2023 in Books

It’s 2024, if you can believe it. I don’t think I’ve had such an absolute year since the disaster that was 2020 – although in this case for much better reasons. But on the whole, though 2023 felt crazy and ridiculous, almost everything turned out better this year than 2022 (which was a rough year personally).

For the past two years, I’ve been working in a job that let me have earbuds in while I work. That meant audiobooks – 40 to 50 (sometimes up to 60) hours a week of audiobooks at 1.75x speed. I got through a lot of books that way. But in March 2023, after almost exactly two years, I left that job for one that is significantly better but involves significantly fewer earbuds. (I am actually allowed to read books on my computer at the new job if we’re not busy, but the amount of “not busy” time varies.) Naturally, going from reading as a full-time job to reading in my spare time had a dramatic affect on the quantity of books I read. But it also had some other, less-expected and less-intended effects.

I switched back to physical books. Since I no longer have large chunks of time to read audiobooks, I’m back to reading print books regularly. I was actually excited about this change, because I had always been a print book lover and audiobooks were a matter of conveninece and opportunity, not preference. But after reading my first print novel in at least two years (A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe), it was quite upsetting to discover that I find print less engaging and immersive than audio. Though I’m over the rough part of adjusting to the format switch, I still prefer audio.

Going to the library in person. I used to love going to the library, any library. But I haven’t set foot in one for many years – partially due to covid, partially because audiobooks go through my library’s app, no physical library visits required. When I switched jobs, I wanted to keep reading, which meant regular library visits. But I’ve discovered that I don’t really enjoy browsing very much. My local library is MASSIVE. The sheer volume of choices is overwhelming, and the physical building is so big I generally need my cane, which makes it difficult to carry books and browse at the same time. I’ve also discovered that I really would rather browse books in an environment where I can easily filter results, check reviews, browse curated lists, and open a new tab to look up the author or other books in the series. (The StoryGraph‘s recommendation algorithm has spoiled me.)

Sticking to my TBR list. Partly because of the lack of library browsing and partly because of the overall reduction in reading volume, my reading choices haven’t been super adventurous this year. The last two years involved a lot of trying and liking new things. But almost all of those unexpected gems came from the librarian-curated lists on my library’s audiobook app. These days, most of my library trips involve me looking books up in advance to see if they’re available and where they’re located, then going to those locations and getting those books. Even when I browse, I tend to get overwhelmed by options and not check out even books that look interesting. So I’ve overall stuck almost exclusively to my TBR list and tried fewer un-researched options in 2023.

My Reading in 2023

As always, I have a lot to say about my reading in the past year (although hopefully less than last year – after all, I read significantly fewer books). I also have my StoryGraph Reading Wrap-Up for 2023. Most of the stats there are accurate. But a few aren’t – the number of books I read that I owned, for example, doesn’t include books that I owned and read, then got rid of and marked as no longer owned.

As always, none of these lists are in any particular order.

Overall Reading

My annual reading goal is always 48 books. This year I actually tracked when I hit that goal: June 6th.

In total, I read 80 books this year, which is 167% of my total goal. That’s 132 books less than last year – but considering I only had two-and-a-half months of the year where I could read the entire work day (I left the audiobook-reading job mid-March), I think that’s a perfectly reasonable number.

I also track how many books I DNF (Did Not Finish), and this year I DNF’d 48 books. So in total I picked up 128 books and finished 62.5% of them.

In reviewing, I reviewed 72 books in total, 11 of which were DNF books. I also continued the Review Shorts this year (and will continue to do them because I like the concept). I wrote 38 review shorts this year, so only 47% of my reviews in 2023 were full reviews.

Reading Charts!

I’m surprised that print was such a small proportion of my reading – but I did have three months of audiobooks and apparently more digital books than I thought.

That small bump in audiobooks in November and December was because we do a lot of driving for the holidays (both his family and my family live in different states than us) and I could listen to audiobooks while we drove.

My Goals for 2023

I set goals for my reading every year. Most of them are the same year to year. But it’s always good to check in on them. So let’s see how I did on my goals in 2023.

Finish 48 books between January 1 and December 31. Check! Because I still had the audiobook-reading job for three months, I reached it faster than I probably would have otherwise, but I definitely hit that goal.

Read at least 50% fiction. Also check! Almost three-quarters (71%) of my reading in 2023 was fiction.

Read only good books (by only reading books I’m interested in, not reading books just because I feel like I “should,” and not finishing books I’m not enjoying). I usually use the star ratings to help me analyze this one. And I read a lot of 3-star books this year, and not a lot of 5-star books. But 35 of the books I read this year (43.75%) were ones I rated 4 stars or higher. But less than half of the books I read were 4 stars or more. This tracks with my general feelings, too. I read a lot of books that were fine, finishable, even enjoyable, but not a ton that were fantastic and outstanding. So overall I’d say I did okay on this (I did, after all, only finish 4 books that I rated less than 3 stars), but I wouldn’t call it a resounding success.

Unread Shelf 2023: Read 12 books I own but haven’t read yet. I didn’t hit that one this year. I only picked up 7 Unread Shelf books this year, and ended up not finishing one of them.

Bonus: Completing series. I didn’t actually set a goal for this one, but since I’m notorious (at least to myself) for starting but never finishing series, I had a section last year on all the series I finished. This year I finished far fewer series, but I did complete a few:

• The Divine Cities
• The Invisible Kingdom
• Radiant Emperor Duology
• Contagion (technically – I picked up all the books but DNF’d the last one)

Top Fictional Reads of the Year

I don’t pick favorite books. Never have. I read so much and so broadly that it’s really difficult to compare books I really enjoy to determine which I like more. Plus, with such a variety, I often deeply love books for very different reasons.

So, as every year, instead of ranking or picking “a” favorite, this is a list of the top fiction books I read in 2023. As with every list in this post, it’s in no particular order.

Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco

It’s a vampire story, sorta. There are definitely vampires in it, at least. But it’s also a blend of Castlevania and dawn of science era a la Frankenstein, with a fascinating setting and a strong plot and, most of all, absolutely fantastic characters. There’s a generous helping of angst, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and even though I’m not usually much for romance this one was sweet, full of mutual pining, and polyamorous, which is always a bonus. The plot is surprisingly twisty and there’s plenty of action. It’s just so good – and it’s first in a series, so there’s more to come!

Godkiller by Hannah Kaner

This was one of my more unresearched selections this year – I’d read the back cover and decided that it sounded like something I’d enjoy (I’m always down for unique takes on gods), but I didn’t know much about it. So it was a delight to find that not only is it a really cool take on gods with an interesting world and a solid plot, the characters were the standout hits of the story and I loved them. Especially our protagonist, who is strong and broken and furious and violent and loyal and traumatized and all-around spectacular – and, of course, stupidly good at murdering deities. I didn’t know going in that this was first in a series but I’m so glad there’s more to come.

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher

A truly unique take on a lot of generic fantasy tropes. The sheltered youngest princess raised in a convent is perfectly happy with that; the impossible magical tasks are not the actual quest and aren’t actually all that hard for the protagonist to pull off; ideas that could have very easily become a somewhat formulaic YA gets a refreshing update with a protagonist who is thirty years old, a princess who would rather not be a princess not because she’s rebellious or wants her “freedom” but because it’s too much pressure and she’d rather knit, and who isn’t whip-smart and in fact recognizes she’s on the lower end of average. Plus she and a variety of companions are on a quest to solve some problems with murder (and honestly, I agree that’s the best solution here). All around an enjoyable story.

