Books I Plan to Read in 2021

Last year, I had a baby… and finished all the books on my 2020 list! (With the caveat that my husband and I took up Cardinal Sarah’s The Day is Now Far Spent as our shared Sunday readaloud book, so I get a pass since we’re reading it slowly together).

All in all, I read 119 books (36.5k pages)—which doesn’t count readings of e.g. Guess How Much I Love You (which is really two books, since we’re on our second copy after the baby gnawed holes in the first).

The oldest books I read were St. John Chrysostom’s On Wealth and Poverty, Dostoyevsky’s Demons, Jane Eyre, Mansfield Park, and My Antonia.

As for this year, the eleven books I’m prioritizing are:

The Friendship of Christ by Robert Hugh Benson On the Prayer of Jesus by Ignatius Brianchaninov Fake Heritage: Why We Rebuild Monuments by John Darlington Shapeshifters: A Journey Through the Changing Human Body by Gavin Francis Peace and Penance in Late Medieval Italy by Katherine Ludwig Jansen Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel: The Gun That Changed Everything and the Misunderstood Genius Who Invented It by Julia Keller Tom Stoppard: A Life by Hermione Lee Uprooted: Recovering the Legacy of the Places We’ve Left Behind by Grace Olmstead The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World by Virginia Postrel Gunpowder & Glory: The Explosive Life of Frank Brock OBE by Harry Smee and Henry Macrory Perfectly Human: Nine Months with Cerian by Sarah C. Williams