While I read fewer books in 2021 than in prior years, those books had a large impact on me. The main themes were silence, technology, and Zen Buddhism. (I wrote about my exploration of silence and solitude in this post.) My favorite books of the year were Less is More, Opening the Hand of Thought, The Wild God of the World, and Breaking Bread with the Dead.
- China Root: Taoism, Ch’an, and Original Zen by David Hinton
- Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel
- Work Won’t Love You Back by Sarah Jaffe
- Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
- How to Shit in the Woods by Kathleen Meyer
- The Yoga of Eating by Charles Eisenstein
- The Provisioner by Rhyd Wildermuth
- Ned Ludd and Queen Mab by Peter Linebaugh
- The Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton
- Greening of the Self by Joanna Macy
- Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits by Bill Porter
- Hermits by Peter France
- The Mountain of Silence by Kyriacos Markides
- Solitude by Anthony Storr
- Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life by Zena Hitz
- How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism by Cory Doctorow
- Opening the Hand of Thought by Kosho Uchiyama
- Privacy is Power by Carissa Veliz
- Refining Your Life by Dogen and Uchiyama
- The Wild God of the World by Robinson Jeffers
- Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind by Alan Jacobs