He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan

This is the sequel to She Who Became the Sun, which made my Top 5 Novels last year. But that doesn’t feel like cheating to me becuase while they’re both astonishingly good, it’s in very different ways. This one leans hard into the morally gray aspects of the protagonist as she passes the point where her relentless clawing upward feels essential to her safety, forcing her to confront the damage she’s doing and making both her and the reader consider if it’s worth it. It’s very dark and full of big, deep emotions. And, being the last book in the series, full of endings – bittersweet for many characters, as I wanted better for them but knew they wouldn’t get it. Dark, intense, and very, very good.

The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang

I did enjoy this book, don’t get me wrong. It’s got a compelling protagonist (and self-aware unreliable narrator) who disregards rules purely becuase she has other priorities, an engaging cast of secondary characters, some really fantastic worldbuilding creating a monotheistic multi-planet scifi society, a compeling plot with some genuinely surprising twists, and a general fantasy vibe woven among the scifi. But that’s not why it made this list. It made this list for an interesting take on unreliable narrators (although admittedly, I haven’t read many) and strong engagement with the concepts of belief, fanaticism, religious power, heresy, and ethics vs. religiosity. Those are all concepts that I find generally interesting, and watching the protagonist engage with it was like watching my own deconversion process, but in reverse. I’m going to be thinking about this one for a while.

The Hall of Honorable Mentions and the Otherwise Noteworthy

I Did Not Ask for a Therapy Session But That’s a Risk You Take With Some Books I Guess

• Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Frost and Gail Stekeete. I am not a hoarder. So I didn’t expect an impromptu therapy session from a book about the psychology of hoarding. However, I do have a somewhat complicated relationship with stuff and owning it, and I actually gained some really good insights into the psychology behind relationships with stuff in general and why my own relationship with things I own is so complicated. And even besides that, it’s an interesting read on its own.
• I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was by Barbara Sher. If you’ve spent some time in therapy, you’re familiar with the feeling where the therapist suggests something that is an amazing solution to your problem but also blindingly obvious now that they’ve said it. For me, reading this book was the literary equivalent. Nothing Barbara says is all that revolutionary or even something you couldn’t have come up with on your own. But it left me with the same feeling of vaguely sheepish enlightenment. (Plus it’s just straight-up good advice.)

If You Like Weird Books Then Do I Have a Book For You

• Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder. There’s a pandemic-driven societal collapse and old gods from outer space, and both of those are background elements in this body horror fever nightmare of a book. Unbelievably gory, extraordinarly disturbing, and contains the only book scene to ever make me physically gag. Repulsively readable. I can’t stop thinking about it.
• Naamah by Sarah Blake. Now, I am an enjoyer of weird books. But this one is so weird in so many different directions that the primary feeling I experienced was a general “what the fuck is going on?” There’s a ton of weird, uncomfortable, sometimes vaguely incestuous sex scenes. There’s insanely bizarre stuff like the angel who lives underwater with a bunch of dead children, or the time the protagonist time travels to watch an episode of Law and Order: SVU. I couldn’t even tell you if I liked it because I have no idea what is even happening here.
• Annihiliation by Jeff Van Der Meer. This is a very weird book with a definite SCP vibe. It does have some semblance of a plot, at least at the beginning, but it goes off the rails quite quickly. It goes hard on a twisted and distorted natural world and a good helping of body horror. It’s also much more towards the scifi edge of weird books than the fantasy edge where I usually read, so I don’t have as much to say about it. It’s pretty good, it’s creepy, it’s very weird. What else do you need to know?

The Gallery of Gorgeous Books

Whether or not you believe in not judging books by their covers, you have to admit that some covers are just prettier than others. This gallery is my favorite covers from books I’ve read this year. (Whether or not I enjoyed or even finished the book is irrelevant – here I judge books by their covers and by their covers alone.)

Reading Goals for 2024

Like every year, I’m aiming for my three annual reading goals: Finish 48 books, read at least 50% fiction, and only read good books.

The Unread Shelf goal (reading 12 books that I own but haven’t read yet) has become a repeating goal over the last few years, too. But I have consistently failed at that one – probably because the majority of the books I own are reference books. So I’m keeping the goal of reading books that I own but haven’t read, but I’m reducing the target to 6.

And finally, I still have a lot of series that I’m allegedly in the middle of – by which I mean I read at least one book in it, said it was really good and I intend to finish it, and then never actually kept reading. Some of these have had the next or final book on my readlist for years. (The exception is the Discworld series. I am actively reading Discworld books, but since there’s a total of 41 books, not counting the novellas/short stories between them, I’m going to cut myself some slack there.) So I am setting one additional goal to finish 3 series that I have started and intend to finish. (I have five different series on my reading list that I only need to read one more book to complete, so theoretically this one should be very doable.)

So my final list of reading goals for 2024 looks like this:

• Finish 48 books between January 1 and December 31
• Read at least 50% fiction
• Read good books, which involves…
  • Only reading books I’m truly interested in
  • Not attempting to read books because I feel like I “should”
  • Not finishing books I’m not legitimately excited to finish reading
• Unread Shelf 2024: Read 6 books that I own but haven’t yet read
• Finish reading three series that are “in progress” (meaning I have read at least one book in the series and enjoyed it enough to want to read more)

Is this a bit ambitious? Potentially. I have been known to bite off more than I can chew every now and again. But considering this is all just for fun anyway and even if I read zero books in 2024 there would be no real consequences, let’s just see how it goes. If I do it, great! If not, oh well.

Final Thoughts

I spent the last two years reading both widely and deeply and trying a lot of new concepts and genres. I did not do that so much this year. A large portion of my reading in 2023 was from by TBR list, or at least pre-researched in some fashion.

I have yet to determine if I want to change this. Perhaps 2024 will be the year I learn to enjoy browsing the library again. Perhaps it will be the year I intentionally choose books outside my comfort zone. Or perhaps it will be another year of working through my TBR list (and let’s be honest, even if I only read books on my TBR list, that would still keep me busy for a year or two).

I don’t think either option is necessarily bad. But sticking to my TBR list definitely has a more narrow scope of genres and concepts than my audiobook reading did the past few years. As much as I enjoyed finding some of the unexpected gems from my more adventurous reading choices, I’m not sure I feel particularly adventurous right now. But really, in a lot of ways life feels like it’s in a state of flux for me at the moment. I have no idea what 2024 will hold in any aspect. So I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes.

Here’s to a great 2024!

2022 in Books

Books can be many things to many people, depending on what the book is and what you want from it. But one thing books can definitely be is a way of expanding yourself – expanding into new settings, feelings, genres, and experiences, and expanding ideas, perspectives, ideologies, and ways of looking at the world.

It’s been quite a year in general for me (and in many ways not a particularly good year), but it’s also been quite a year in reading. I have found books expansive in both senses this year. I have read about things I’d never thought about before, experienced new genres and concepts that I didn’t realize I would enjoy, and encountered books that turned everything I knew on its head.

Quantity may eventually lead to quality

I am still at the job that lets me have earbuds in while I work, and we did a TON of overtime this year. (Our longest stretch of time without mandatory overtime was three weeks.) Therefore, I read a ton of books. And when you read that many books, eventually you’re going to have to start trying things you normally wouldn’t pick up because you’ve run out of books you actually want to read. I’ve DNF’d a metric ton of books that just didn’t end up being that enjoyable – both ones I expected to enjoy and ones I decided to give a chance even though I expected not to enjoy them. But I’ve also read plenty of books that turned out to be so much more enjoyable than I anticipated.

