Books Read in 2021 and Why I Didn't Read More

As an afterthought, I realized that I should write up this post summarizing what I read in 2021.  Reading has not been a priority, and I struggled to finish many books that I started.  I also started quite a few books that I could not read.  I didn't care much about writing this post, but I became interested once I got started.

I began the year decently motivated, and then my reading output dropped.  It then dropped more and stopped completely for some time.  Looking over the monthly totals, I understand why it happened.  

January:  15 books

Friday Barnes #3 Big Trouble
Friday Barnes #4 No Rules
Friday Barnes #5 The Plot Thickens
Friday Barnes #6 Danger Ahead
Friday Barnes #7 Bitter Enemies
Friday Barnes #8 Never Fear
Nancy Drew Diaries #21 Danger at the Iron Dragon
Spirit Town by Suzanne Roberts
Bicycles North! by Rita Ritchie
Hardy Boys Casefiles #45 In Self-Defense
Windswept #17 Mirror, Mirror by Virginia Nielsen
Windswept #23 A Date with Danger by Edward Hunsberger
Windswept #27 Mystery Cruise by Carole Standish
Windswept #33 Weekend of Fear by Virginia Nielsen
Lou Dunlop: Private Eye by Glen Ebisch

February:  6 books

Windswept #4 The House of Three Sisters by Virginia Nielsen
Friday Barnes #9 No Escape
Moonstone Mystery Romance #5 Something Out There
Heartbreak Cafe #1 No Experience Required
Heartbreak Cafe #2 The Main Attraction
Heartbreak Cafe #3 At Your Service

March:  6 books

Hardy Boys Adventures #22 Trouble Island
Heartbreak Cafe #4 Catch of the Day
Heartbreak Cafe #5 Love to Go
Heartbreak Cafe #6 Just Desserts
Moonstone Mystery Romance #1 Deadly Design
Moonstone Mystery Romance #2 The Shadowed Path

I did not like the Hardy Boys Adventures book at all.  Since I couldn't be bothered to write a review, I'll say it here.  The ghostwriter tried to telegraph a certain boy's race to the reader by being as vague as possible.  This is what I wrote while I was reading the book:  "I am really annoyed that the son has medium brown skin but I don't know which race.  His hair can be tucked behind his ear.  What am I supposed to visualize?  It's an epic fail when I have no idea.  I decided just to picture a white kid who is really tanned."

I know how bad that sounds, which is why I included it here.  I actually have grown to enjoy diversity in books and media, and I enjoy learning about people who are different from me.  I love the diversity of the Nancy Drew television series on The CW.  I shouldn't have to do mental gymnastics while reading a book to figure out the characteristics of diverse characters.  Attempting to picture the kid as white was what enabled me to cope.  Even so, I was bothered the entire time I was reading, because I knew that he wasn't white.  Also, (SPOILER ALERT) the kid with the medium brown skin is the culprit.  

April:  9 books

Moonstone Mystery Romance #3 Dangerous Beat
Tom Swift Inventors' Academy #6 Augmented Reality
Moonstone Mystery Romance #4 Fatal Secrets
Moonstone Mystery Romance #6 When Darkness Falls
First Love from Silhouette #1 New Boy in Town
Roswell High #1 The Outsider
First Love from Silhouette #2 Girl in the Rough
First Love from Silhouette #3 Please Let Me In
First Love from Silhouette #4 Serenade

Eventually, I will hit "publish" on my Moonstone Mystery Romance reviews.  I am quite confident that "moonstone" is used in the title of the series as a nod to the Nancy Drew series.  I also have at least two First Love from Silhouette reviews written.  I need to publish those at some point.

May:  9 books

Roswell High #2 The Wild One
Roswell High #3 The Seeker
The First 30 Days: A Zombie Apocalypse Novel by Lora Powell
Thunderbolt House by Howard Pease
The Front Page Mystery by Graham Dean
First Love from Silhouette #8 Special Girl
Nancy Drew Diaries #22 A Capitol Crime
Hull-Down for Action by Armstrong Sperry
First Love from Silhouette #135 Bid for Romance

It was in late May that I began to go off-track.  On May 22, two of my teeth began to hurt and continued to hurt through the summer until they were removed on August 3.  The pain was consistently a 7 to 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. 

Also in around late May, I threw myself back into my 30-year-long fandom of the Bee Gees.  This involved listening to all of the albums, watching biographies again, and buying merchandise.  In June, I decided to paint a room, which was a massive amount of work, since I had to move hundreds of books.  While all this was going on, my reading slowed to a crawl.

June: 3 books

You Should Be Dancing: My Life with the Bee Gees by Dennis Bryon
Hardy Boys Adventures #23 Mystery on the Mayhem Express
The Resistance Trilogy #1 Recruitment by K. A. Riley 

I enjoyed the Resistance Trilogy book enough to try the second book.  The second book lost me.

