Mollie Hunt, and “Where Lilacs Still Bloom” by Jane Kirkpatrick.

Happy New Year and Good Reading to All in 2022! If you’re browsing, take a look at the Writers’ Mill’s latest anthology, “The Floor Above,” available on Amazon. Profits go to the Portland-area Cedar Mill Library.