Last year was a year of reading surprises. Mainly, I was surprised to discover that things I had always hated previously could sometimes be good (namely sex scenes, graphic novels, and the entire romance genre). This year continued the theme with a few new and even more dramatic surprises.

I don’t hate literary fiction

Ever since high school (and an English Literature class specifically designed to suck the joy out of reading), I’ve considered “literary fiction” synonymous with “boring.” If it’s populated with dull, unlikeable characters, contains minimal plot, and is written to impress awards committees and/or academics with the blandest philosophical insights possible, why should I bother reading it? Literary fiction may not be the plot-driven action I’m used to, but when done right, it can be thematic, nuanced, and rich with meaning and feeling. It definitely has the ability to be dreadfully dull (especially the “man deals with his midlife crisis by having sex with barely-legal women” type), but also has the potential to be spectacular.

I don’t hate horror

Horror has been one of those genres that I’ve hesitated to even try because I’m just not a horror kind of person. Or so I thought. Remember that whole “trying new things because I’m running out of books I actually want to read” thing that I encountered this year? One of the new things I tried was horror. And it turns out I don’t hate horror. In fact, I have discovered I LOVE horror. Space horror and body horror are my favorites so far, but I’ve been trying out different horror genres and most of them are, surprisingly, pretty good. I’m not much for extreme gore, but if I have to mentally pull myself out of story immersion to keep from totally freaking out, it’s a good book.

Weird books are the best books

I first became really aware of the enthrallingly off-kilter genre of Magical Realism last year, when I read the absolutely stellar Vita Nostra. I read some more magical realism this year, both classic and new, and fell in love with its unexpected, nonsensical, and often unsettling weirdness. Even if it’s not specifically magical realism, I’ve discovered that I adore books that are weird, bizarre, and make just enough sense to be comprehensible but not necessarily enough to be coherent.

My Reading in 2022

I have a lot of stuff to stay about my reading and specific books from this year, so heads up for a very long post!

The StoryGraph also gave me my Reading Wrap-Up for 2022. The major stats (like how many books I read) are the same, but other ones are less accurate (like how long it took me to finish a book, as I update The StoryGraph when I write my review, not when I finish the book).

As always, none of these lists are in any particular order.

Overall Reading

My annual reading goal is always 48 books. If I remember right, I hit that in April. In total, I read 212 books this year, which is 442% of my goal and makes 2022 my biggest reading year EVER. I’ve been tracking my reading since 2010, and in the previous twelve years, my peak has been 2012 with 187 books. A decade later, not only did I read 50 more books than I read last year, I beat my previous record by 25 books. This is also the second year I’ve kept track of my DNF books, and I DNF’d 135 books. So in total I picked up 347 books and finished 61% of them.

In reviewing, I reviewed 149 books in total, 25 of which were DNF books. I also started doing Review Shorts this year, for books where I have a sentence or two of opinions, but not enough for a full review. I wrote 68 review shorts this year, so only 54% of my book reviews this year were full reviews.

The Details

Poetry is categorized as nonfiction, but it doesn’t matter because I only read one book of poetry this year.

The StoryGraph counts audiobooks by hours, not pages – which makes sense, but it does mess with my page count statistics.

My Goals for 2022

I set some reading goals for myself every year – some of them are always the same, and some of them change by the year. Let’s check in on the goals I set for my reading in 2022.

Finish 48 books between January 1 and December 31. Completed summa cum laude with honors, etc. I’m pretty sure I finished 48 books between January 1 and May 1.

Read at least 50% fiction. I read a ton of nonfiction this year, but I also read a ton of fiction, so it balances out. 68% of the books I finished were fiction.

Read only good books (by only reading books I’m interested in, not reading books just because I feel like I “should,” and not finishing books I’m not enjoying). I picked up a lot of crappy books this year, but I also DNF’d a lot of books, so I usually use my star ratings stats to give me an idea of this one. Ratings-wise, my numbers are a little different this year, for a couple reasons. One is that I started giving star ratings to every book I finished, not just the ones I reviewed. So the data is more complete but less positive than last year, when I only gave star ratings to books I reviewed. Also, I was more harsh in my star ratings this year and refused to give out five stars to anything I didn’t thoroughly, 100% enjoy. I finished 32 books that I rated three stars or lower. However, I also finished 103 books that I rated four stars or higher, including 25 that got a full five stars. With 60% of my finished books rated four stars or higher, I think I did pretty good this year.

Unread Shelf 2022: Read 12 books I own but haven’t read yet. I didn’t hit that one this year, as I only picked up 9 Unread Shelf books this year (and 2 of them were DNF).

A Year of Finishing Series

I am notorious (at least to myself) for reading the first book of a series, saying “that was fantastic, I desperately need book two!” and then never actually reading book two. This is especially a problem if it’s a newer book and book two isn’t out yet, but I am perfectly capable of doing it to a series whose last book came out a decade ago. This year, though, I finished a lot of series:

• Book of the Ancestor
• The Nevernight Chronicle
• Scholomance
• Wells of Sorcery

I also am reading several series that are still ongoing, so there are a few series I “completed” in the sense that I have read all the books currently published:

• Wayward Children
• Monstress
• Spells, Swords, & Stealth
• The Murderbot Diaries

And finally, there are two series I “completed” in the sense that I picked up every book in the series, but ended up DNF-ing the last one.

• The Never Tilting World
• The Serpent Gates

I also read 18 Discworld books this year, but I still haven’t finished that series …

Favorite Fictional Reads in 2022

I don’t pick overall favorite books in any category. Partly because it’s hard to compare two drastically different and very good books to pick a “favorite,” and partly because I’ve read a lot of good books and don’t want to have to pick just one or even rank them. So these are my top favorite fictional reads from 2022, in no particular order or rank.

Ship of Smoke and Steel by Django Wexler

This is the first book in the Wells of Sorcery series, and like most trilogies, I enjoyed all three books but number one was the best. I loved the angry, violent protagonist and her anger as a super power, plus she had the Protagonist Does the Impossible variation of my favorite Absurdly Powerful Protagonist trope, which was delightful. And the massive ghost ship setting was weird, dark, terrifying, and generally amazing. A bunch of fantastic elements combined to make a fantastic story.

Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White

This is a pandemic-driven post-apocalyptic story featuring queerphobia, religious trauma, and so much body horror. But it’s also insanely cathartic. Let’s be real, which of us religiously-traumatized queers wouldn’t enjoy it at least a little if their religion twisted their body as well as their spirit and enabled them to rain down bloody retribution on the people who hurt them in the name of god? I know I would. It’s extremely dark and fairly gory, but also cathartic and remarkably uplifting.

NPCs by Drew Hayes

This is the first book in the Spells, Swords, & Stealth series, and the cover and back cover copy really had a “D&D nerd decided to write and self-publish a crappy novel” vibe. I didn’t expect to finish it, let alone love it. But love it I did. Yeah, it’s a fantasy RPG-themed novel, but it also has surprisingly good characterization, remarkable emotional depth, humor that’s actually funny, and characters who know all the tropes and are just so tired of dealing with them. It’s not winning any awards, but it’s so much fun. (Plus the rest of the series is also fantastic.)