July: 2 books

Sweet Dreams #113 Private Eyes
Sweet Dreams #153 The Perfect Catch

August: 4 books

Tragedy:  The Sad Ballad of the Gibb Brothers by Jeff Apter
Sweet Dreams Special #1 My Secret Love, Janet Quin-Harkin
Tom Swift Inventors' Academy #7 The Blurred Blogger
One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus

I liked the Tom Swift book for the most part, but I once again could not write a review.  I really enjoyed One of Us Is Lying.  I tried reading the sequel, but I found it boring.

September:  1 book

Fall of Houston #1 No Way Out by T. L. Payne

I thought maybe I could get back into reading by reading dystopian series.  Unfortunately, I found the Fall of Houston books to be not that interesting.  I did not finish the second book.  At this point, I quit reading for nearly two months and didn't even notice that I wasn't reading.  School was going pretty badly during this time, besides all of the pain I was in due to the aftermath of the tooth extraction.

October:  none

November: 2 books

The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
The Hawthorne Legacy by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

In late November, I made another attempt.  Since I couldn't find any good dystopian books, I tried young adult mystery books.  I found The Inheritance Games and quickly read the two books that have been released so far.  Both books are excellent. 

Since I cannot be bothered to write reviews, I want to comment on a thought I had regarding Jennifer Barnes' treatment of race as compared to the Hardy Boys Adventures book.  On page 14, a character is introduced as a "Black man, forties, with a military bearing, who stood with his back to a wall and maintained a clear line of sight to both exits."  I knew immediately that this man was security and that he was Black.  A bit later, he is introduced as John Oren, and I already knew what I needed to know.  That made me happy.

Close to a month went by, and I tried to read again near the end of December.

December:  3 books

Arc of a Scythe #1 Scythe by Neal Shusterman
Arc of a Scythe #2 Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman
The Wasteland Chronicles #1 Apocalypse by Kyle West

I tried reading the third book in Arc of a Scythe, but I didn't find it interesting.  I then got the idea to look for free young adult apocalypse books.  That gave me some different titles.  I found some that sounded promising.  I started to read one of them, but I didn't feel like I was enjoying it enough.  I then tried the first book in the Wasteland Chronicles series.  Oh, this was about my style.  I enjoyed it, so if the plot and writing don't fall apart in the second book, I should be able to read some books in January without difficulty.

I want to read, but most all books are unappealing to me at present.  I find that the only kind of books I currently find remotely appealing are ones about an apocalypse of some kind.  I don't need it to make sense, but I do want it to have occurred in the world we know, involve very little fantasy, and be written in an engaging fashion without a bunch of boring content.  Most of the books I try fail on one or more points.  I abandoned a number of books this year since they didn't end up meeting those conditions.

I mentioned the tooth pain that began in May.  My tooth and gum pain lasted a total of 4 1/2 months.  The pain was intense.  Once the teeth were removed, my gums became very inflamed.  It was an autoimmune reaction exacerbated by the stitches.  In short, I ended up with burning mouth syndrome which lasted for around two months.  I lost weight during that time due to how painful eating was.

I got my dental implants on December 22.  This wasn't anything near as bad as having the teeth removed, but I can tell that the gum inflammation has started up again.  I hope that it doesn't turn into burning mouth syndrome and also that it doesn't last for two months.  

As an additional unneeded problem, I acquired a virus with the dental implants, as best I can guess.  I've been so careful, so I'm pretty sure that was where I got the virus.  I went one year and nine months virus-free.  This one has been quite unpleasant, probably because it had been so long and my immune system hasn't had to fight an actual outside invasion.  

I tested negative for covid, so I'm confident that this was just a cold.  My overactive immune system saw the virus as a dire threat and launched quite an attack against it, causing me to be quite unwell for most of the last week.  My symptoms are lingering but gradually easing.

Reading is not my top interest at this point in time.  I'm much more interested in passive media.  

I purchased all three seasons of the current Nancy Drew television series on Amazon prime video.  I watched all of the old episodes again this fall.  I watched some of them more than once while I was figuring out some plot points.  That was fun.

I watched the three Netflix Fear Street movies back in July.  I recall watching the first movie on the day that I began taking an antibiotic for the infected teeth.  I felt so bad that day.

On Sunday, I watched the movie Don't Look Up on Netflix, and I watched it again a few days later.  The movie is an allegory about climate change, but the story works quite well as an allegory for the pandemic.  I have found the pandemic to be the most fascinating (and stressful) train wreck, so the movie capped it off for me.

I also watched the second season of The Baby-Sitters Club on Netflix months ago.  It's a really cute show, and I especially adore Claudia. 

I watched Only Murders in the Building on Hulu this fall.  The show's plot ties in with the Hardy Boys books, which are prominently featured in several episodes.

I have kept quite busy, so it should be understandable why I didn't read as many books.  For a time, I thought that I wouldn't even make it past 50 books, so I'm pleased that I ended up reading 60 books altogether.  One study found that Americans read an average of 12 books per year with the median American reading just 4 books per year.  Reading 60 books is just fine.  

In closing, I want to express that I do not need any advice.  While most books do not interest me right now, I read as fast and with as much interest as ever when I come across a book that does interest me.  I haven't changed, but I have other concerns and interests right now.