10 Books of Summer 2021: A Retrospective

10 Books of Summer 2021 is over! I thought I’d made it easy on myself by choosing 10 instead of 20 books, but I still ended up rushing to the finish line. I read much less than usual during July because I got a new puppy, and although August partly made up for it, this didn’t help with my reading challenge. I was also distracted by books that weren’t on this list.

The ten books I chose this year also had fewer standouts than previous sets of twenty I’ve picked. I guess there were fewer chances to read something really amazing? Anyway, I didn’t read anything this time that will be in contention for my book of the year. The ten reads stacked up as follows [links to my reviews]:

The good books that I’d strongly recommend, even though they didn’t completely blow me away: The Startup Wife; The Women of Troy; Easy Meat; Milk Fed. (I feel especially warmly towards The Startup Wife, despite the issues I had with it, as it was the first ‘real’ book I managed to read after puppy madness commenced).

The books I enjoyed but about which I had reservations, ranging from more to less serious: How The One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House; The Sleeping Beauties; Holding Her Breath.

The outright disappointments: The Wild Laughter; Unsettled Ground; True Story.

Will I do 10/20 Books of Summer again next year? I still fancy doing it as a re-reading challenge, so hopefully next year I’ll focus on re-reading any 10 or 20 books from my shelves – depending on how I’m feeling!

Did you do the Books of Summer challenge this year? How did it go?

PS a gratuitous picture of the puppy (right) chewing on a cardboard tube with my mum’s sprocker puppy! she is a lot bigger now so I need to take more up-to-date photos!