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

If Pacific Rim took place in ancient scifi China and the only way to power the mecha robots was to sacrifice the woman in a male-female pilot team, you’d get something like this book. If you’re here for action, adventure, and a protagonist who is too angry to deal with this bullshit, you’ve got it. If you want to watch an angry young woman realize how misogyny is systemic and change her target from killing an individual man to tearing down the entire system, you’ve got that. And if you want a love triangle that shakes out in the best way possible, you’ve got that too. Overall a stellar book, and I can’t wait for the sequel.

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

A smart and capable daughter is given a fate of nothingness, while her spoiled and bratty brother is given a fate of greatness. So when her brother and father die in a famine, the girl takes her brother’s identity and strives to take his fate as well. As a girl child in a world that would rather let a girl die than let a boy be uncomfortable, she chose to live by any means necessary. Featuring a morally complex queer anti-hero and set against the background of the Chinese rebellion against their Mongol rulers, this book is full of violence and yet is poetic and feels like an epic saga. I adored it.

Earth-Shattering Reads in 2022

Sometimes you read a book and feel like you just got bludgeoned across the head with a brand-new perspective. And occasionally, that new perspective is so monumental and earth-shattering that it makes you a completely different person than before you picked up the book. I haven’t called a book “life-changing” since I stopped pretending the Bible mattered to me. But if any book deserves the epithet “life-changing,” these psyche-altering volumes do.

Severance by Ling Ma

A pandemic novel in that it’s a novel about a pandemic, it’s a horror story that emphasized the helpless despair in my own life. After I put the book down I felt off-kilter, like my life (or my psyche) was in a box that just got knocked off a table and nothing inside can ever be the same again. It sparked an intense reevaluation of my day-to-day life that’s still ongoing. Pretty much everything I’m currently doing just doesn’t matter.

The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

A work of moral philosophy with an emphasis on American partisan politics, it’s not the kind of thing I expected to find earth-shattering, or even interesting enough to finish. But the idea of moral foundations and the author’s clear emphasis of the good parts of each political party (even the parties I vehemently disagree with) started another reevaluation. My political beliefs and even the values that underpin my own sense of morality are in question.

The End of the World is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan

I thought this was going to be about climate change. Climate change doesn’t even get discussed until the last chapter. Regardless of climate change, society as we know it is going to collapse. In fact, the collapse has already begun. It’s going to be a long, slow apocalypse, but the apocalypse has already started. And I am reevaluating every plan I’ve ever made about my future.

The Hall of Honorable Mentions and the Otherwise Noteworthy

I Expected Self-Help But I Got a Memoir Instead

• Tired as F*ck: Burnout at the Hands of Diet, Self-Help, and Hustle Culture by Caroline Dooner. My library categorized this as self-help, and combined with the back cover I thought it would tell me how to do a radical period of rest like the author talks about. Instead, it was mostly a memoir about the stresses that brought her to the point where she needed two years of rest in the first place. It wasn’t a bad read, actually, just not what I expected.
• For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World by Sasha Sagan. I was hoping for something more instructional about creating secular rituals and finding meaning in a meaningless universe – you know, like the title suggested. It does have a little bit of that, including some interesting notes about the kinds of rituals humans tend to create. However, a lot of it is memoir. It discusses the author’s experience with secular ritual as the daughter of Carl Sagan, and the rituals she does and plans to do with her own child. It was interesting and somewhat useful, just not as instructional as I’d hoped.
• Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May. This book was worthwhile for introducing the concept of “wintering” as an emotional season. The book provides some symptoms and an idea of what it feels like, but then goes off on a series of only vaguely related vignettes from the author’s life. It provides no real suggestions for what to actually do when you find yourself in an emotional winter. The concept is useful, but this book is mostly a rambling memoir.

I Didn’t Expect to Like It but Joke’s On Me

• The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware. I’m not usually much for mystery or thriller-type books, and while I was a slightly interested in the idea of a fortune-teller using her cold-reading skills to grift her way into an inheritance, I didn’t expect to enjoy it. And while the beginning was difficult, it ended up being really good. The Westaway family is full of secrets, the protagonist may not be a long-lost granddaughter but she might have some connection with the family anyway, and the secrets could very likely become deadly. A twisty, thrilling story all the way around.
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez. I picked this up during a very brief classics-reading kick, right before I figured out most classic books are pretty dull. This one, though, was very good. It’s magical realism, which I’ve discovered I really enjoy, and also a sweeping family saga about the rise and fall of one family across six generations. And it’s weird, and surprisingly relatable, and remarkably human. It’s not just a book about the human condition (which sounds pretentious, but is true), it’s also a good story.
• The Everlasting by Katy Simpson Smith. I’m not usually much for literary fiction and I didn’t have high hopes for this one. But I was pleasantly surprised – or should I say emotionally surprised, because this book has big feelings. There’s not much of a plot, but it’s about bodies and their betrayals – being young, growing old, being female, getting sick, becoming pregnant. And yet it’s also about the joy of being embodied. It’s deep and rich and full of religious motifs and supremely relatable struggles. I’m not sure if I precisely liked it, but I most definitely felt it.

The Gallery of Gorgeous Books

I read some books with absolutely beautiful covers this year, so here is a small gallery of my favorites. (Whether or not I enjoyed or even finished the book has no bearing here – this section judges books by their covers and by their covers alone.)

Reading Goals for 2023

Like every year, I’m aiming for my annual reading goals:

• Finish 48 books between January 1 and December 31
• Read at least 50% fiction
• Read good books, which involves…
  • Only reading books I’m truly interested in
  • Not attempting to read books because I feel like I “should”
  • Not finishing books I’m not legitimately excited to finish reading

I’m also brining back the Unread Shelf goal, because I still have a bunch of books I’ve owned but haven’t read. So again, I’m challenging myself to read 12 books that I own but haven’t read.

Final Thoughts

I’ve read a lot this year. Inevitably, that’s led me to read a wide variety of things I wouldn’t have normally read. And that’s introduced me to some things that it turns out I really enjoy. It’s also led to me picking up a ton of books that I ended up not finishing, and that’s okay too. I’m reading for fun, not to meet some arbitrary standard or goal. If I’m not having fun, what’s the point?

Here’s to a 2023 full of fun, entertaining, enjoyable, and even occasionally mind-blowing books.

A Decade of Books: Ten Years of Bluejay Reads

Ten years ago, I published the very first post on this blog. It was the third blog I’d ever started, and out of the thirteen blogs I’ve started for both personal and work purposes, it’s the only one still up and consistently active. Except for one short and unintentional hiatus due to college, Bluejay Reads has been running for a decade, and I had planned to do a big commemorative post for the occasion, featuring a bunch of stats and lists for my last ten years of reading.

However, I couldn’t find the motivation to do something massive and all-encompassing – especially since most of it would have to be done the day before to keep the statistics accurate. Plus the bias of recency would make any favorite books of the last ten years skew towards the recent (as is obvious in the “Reading Highlights” section of this post – only one of the books featured there I read pre-2017).

So instead, you get this. A few fun facts and statistics (I love statistics, my list of read books currently tracks 14 different statistics of my annual reading), highlights of a few noteworthy books with no attempt to pick any “Favorite Books of the Decade,” and a brief retrospective on reviewing, book choices, and how my understanding of books has changed as I’ve grown from a teenager into an adult.

