#13 Reflections: Top 10 Books of 2021

This year I read 27 books. Significantly less than 2020 but it was inevitable as lockdown came to an end and the fast-paced life picked up again. Considering how busy the year was, I’m pretty proud of myself.

So here goes my top 10 of 2021

1. If The Oceans Were Ink — Carla Power

2. The New Odyssey — Patrick Kingsley

3. The Monk of Mokha — Dave Eggers

4. A Place of Refuge — Asmaa Hussein

5. The Boy With Two Hearts — Hamed Amiri

6. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years — Donald Miller

7. Long Walk to Freedom — Nelson Mandela

8. I Refuse to Condemn — Asim Qureshi

9. The Simple Seerah — Asim Khan

10. My Past Is a Foreign Country — Zeba Talkhani

(For the full reviews, check out my guide)

Yes, this list contains no fiction. It was a surprise to myself too. I remember a time where I used to make fun of my mum for having such a boring taste in books, that being biographies and memoirs. Why read about real life people when you could read about fantastical worlds of faeries and aliens I used to wonder. And here I am, a couple of years later with not a single fiction book in my top 10.

Sadly, none of the fiction I read this year turned out to be extraordinary. I can maybe give an honorable mention to Anxious People by Fredrik Banckman, but that was about it.

It’s safe to say that this year was a fabulous year of memoirs. I really can’t wait to carry that on next year too.

So help me out — what’s your favorite memoir/biography?