2021 Year in Books
This was a slower reading year for me. 55 books broken down by fiction (31), nonfiction leadership & parenting (12) and memoirs (11). Some interesting patterns that I saw from this year:
I was over leadership books after overdosing on them in 2020. Instead, I followed my own pain-points and struggles for the 12 that I consumed. Since I spent a lot of the year writing a leadership book, I also didn’t feel like both consuming & creating in the same genre.
Fiction is a lovely escape for me. Many of these were children’s series recommended by my 10 year old. Plus a fantasy interlude through the Bridgerton series.
I’m obsessed with memoirs. For a long time, I thought my second book would be memoir. While I’ve since reconsidered that, I’ll continue to be obsessed with memoirs over the coming years while my own continues to marinate.
These 8 are the most memorable books of the year for me. I hope that you’ll also enjoy them.
Fiction
The Midnight Library is a book that I wish I’d written and has all my favorite elements—mysticism, a troubled heroine faced with infinite choice, and a magical library that lets you dip in and out of different books representing different lives.
Circe, my fave book choice from my feminist book club, shares the backstory of a woman best known for turning sailors into pigs and distracting Odysseus from his return home. It’s a story of an immortal’s transformation from her childhood as the least love child of a Titan through her own reckoning as a powerful and compassionate witch and mother.
Memoir
Chanel Miller was the unnamed Stanford assault victim who wrote a powerful letter to her attacker and then shared her story with the world. The book was traumatic and shows the healing power of both art and storytelling. I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that like my kids, Chanel Miller is bi-racial.
I read Mother Daughter Me while on a 3 week trip to Thailand and spending time quarantined with both my mother and my two daughters. I sobbed through scenes of mother-daughter relationships, and loved seeing familiar strains of my San Francisco life as Katie Hafner shares her short experiment of living with her mother and teen daughter.
Non-Fiction: Leadership and Parenting
These four books are references that I’ll continue to return to over and over again, both personally and as recommendations for others.
Humor, Seriously is an entertaining read, with a built-in assessment to understand your humor style and how to be a funnier person in business and life. The Memo is a crucial understanding of the bias, gaslighting, and ways women of color have had to adapt in the workplace.
More personally, I came to grips with how anxious I was over the past two years of the pandemic, and that I had likely been masking my anxiety for most of my life. Dr Jud’s Unwinding Anxiety helped me to better understand my triggers and ways to break out of these worry loops. Finally, as the mom of an 8th grade girl, I’ve been devouring parenting books. Lisa Damour’s Untangled shares her model for guiding teen girls into adulthood built upon her extensive research background. Both the book and her podcast have been my lifelines through these past months.
Bottom-Line
I read to learn and experience the world. I’ve always been a reader my entire life and I feel unbelievably lucky to also embrace a new identity this year — that of a writer. As I’ve become more intimate with creativity, structure, narrative, and evocative language, I appreciate the books I read even more.
Hello! I’m your host, Tutti Taygerly. I’ve spent 20+ years in product design & technology, leading teams at startups, design agencies, and large tech companies. I left Facebook in the summer of 2019 to focus on leadership coaching full-time. I write weekly about topics related to design & coaching which you can follow or learn more about my new leadership book, Make Space to Lead.