Ten Years of Reading Stats

These stats are not 100% accurate, mainly because I didn’t divide my read books list for 2012 by month. I have the aggregate data for the entire year, but I have no way of knowing which books I read before and which ones I read after starting this blog. So these stats are for a little over ten years: January 1, 2012 through September 10, 2022.

Total Books Read: 928

Total Books Read by Year:

• 2012: 187
• 2013: 133
• 2014: 89
• 2015: 26
• 2016: 9
• 2017: 31
• 2018: 31
• 2019: 48
• 2020: 59
• 2021: 162
• 2022: 153 (January 1-September 10)

Total Books Reviewed: 642 (including 40 Review Shorts)
One of my bucket list items is to review 1,000 books – I’m definitely making progress!

Just for Fun, Some Very Inaccurate Graphs from The StoryGraph

These stats are even more inaccurate than the ones above. I didn’t start using Goodreads until 2013, I didn’t start seriously using Goodreads until a while after that, and I’m sure some of the data got messed up in the import to The StoryGraph and I haven’t bothered to go through and fix it. But I like pretty charts and The StoryGraph likes to give me pretty charts, so here are a few!

As best as I can tell, poetry is categorized as Nonfiction.

I’ve only read two of Marie Kondo’s books, one of them I just read multiple times.

Blog Stats

Since it’s been going for 10 years now, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the statistics of the actual blog and see what’s happened. Except for a brief period in 2013-2014 when I thought having a popular book review blog might make it easier to get one of my own novels published, I haven’t put any effort into promoting this blog. I also haven’t looked at the stats in several years and didn’t even know WordPress gave some of these statistics, so this is a fun surprise for me, too!

Total followers: 108 (104 via WordPress, 4 via email)

All-time traffic: 6,321 unique visitors, 9,172 total views

Total number of posts: 579

Total number of words written: 369,062
Average words per post: 637
Most words written: 2021, with 118,677 words across 182 posts

Most popular review: The Girl with the Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Roberts, with 621 views. I have no idea why that is the most popular thing I’ve written on this blog, as it was neither a particularly remarkable book (a childhood favorite, but I had outgrown it by the time I reviewed it) or a particularly remarkable review.

Reading Highlights of the Decade

Due to the biases of recency, this list skews towards books read in the last 2-3 years. But they are all fantastic books, and some of them have influenced my life and (especially in the case of Vita Nostra) the way I read, so I thought it was worth at least highlighting a few books.

Dreamdark: Blackbringer by Laini Taylor. I have reread this book four times. The first three were sometime before 2010, when I checked out three books from the library and loved this one so much that instead of reading all three books, I read this one three times back to back. It held up as a reread in 2013, and it still lives in my memory as one of the best books I’ve ever read. I am still trying to get my hands on a copy with the original, now-out-of-print orange cover that I first read.

Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko. After finishing this book, I knew it was a fantastic book, but I didn’t think it would end up on any “favorite reads” lists. And then I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I still can’t. It took a spot in my top 5 for 2021, and here it is again in noteworthy books of the last ten years. It had a significant effect on my reading habits – I’m reading more translated books, more Russian literature, more magical realism, more literary stuff that’s weird and out there and bizarre. I am still chasing the high of this book, looking for something else that’s as surreal, unsettling, and utterly, helplessly engrossing.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. I don’t know what it is about this book, but despite having never used the KonMari organizing methods on my stuff, I keep coming back to it. I first read it in 2017 on CD in my car, then reread it as an ebook in 2019, then again as an audiobook in 2021 and twice 2022. It’s a combination of comforting and inspiring and I love the calm, relaxing, and overall hopeful mood – kind of like a mom or older sister who gently says, “Yes, I see we have a problem, but I know we can fix it together.” I even (temporarily) converted to Shinto because of this book. It’s almost a comfort read, in a way, which is absolutely bizarre for a book on cleaning and organizing. Regardless, I find it worth reading just for itself.

Severance by Ling Ma. I picked this up mainly because it didn’t sound like anything I’d read before, and by the time I finished it I felt off-kilter, like my life (or my psyche) was in a box that just got knocked off a table and nothing inside can ever be the same again. I’m still thinking about it, or more accurately I’m still trying to recover from it. It’s one of those books that’s both horrible and fantastic in that it will absolutely mess you up and you should definitely not pick it up unless you’re ready for existential despair, serious soul-searching, and a sudden and intense desire to reevaluate your entire life. One of the very few books I would legitimately describe as life-altering.

An Honorable Mention to a Few Noteworthy Reads

The Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer. It starts out solidly in the Middle Grade and slowly transitions into Young Adult, and I discovered it at the perfect age for it to help ease my reading transition into YA.

Dare Me by Eric Devine. This is less because the read itself was remarkable (it was very good, but not earth-shattering), but because I’m particularly proud of the review. On Twitter, the author called it “maybe the best review of DARE ME yet.”

A Few Thoughts on Reading Choices, Understanding Stories, and Growing Up as a Reviewer

When I started this blog, I was a teenager – still in high school, still too young to have a driver’s license. Too young, in fact, to quite grasp the concept that my opinion of a book was not universal. My original goal with this site was to create a comprehensive website where there was a review of every single book so people could find out if a book was bad or not. (Though the site name has changed, the tagline “Life’s too short to read bad books” is the original from 2012.)

When I reviewed books in the early days, I started with an outline. The outline set the topic for every paragraph, and went something like this:

• Introduction, why I chose to read this book
• Thoughts on the protagonist
• Thoughts on the other protagonist or love interest, if applicable
• Thoughts on secondary, minor, and side characters
• If the plot was interesting, made sense, or was too easy to guess
• Thoughts on the setting, if it was noteworthy
• Other opinions, if applicable (this was self-published and needed an editor, thoughts about the romance or character relationships, this book would have been better if this happened instead, etc.)
• Conclusion: Would I read this again, recommend it, or read sequels?

It was very formulaic, and in many cases pretty boring. I also focused only on what was on the page. I neither noticed nor looked for any themes, motifs, or messages. Back then, I didn’t understand what any of those things really were and I thought looking at anything beyond the story’s entertainment value actively made the reading experience worse.

At the end of high school and my first year of college, I went through a hyper-religious phase. My review focus switched to how “edifying” a book was – i.e. how well it supported the fundamentalist Christian system of values and beliefs. I kept a piece of paper nearby when I read books so I could count how many times characters swore, and each review came with a “report card” to score how moral it was. Those reviews were spectacularly bad, and I’ve deleted most of them.

When I got back into reviewing in 2017, I originally went back to my old outline format. But I quickly realized that didn’t always create great reviews. I floundered along for a while, knowing I still wanted to write reviews but that the old review format no longer worked. And then last year, something just clicked.

I think it was a combination of factors. Some of it was me getting older, my brain maturing, and having more life experience. A large part was the sheer number and variety of books I read that year exposing me to new kinds of stories and new ways of writing. In 2021, I got a job that let me wear earbuds while I worked, and I started reading audiobooks for 40 hours a week. And when you read that many books, eventually you start seeing the threads beneath and between them. Regardless of the reason, though, I discovered I understood what a motif was, I could identify themes, and far from detracting from the reading experience, spotting the deeper threads of meaning behind a good story can make it even better.

That realization changed both my reviews and my reading choices.

First, I stopped trying to force my reviews to cover any particular aspect of a book. Reviews are personal and reflect my opinion, and if my opinion is less about plot and characters and more about the feelings the story evoked in me (see: Severance), my review could generally ignore plot and characters and just be about the feelings. Personally, I think that made my reviews significantly better.

