2021 was a stellar non-fiction year for me. I read almost 70 books in this category, which made this list very difficult to put together. Even after setting aside my absolute top favourites that I have already covered, I ended up with more than 15 books I wanted to highlight. I could of course have steeled myself and whittled the list down to 10 or something else more manageable, but as I didn’t do regular monthly round-ups last year, I prefer to include more books rather than less.

First, a quick reminder of the five books that were among my overall 2021 favourites: ACE by Angela Chen, Natives by Akala, Dear Senthuran by Akwaeke Emezi, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez. I will not go into detail here, but these are all brilliant and very much recommended. So on to the rest.

It was a year when I read several important books about racism. I have already praised Akala, but Claudia Rankine’s Just Us could equally well have been in my top 12 of 2021. She continues to examine race relations in the US with extraordinary bravery, nuance and intelligence. Her books are challenging, as she likes to experiment with form and she doesn’t deal in slogans or platitudes, but they are also rewarding.

If you want something more straightforward, you could do much worse than Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste. I was on everyone’s best nonfiction list for 2020 and I finally got round to reading it (or in fact, mostly listening to it) last year. Wilkerson’s main thesis is that the US is a caste society, similarly to India and Nazi Germany, with the blacks as the lowest caste. You don’t have to fully agree with her conceptualisation of racism in the US to get a lot out of the book. My favourite parts were actually on India, as I know very little about the caste system there.

Let me also quickly mention two short books that aren’t ‘officially’ on this list, but are both excellent and work wonderfully if you really want to read something on race but struggle for time: James Balwin: The Last Interview and Whites: On Race and Other Falsehoods by Otegha Uwagba. The latter is only 90 pages, but packs a punch.

Racism of course isn’t only directed towards blacks. Last year, I read 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act, which is a short book about the horrific treatment of indigenous peoples in Canada. This is of course mostly meant for Canadians, but it’s an enlightening read for anyone interested in truth and justice. I also read Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings, a collection of essays on anti-Asian racism and prejudice. It was of course sadly topical in 2021, but I highly recommend this as an introduction to the topic, no matter the year.

On a related note, I read two memoirs that also have Asian heritage and identity as central themes: Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart and Nina Mingya Powles’s Small Bodies of Water. Zauner is half-Korean and lives in the US, Powles half-Chinese and grew up in New Zealand. I enjoyed both of these a lot, although considering that Crying in H Mart centers on the death of Zauner’s mother, it’s not exactly a happy read. Zauner focuses more on family, grief and food, while Powles talks more about nature and travel and is more poetic. Where they overlap is the struggle with identity, trying to make sense of who they are and where they fit. Both are also quick, effortless reads.

Another smart woman with Asian (Indian) roots, Amia Srinivasan, wrote my favourite feminist book of the year: The Right to Sex. It took me a while to warm to it, mostly I think because my expectations were sky-high, but in the end I appreciated it a lot. Srinivasan is a philosopher and writes from a very clear ideological point of view, while being very transparent about it and examining all her points rigorously and transparently. I respect the fact that her logic sometimes takes her to places that aren’t 100% aligned with mainstream feminism (while still seeming fully feminist to me).

The other feminist work I really enjoyed was Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work, her somewhat controversial take on motherhood. I didn’t find it controversial at all, but interesting and often relatable. I really enjoy Cusk’s aloof, intellectual and sometimes awkward voice in her non-fiction and that’s on full display here.

I hesitate to call Vanessa Springora’s book a feminist book, although Consent certainly tackles a topic very close to many feminist’s hearts: the sexual abuse of minors. Springora was a teenager when she was in a ‘relationship’ with a much older, acclaimed writer – with the knowledge of her mother and the French literary establishment. It’s a difficult book to read, but it’s necessary and powerful.

While I am relatively well-versed in feminism, I’m much less so when it comes to ableism. I read a couple of books about disability last year and found Rebekah Taussig’s Sitting Pretty a really good introduction to the topic. It is a memoir in essays about her life in the wheelchair and comes also recommended by Jen Campbell, who is my lodestar for everything disability and chronic illness related. And as we are on the topic of essays, let me also give a shout-out to Joan Didion’s Let Me Tell You What I Mean, which is far from being her best book, but still a great read and must be mentioned now that she no longer can add to her oeuvre.

India has already crept into this post and I plan to read more about the country this year. I started already last year, though, with Tony Joseph’s Early Indians. This is a rather niche book (at least for the European audience) that looks at early history and population genetics of India. I am fascinated by these topics and found the book incredibly interesting and well-written. It also opened my eyes to how history and genetics are a battleground in today’s India, with nationalists refusing to accept scientific evidence that doesn’t match their beliefs.

Which brings me to David W. Anthony’s classic book The Horse, the Wheel, and Language that argued convincingly (already in 2007, without the genetic evidence being available), that the proto-Indo-European homeland was likely in the Pontic steppe of today’s Ukraine and Russia. This is an impressive and rather academic book, so I would only recommend it to people with a more than passing interest in the topic. And whatever you do, don’t pick the audiobook, it’s almost impossible to follow if you aren’t an expert in the field.

Another country I plan to read more about in 2021 is China. I had a decent start last year and wanted to highlight The Shortest History of China by Linda Jaivin. It’s not the most amazing history book ever, but it does what it sets out to do and gives you a quick, accessible overview of the history of China. As you can imagine, this is not an easy task and Jaivin deserves credit for doing such a great job.

Finally, some nature and science books. I loved Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction and her new book, Under a White Sky is great as well. It is perhaps not quite as good as her most famous work (which is an almost impossible standard to meet anyway) and a bit uneven, but it’s fascinating and brilliantly reported nevertheless. This time, she focuses on how humans have tried to ‘improve’ nature or fix problems we have created – almost always creating new and even larger problems as a result.

While Kolbert’s book is scary, Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life is a pure delight. This is a book about fungi and the combination of a genuinely interesting topic and Sheldrake’s enthusiasm (plus top-notch writing skills) create an absolutely wonderful read. You don’t need to be a mushroom fan to enjoy this, although at least some interest in nature is probably required.

Last but not least, I want to highlight Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s The Disordered Cosmos – which I simply could not find on my disordered bookshelves or even more disordered stacks of books scattered around the house. I love to read about the universe and have encountered some abolute gems in recent years (hi, Katie Mack!). This book is, however, unique in how it approaches the topic: it mixes themes like dark matter with the author’s personal story in science as well as criticism of the Western scientific establishment and way of doing science in general. It is a fresh, almost radical approach that probably will not work for everyone, but is eye-opening for those who are willing to go along for the ride.

What were your favourite non-fiction reads of last year?