Our Favorite Reads of 2021

You should have heard the grumbling when we asked our staff to pick their three favorite reads from 2021. If we’d had a dollar for every time someone muttered, “How can I pick just three?” … well, our book-buying budget for 2022 would be much larger.

They persevered and winnowed their lists down to their favorites, as listed below. But rest assured: should you need more reading recommendations, our librarians have plenty.

Al’s favorites:

• The Souvenir Museum (stories), Elizabeth McCracken
• A Town Called Solace, Mary Lawson
• Leave It As It Is: A Journey through Theodore Roosevelt’s American Wilderness, David Gessner

Amy’s favorites:

• Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead
• Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe (enthusiastically cosigned by Hillary!)
• How the Word is Passed, Clint Smith (particularly good on audio)

Cedric’s favorites:

• Smut, Alan Bennett
• Emporium, Adam Johnson
• Vesper Flights, Helen MacDonald

Chris’s favorites:

• Powers and Thrones, Dan Jones
• The Great Mistake, Jonathan Lee (recommendation cosigned by Al and Hillary!)
• City of Bohane, Kevin Barry

Hillary’s favorites:

• A Little Devil in America, Hanif Abdurraqib
• The Great Dissenter: The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America’s Judicial Hero, Peter S. Canellos (loads of Cincinnati history!)
• Matrix, Lauren Groff

John’s favorites:

• The Boy in The Field, Margot Livesey
• Behind The Scenes at The Museum, Kate Atkinson
• Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng

Phoebe’s favorites:

• All Systems Red, Martha Wells (This is the first book in the Murderbot Diaries series, which is recommended by several Mercantile readers.)
• The Light Ages, Seb Faulk (When read by its very enthusiastic British author, this book about medieval math and science is extra charming!)
• Hearing Homer’s Song, Robert Kanigel