A few favorite reads from 2021

I like to read, always have and probably always will.  I mainly read when I'm walking the treadmill 5 days a week for 35 minutes.  I use my tablet for reading e-books that I get from our local public library.  I also check out "regular" books from them that I read at night before bed.  It takes me about 7-10 days to read an e-book and about 3 months (lol) to read a "regular" book because I tend to read a few pages and then am too tired to keep my eyes open.  

I thought in 2022 it might be fun to keep a list of the books I read.  I probably read about 30-40 books a year.  I haven't finished any books yet for this new year, but thought I would share 3 of my favorite from last year.  I also plan to review in sets of three, the books that I read in this new year.

So, in no particular order, here my favorites from the year 2021:

The Family by Naomi Krupitsky.  I'll just give a little synopsis of each book I feature.  This book tells the story of 2 best friends that grew up in mob families.  It is fictional.  It was easy to read, descriptive, but, without giving away anything about the end, it just ended.  It seems like the majority of books I read these days just end.  They don't wrap up loose pieces or do an epilogue so we know what happens to the characters.  I become attached to the characters in books and I want to make sure they'll be okay at the end.  Know what I mean?  Still, this book was really good and I do recommend it.

The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles.  It is historical fiction based on the heroic librarians at the American Library in Paris during WWII.  It is told in both the past and the present.  It was informative to read about the history of the library.  I didn't realize there was an American Library in Paris (still is to this day) so I did learn some new things as a result of reading this book.  I enjoyed the plot very much and it did sort of wrap things up by the end of the book.  

The final one is Nomadland by Jessica Bruder.  This was a nonfiction book.  Now normally I don't read a lot on nonfiction books (do you?).  I'm not sure why I don't.  I speed read and skim a lot when I'm reading fiction, so perhaps it is because it is harder (for me at least) to skim through a nonfiction book I find it more difficult to read them.  Maybe that's why I don't read a lot of them.  I didn't realize this was a nonfiction book until after I started reading it.  It flows like a fiction book though (I'm sure this makes no sense).  The story is basically as a way to escape homelessness some people decide to buy trailers or convert vehicles to be trailers and they basically live on the road going from camp site to camp site, seasonal job to seasonal job, in order to survive.  The book was written back in 2017 and I understand a Netflix movie was made about it, which I have not seen.  I did enjoy reading about the history about workamping (the term used for camping from site to site and working from site to site).  Amazon even hired (not sure that they still do) workampers for their seasonal times of needing lots of employees.  It was a very interesting read coupled by the fact that the annual get together for workampers was held in Quartzsite, Arizona  which is about 125 miles from where I live.  Yearly (before the pandemic) many would come to Quartzsite in January to convene as a mini convention for workamping and RV living with seminars and other get togethers to discuss the lifestyle they had chosen to pursue.  We recently drove through Quartzite on our way back to Phoenix from San Diego.  It is a very small town with a lot of RV parks.  Anyway, the book was informative and I did enjoy reading it.  Again, highly recommended.  

Let me know if you have read any of these three I featured as well as what your favorite book of 2021 might have been as well as what you are currently reading.  I am always looking for a good read.