Second, I’m willing to try a much broader range of books now. For a long time, I stuck to fantasy and the occasional sci-fi, mostly YA, because that’s what I knew I liked. With the job I got in 2021, the majority of my reading was limited to my library’s audiobook collection – which is admittedly extensive, but most of those books are not YA fantasy. I began to read beyond my standard fare out of necessity, and discovered that books that aren’t YA fantasy can be pretty good, too. It turns out I don’t hate the romance genre if it’s done well, I don’t hate graphic novels, horror can actually be really good, and magical realism is absolutely fantastic. I’ve also found a taste for slower, more meditative novels, early-modern and modern Russian magical realism (which sounds incredibly pretentious, let’s be honest), and especially books that are weird, bizarre, and off-kilter. But I’m now a lot more willing to try things I’m not sure I’ll like and see what happens. (The only thing I haven’t really had the courage to tackle yet is historical fiction.)

Working on this blog has been a fantastic adventure. Even though this retrospective isn’t very in-depth, it’s interesting to take a look back on how my reading tastes and reviewing style have changed. I’ve gone from sticking to YA only to reading more non-YA than YA (though I still do appreciate a good YA book now and then), from a strict review format to reviewing in whatever way feels like it fits the book, and from a rigid line between “books I like” and “books I won’t like” to a more flexible willingness to try all sorts of things, even if I don’t end up liking them in the end. I am excited to see how my reading evolves and changes in the next ten years.

Here’s to ten fantastic years of Bluejay Reads, and to ten more years of great books!

2021 in Books

Time is an illusion and the new year is fake, but it’s time for my annual reviewing of everything. My favorite part of the calendar switching to a new year is looking back at the past year – which means it’s time to look at my reading in 2021.

In March I started a new job that allows me to have headphones in while I work, so the majority of my reading switched over to audiobook. This also enabled my reading quantity to go way up – when you work 40 hours a week and listen to books at 1.5x speed, you can get through 4-6 books in an average workweek.

So let’s talk about all those books!

As always, none of these lists are in any particular order.

My Reading in 2021

I’m still using The StoryGraph – it’s out of beta, and the only thing about Goodreads that I miss the ability to have custom shelves (but it’s always updating, so I’m hoping that’s coming soon). Here are some highlights from my StoryGraph year in books.

Update: Apparently The StoryGraph does a Reading Wrap-Up similar to Goodreads’ Year in Books. So here’s mine for 2021!

Overall Reading

My usual goal for reading is 48 books, and I absolutely surpassed it this year with 162 books, or 338% of my goal. That’s 103 more books than I read last year.

This was the first year I kept track of all the books I didn’t finish, including the ones I didn’t review, and I DNF’d 78 books. So in total, I started 240 books and finished 67% of them. I also reviewed 181 books, which is 75% of the books I started.

The Details

This is how The StoryGraph broke down fiction versus nonfiction. But since I don’t know how they categorize poetry, by my math, my reading in 2021 was 3% poetry, 37.6% nonfiction, and 59.4% fiction.

I love that The StoryGraph gives me a page number chart, because I never keep track of this kind of thing on my own. I’m always surprised at how many of the books I read are less than 300 pages. This year the chart isn’t entirely accurate, since The StoryGraph isn’t great at putting audiobooks in the right page length category, but it’s interesting for me to see how many books feel much longer than they are.

Can you tell when I got the job that let me read while I worked? After I finally accepted that I’m not a podcast person in June, I finished between 18 and 21 books a month, mostly in audiobook format.

I like the star rating chart because it serves as a visual representation of how well I’m choosing only “good” books – books I’m reading because I enjoy them, not because I feel like I “should” or some other obligation. The StoryGraph doesn’t allow you to give star ratings to books you don’t finish, so that data doesn’t clutter up this chart. 80% of my reviews in 2021 were between 4.0 and 5.0 stars, so I’d say I’m doing pretty good.

My Goals

I joined the Unread Shelf Project 2021 challenge to challenge myself to read all the books I own that I haven’t read (which started the year as a little over a shelf and now is about a shelf and a half). I did complete the challenge, but only because I picked a random unread book for the “Book you bought on a trip” prompt, as the last time I bought a book on a trip was high school. I actually picked up 15 books off my unread shelf in 2021, but two of those were ones that I didn’t finish, which didn’t count for the challenge.

Other Fun Facts

• My most-read author of the year is Sir Terry Pratchett – due to my attempt to read the entire Discworld series, I read 11 of his books in 2021.
• Due to reviewing a lot of books I didn’t finish, I can accurately say that I reviewed 112% of the books I read.
• 13% of the books I finished were written by authors whose last names started with the letter C, and 6% of the books I finished were written by authors whose last names started with CH.

A Year of Reading Surprises

I have some maxims when it comes to books. I don’t like the romance genre; I don’t like sex scenes; graphic novels are inferior fiction because the art distracts from the story; if a nonfiction book isn’t either informative or practical it’s useless. 2021 was a year of surprising myself with what I liked.

• I don’t actually hate sex scenes. It’s always been one of my maxims that I don’t like sex scenes in books. However, I read a lot of books with sex scenes, and some of them (e.g. Soulless, Red White and Royal Blue, The Fifth Season) had very graphic sex scenes that I actually enjoyed. It turns out that I don’t hate sex scenes, I just hate sex scenes that are badly written, irrelevant to the story, and/or between characters with little-to-no chemistry.
• The romance genre can be good. Another one of my reading maxims is that I just don’t like the romance genre. I have actually read some – both of my grandmas were into Harlequin Romance novels and I did read a couple to make them happy. I did not like them at all and completely wrote off the entire genre as not my thing. But this year I enjoyed both a rom-com and a paranormal romance, and it turns out that if it isn’t formulaic and the characters actually have chemistry, the romance genre isn’t bad! (It helps if it’s not heterosexual, either.)
• Graphic novels are actually pretty cool. I thought I disliked graphic novels. The art always distracted me from the story, being face-blind made it next to impossible to tell the characters apart, and the 80s lettering style of emphasizing random words made it hard to parse what the characters were saying. And then I read the Monstress series and discovered that in a good graphic novel, the art supports the story instead of distracting from it, and graphic novels can actually be enjoyable.
• Naomi Novik. I picked up her book Spinning Silver because it looked vaguely interesting, and found an intricate and thrilling tale. I’ve read four of her books so far, and everything else she’s written has gone on my reading list. Even her books that are lighter on the masterful plotting are just so much fun to read, and I consider her a new favorite author.

Favorite Fictional Reads in 2021

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

This one went on my TBR list a long time ago because I’d heard somewhere it had polyamory in it. I knew next to nothing else about the book and did not expect to particularly enjoy a story about a mother searching for her kidnapped daughter. It did have a polyamorous relationship briefly in the middle, but it is so much more than that. It’s an intense, dark, tangled, brilliant story, weaving three storylines together to tell a complete story out of order, set against a backdrop of an apocalypse in a world of regular apocalypses. The worldbuilding is some of the best I’ve ever encountered, and literally everything is connected into an intricate tapestry of a story. I don’t pick #1 favorite books, but if I did this would be a definite contender.

Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko

I only picked this one up because I’m trying to read different viewpoints and this was a Russian bestseller, and I did not expect to like it. After reading I’m not entirely sure if I did like it, but I do know it was absolutely impossible to put down. It was bizarre, surreal, uncomfortable and unsettling. I didn’t understand, and then I sort of understood, and by the time I finished I still didn’t really understand but I loved it. I don’t know if any of what happened in this book was actually real or if the protagonist was going insane, but this is by far the most gripping book of the year and possibly the most gripping book I’d ever read. I could not stop wanting to come back to it.

Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone

The back cover described this book as “a feminist Guardians of the Galaxy,” which is kind of accurate in the sense that Viv, the protagonist, puts together a team of various non-Earthian creatures to fight the Empress of the Universe. But that’s about where the comparison ends. Viv is a Silicon Valley tech billionaire who somehow ends up in space, and she doesn’t understand what the heck is happening but she’s not about to let that stop her from getting home. She gathers a “team” of fantastic characters and sets out on an adventure that is full of twists and the earliest fake-out ending I’ve ever encountered. If you like found families, awesome high-tech space settings, sci-fi that almost but not quite feels like magic, brilliant characters who have to face their flaws, and/or multiple plot twists, you’ll like this book.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

You know a Naomi Novik novel had to be on this list somewhere, right? I had a really hard time choosing between this one and Uprooted because both are spectacular, but I chose this one because it’s the first one I read and also because it’s three separate but connected stories in one. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say it’s one story told through three different pairs of eyes. Each of the three heroines are their own person with their own dreams and flaws, each story is full of twists and dangerous players, and it has a very strong folktale vibe. It’s a lyrical, dense, relatable story of supernatural forces considering humans beneath their notice and humans standing up and taking back their power, set in a fantasy Poland plagued by winter Fae.

Little Thieves by Margaret Owen.

It may sound weird for a book to be tons of fun and also about dealing with intense trauma, but Little Thieves manages all that and more. I got to see some fantastic hijinks, solve a couple magical mysteries, encounter several gods, tell off some nobles, enjoy hilarious one-liners, and fight a seemingly-unstoppable antagonist armed with little more than quick thinking and thievery skills, and I also got to wrestle with some complicated feelings about mothers, face lingering trauma, stand up to past abusers, seize control over my own destiny, and start learning to be happy. Not only was it a stellar story and a lot of fun, reading it was incredibly cathartic.

The Mandatory Reading Shelf

Last year I had a “Mandatory Reading Shelf” with three nonfiction books I thought everyone should read. I found more to add this year, so I just made a page: Required Reading.

The Hall of Honorable Mentions and the Otherwise Noteworthy

Books that didn’t belong in “Best Fictional Reads” or the Required Reading page, but were noteworthy nonetheless.

The Title Promised Me Practical Knowledge But It Lied To Me

• How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell. Not a book about how to do nothing, but instead a philosophical and sociological work about context and temporality, art and perception, communication, community, the destructive nature of capitalism, and birdwatching. I actually did enjoy the book, but it offers no how-tos and very few whys.
• True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society by Farhad Manjoo. Not a book about learning to live in a post-fact society, but instead a sociological work discussing how society got to the point where objective facts are debatable. Very interesting and actually a good read, but not practical instructions.
• How Propaganda Works by Jason Stanley. Not a book about how propaganda works, but a work of political philosophy about how propaganda undermines liberal democracies. Might have good ideas, but I am not interested in political philosophy whatsoever and found it boring to the point of incomprehensibility.

Not a Literary Masterpiece but a Ton of Fun

• Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong. Both Zoey Ashe books, of which this is the first, fit in this category. It’s a cyberpunk rollick full of hysterical one-liners, a “trailer trash” barista who suddenly inherits billions and the crack team of morally gray fixers who now have to keep her alive, high-tech hijinks, an incredibly hateable antagonist, and a high-tech hellhole of a city. There’s violence and gore and wit and humor, and it’s basically fluff reading for those who like their fluff on the action-packed cyberpunk side.

• The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik. This one is most definitely not a literary masterpiece – it’s second in a series, and there are so many continuity errors from book one and most of the plot elements seem to come out of absolutely nowhere. But if your favorite trope is “protagonist is so much more powerful than everyone else and keeps shocking people with how powerful they are” – and mine is – it’s a ton of fun despite that.

• This Body’s Not Big Enough For Both Of Us by Edgar Cantero. A blend of detective noir, dark comedy, and probably a few other genres, this story is about a pair of conjoined twin detectives who have all the normal number of appendages but each have half of the brain, and who absolutely loathe each other. It gets really dark, but manages to be mostly lighthearted and sometimes even laugh-out-loud funny. It fully leans into the wacky weirdness of siblings who hate each other being stuck in the same body, and ends up being astonishingly fun.

Prettiest Covers

I read a lot of books with absolutely gorgeous covers this year, so here’s a little gallery highlighting some of my favorites. (Whether or not I liked the book itself has nothing to do with it being in this category – this category judges books by their cover and their cover alone.)

Reading Goals for 2022

Like every year, I’m aiming for my annual reading goals:

• Finish 48 books between January 1 and December 31
• Read at least 50% fiction
• Read good books, which involves…
  • Only reading books I’m truly interested in
  • Not attempting to read books because I feel like I “should”
  • Not finishing books I’m not legitimately excited to finish reading

Last year I joined the Unread Shelf 2021 reading challenge on The StoryGraph to read at least 12 books that I own in some format but haven’t read yet. I really like the idea, but I found the challenge’s prompts to be too restrictive. So I’m going to do it on my own this time – I’m still setting a goal to read at least 12 of the books I own but haven’t read, but I’m not joining any official challenge. I’m thinking I may make this one of my regular annual reading goals, at least until I clean off my unread shelf (if that ever happens).

Finally, in 2021 I reviewed 181 books, and in October specifically I published a review every single day. So I’m chilling out on the book reviews this year. I’m still going to write them, because I love writing book reviews, but I’m only going to review books that I want to review – which most often means books I loved, books I hated, or books that I have something to say about. The posts in 2022 will be fewer, but hopefully better.

Final Thoughts

I read a lot of really good books this year, and a lot of books that surprised me. Only two of my top five favorite novels of the year were on my TBR list (Empress of Forever and The Fifth Season), and one of those I didn’t expect to like very much. I still have a fairly long TBR list that I do want to get through, but I’m also saving room in my reading schedule in 2022 for occasional things that look vaguely interesting.

And I still have that job that lets me read while working, so if I have that job all year and read 18 books a month like I did this year, I’ll crack 200 books read in a year – which gives me plenty of time to discover more hidden gems.

2020 in Books

via GIPHY

Well. 2020 was a year, wasn’t it.

I’m still 95% sure it’s still sometime in July, but there’s snow outside and my phone calendar tells me it’s now 2021, so here we are again. I started working from home at the beginning of April and somewhere around June I went past stir-crazy and into time-is-fake-and-nothing-matters. There might be a pandemic that some people deny exists despite hundres of thousands of people dying, inevitable climate disaster on the horizon, systemic racism, the shitshow that is American politics, and crushing poverty, but at least we still have books to distract us! (Until the power grid shuts down and we have to burn them to keep warm.)

My Reading in 2020

This year I switched from Goodreads to The StoryGraph, which is still in beta but also really cool – it does 90% of what I wanted out of Goodreads, and has some cool additional features besides. (Like charts!) Here are some highlights from my StoryGraph year in books:

My reading goal for last year was 48 books, and (thanks to a LOT of reading in January) I blew that out of the water with a total of 59 books – roughly 15,000 pages. That’s about 11 books (and about 2,500 pages) more than I read last year. I also Did Not Finish-ed 7 books.

