At the beginning of the year I posted a tbr with 6 books included in lists of favorite books of 2021 from bloggers, booktubers, and people from book Twitter, and today I wanted to tell you how that experiment worked out, if I enjoyed the books or not and if I found a new favorite.
These are the books I was planning to read:
I ended up reading 5 out of the six books because I decided that I was not really interested in reading The Atlas Six after the third time I loaned it from my library and didn’t even attempt to read it.
Overall, I had really good luck with the books I picked:
- Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – humorous, interesting, with unexpected twist. It had some pacing issues.
- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – rough start, a bit confusing and boring, but once the mystery started to unravel it was fascinating.
- The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher:⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Creepy, disturbing, anxiety-inducing and SO GOOD. It dragged a bit toward the end.
- Finlay Donovan is Killing It by Elle Cosimano: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- fun, fast-paced, full of twists and turns, absolutely absurd, with interesting characters that are easy to root for
- The Inheritance of Orquidea Divina by Zoraida Córdova: ⭐⭐⭐⭐- beautifully written, full of strange and wonderful magic, and explores interesting themes. I wish it dove deeper into the characters.
CONCLUSIONS
While I only gave one of the books five stars, I still think this was an absolute success. I found really good books that were a bit outside my comfort zone, since I don’t usually read magical realism or hard sci-fi and I didn’t use to read that much horror.
Also, I discovered four new-to-me authors. I have read more books by two of them (Elle Cosimano and T. Kingfisher) because I enjoyed their books so much and I’m planning on reading more books by the other two authors (Andy Weir and Susanna Clarke). I also discovered another great book by Zoraida Córdova, who is an author I love.
I think part of the reason why this experiment worked for me was that I didn’t choose the books that appeared in the biggest number of favorite lists, instead within the books that were mentioned more than once, I chose the ones that sounded interesting to me.
Overall, I really liked the experience even if reading all of these books took me a lot longer than I hoped. I will definitely be doing this again in 2023.
Bookish Wanderess 
I’m so glad you liked T Kingfisher’s work! She’s a favorite of mine. I also really loved Project Hail Mary, and if you haven’t read The Martian by Andy Weir, you’re in for a treat!
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I haven’t read The Martian but I watched the movie when it came out and love it, so I have high expectations!
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This is such a cool thing to do! I’m always afraid to read people’s favorite books in case I hate them 🙈
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Thank you! I was a little nervous and that’s why in my original post I didn’t mention who were the people that included the books in their favorites list, I didn’t want that added pressure.
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Great idea! (and in my opinion you didn’t miss much by skipping The Atlas six)
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Thank you! That’s good to know.
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What an interesting idea!
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Thank you! 💛
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Love to see that this worked out to be all four or five star reads for you! What a fun idea.
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Thank you! it was actually a real fun project and I can’t wait to do it again.
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