My 2021 Retrospective

                             WELCOME TO NEW YEAR

But first this is what 2021 looked like:

My 2021 statistics are a mixed bag.  The great news is that this blog's views more than doubled.  Yet I posted fewer reviews and read fewer books.  So I don't think that the trend of increasing views can possibly be sustained in 2022 unless I increase my reading and reviewing.  In blog land, you usually don't get an increasing audience unless your content is also increasing.  For the record, my total views in the entire history of this blog are now 56,041. 

My most viewed blog post in 2021 was a review of  A Door Into Earth on Flying High Reviews here .This is a book about a female Afghani-American going to Afghanistan.  I would speculate that there was great interest in Afghanistan while the U.S. was occupying that nation. I wonder if this review will continue to be read in such numbers since the U.S. has withdrawn from Afghanistan. We'll see.  My total number of views for the review of A Door Into Earth at the end of 2021 was 520 which wasn't a record number in earlier years, but certainly was in 2021. I'll be sure to check this post at the end of this year and then find out what happened with viewers of the post dealing with Afghanistan in 2022.

My most viewed post on Shomeret: Masked Reviewer in 2021 was a review of The Far Away Girl which was a blog tour post. Blog tours tend to generate many more views for a post than usual. The Far Away Girl review can be found here.

I rated ten books five stars on Goodreads in 2021.  This is fewer books than in 2020 when I had 18 five star rated books, but I also read less than half of my total number of reads for last year. This means that my percentage of five star reads was actually higher in 2021.

This completes the statistical section. The remainder of this post will be my favorite books in various categories which will be the 2021 recipients of :

                     

                        THE GOLDEN MASK AWARDS

Best Book of the Year

Do Better by Rachel Ricketts

It's also the best non-fiction and the best book published in 2021. This book caused me to reflect about how I might have unintentionally harmed African Americans.   My review of  Do Better on this blog can be found here.

 

Best Fiction

The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec

This book dealt with  my favorite female Norse mythic character Skadhi the Huntress and Loki's wife, Angrboda.  I disovered Angrboda more fully than I ever dreamed through reading The Witch's Heart.  I didn't blog about this book, but I did review it on Goodreads here.

Best Mystery

The Bombay Prince by Sujata Massey

This is also the best historical fiction of the year. It's the most recent mystery in the Perveen Mistry series.  So it's a Mistry Mystery.  It dealt with important real history taking place in India in the 1920's.  It also dealt with issues of enduring importance to Perveen which included how women can be mistreated by men. See my review of The Bombay Prince here .

Best Biography

 The First Emancipator  by Andrew Levy

This is about the life of Robert Carter, a virtually unknown American founding father who freed his slaves during his lifetime.  Robert Carter and Thomas Jefferson knew each other.  So Jefferson would have known that freeing his slaves during his lifetime could be done. See my review of The First Emancipator here.

 

I normally have more categories, but I didn't have five star books in them in 2021. I had multiple five star books in non-fiction and historical fiction, but there could only be one best book in each category. This could also be the result of having read only 54 books this past year.  Let's hope I do better in 2022.