The StoryGraph breaks down fiction versus nonfiction, but I’m not sure how they categorize poetry, so by my math, my reading in 2020 was 5% poetry, 41% nonfiction, and 54% fiction. (I also reviewed 91% of the books I read in 2020.)

I’ve never kept track of the page count of the books I read, but The StoryGraph gave me this chart and I thought it was interesting to see how much I leaned towards books with less than 300 pages. Although I did read a ton of novellas this year, so that probably skewed it some.

The StoryGraph also gave me this really cool breakdown of my reading by month. I’m very sure that I would not have met my reading goal for the year if I hadn’t read so many books in January (17 books) and February (15 books).

One of my resolutions for reading in 2020 was to read more good books, and my StoryGraph ratings breakdown shows that I read a bunch of five-star books. So many, in fact, that I’m breaking my faves down into different categories. I have a lot of books to recommend! (As always, these lists are in no particular order.)

My Favorite Novels of 2020

1. The Binti trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor

This is probably cheating since the Binti trilogy is actually three books (Binti, Binti: Home, and Binti: The Night Masquerade), but the trilogy has such a good thematic arc that I’m going to call them all one entry. The world and the culture is fantastic, Binti herself has a fantastic character arc, and there are all sorts of twists and turns. Each book is technically a novella, which is both good (quick reads) and bad (I want more!). It’s very much sci-fi but has a fantasy edge that I love. And have I mentioned that world-building?

2. In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire

In an Absent Dream is book 4 in Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series. Really, any of the Wayward Children books could have gone on this list, but I chose In an Absent Dream because each of the books follow a different major character and I related to Lundy, the star of this one, the most. If someone wanted to make a fictional representation of me before age 18, they couldn’t have done better than Seanan did in the character of Lundy. Combine that with a unique and magical adventure and you end up with an absolutely fantastic book.

3. Thief’s Covenant by Ari Marmell

I read this book in 7 hours, 6 of which were technically at work. It’s just that good. Between Widdershins herself (one of those characters who is always underestimated by her enemies, which I love) and her backstory, a collection of delightfully complicated plot threads that I didn’t predict at all, and some unique and fascinating takes on gods, it combined into an adventurous, dark, and thoroughly engrossing story. I don’t usually pick #1 favorite books of the year, but if I did this one would definitely be in the running.

4. The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley

Are you tired of heroines who get the opportunity to learn magic or cool skills and instead spend their time and energy weeping about the boring life they left behind? Then this is your book, because Harry, our protagonist, does none of that. When she gets kidnapped by the king of the Hill People, she is remarkably chill with this new development and jumps right into being completely awesome. Magic, swordfighting, Harry fitting right in with a cool new culture, a really epic final battle – this book has it all. Don’t let the objectively terrible 80s-mass-market-paperback cover fool you, there’s a fantastic story inside.

5. Avi Cantor has Six Months to Live by Sacha Lamb

This novella is just so damn cute! Written by a trans Jewish guy about a romance between a closeted trans Jewish guy and a non-closeted non-Jewish trans guy, it has magic, demons, and prophetic dreams, but it’s mostly a romance. I don’t even like romance that much, but watching severely depressed Avi get drawn into the life and happiness of optimistic Ian is just so cute, I couldn’t help but love it.

The Mandatory Reading Shelf

Books that, for one reason or another, I think everybody should read.

1. Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday

Is media awareness and literacy a thing that people learn in school? If not, it should be, and this book should be in the curriculum. Though written entirely from personal experience with little to no research involved, it’s an easy-to-read, if somewhat sensationalized, introduction to the ways that online media (including news media you thought you could trust) is either actively manipulating you or incredibly suceptible to reposting untrustworthy content as fact.

2. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi

This is an excellent book to read if you want to be angry. It discusses all the ways individuals and society try to tear down women’s rights and progress, organized by category. From personal violence to institutional discrimination to societal expectations, this is incredibly thorough and comprehensive. It’s very well-researched, and Susan has pages and pages of academic studies and sources. The book is nearly 600 pages, so take it bit by bit if you want to read the whole thing, but even reading a chapter or two will leave you more aware of the war of misogyny being waged in America, which most of the participants are largely unaware of.

3. The Men with the Pink Triangle by Heinz Heger

The Holocaust narrative you never heard in school. Written by a German Holocaust survivor who was sent to the concentraion camps for “degeneracy,” a.k.a. being a homosexual, it goes into (sometimes excruciating) detail about what life was like for the non-Jewish concentraion camp prisoners. It has a lot of details about the inner workings of concentration camps and also is an excellent first-hand account of an aspect of WWII and gay history that isn’t often mentioned.

The Hall of Honorable Mentions

Categories that didn’t have enough books to be a full category, but it’s weird that I read more than one book that fit.

Nonfiction that Needs a 2020s Update (please)

• The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford. Fascinating information about how predatory the funeral industry is, but published in 1996 and almost completely useless in 2020 without knowing how relevant laws, prices, etc. have changed in the past three decades.
• No Logo by Naomi Klein. An excellent overview of the multiple ways capitalism, consumerism, and corporations have screwed over society in general, but the section about “current” activism work being done is 30-odd years old and I want to know what I can get involved in now.

Batshit Authors with A Few Good Ideas

• Building a Better World in Your Backyard by Paul Wheaton and Shawn Klassen-Koop. If you’re into permaculture and sustainability, there are some interesting bits in here, but the author also has some ridiculous ideas (such as “soap is bad and will give you migraines and nosebleeds”) and refuses to consider that other people may have different needs, abilities, or local climates than him.
• Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier. Some good information about the inner workings of Silicon Valley giants, but the author inadvertently reveals that 99% of his problems with social media are because he doesn’t know how to interact with people, not because social media is inherently malevolent.

Other Noteworthy Books I Read in 2020

• Salt. by Nayyirah Waheed. Bite-sized poems that somehow express huge and complex feelings. One poem summed up my complicated feelings about my childhood in 12 words, which theoretically shouldn’t be possible. I recommend this one to everyone, even (especially) if you hate poetry.
• Hexis by Charlene Elsby. One of the best books I’ve ever read in terms of pure raw emotion, and I couldn’t finish it. It’s about philosophy and the subtle kind of sexual trauma and just go read the review because there isn’t enough space here to say everything that needs to be said.

Reading Goals for 2021

My annual reading goals:

• Finish 48 books between January 1 and December 31
• Read at least 50% fiction (24 books)
• Read good books, which involves…
  • Only reading books I’m truly interested in and not attempting to read books because I feel like I “should”
  • Not finishing books I’m not legitimately excited to finish reading.

In previous years, I’ve done lists of “5 books I want to read in the coming year,” but since I don’t really keep up with new releases or anything, it would be just picking 5 random books from my TBR list. And since my TBR list is already on this blog, well, just go take a look at that. 90% of what I read is off that list.

Also in 2021, I’m joining the Unread Shelf Project challenge on The StoryGraph, which is a challenge to make at least 12 of the books I read in 2021 books that I own but haven’t read. Considering that one entire shelf of my bookshelf is books I own but haven’t gotten around to reading yet, I thought it was a good challenge.

2019 in Books

2019 was a wild year for many reasons. I got married. I got fired for the first time. I crossed three things off my bucket list. I moved again. And somehow I managed to meet my goal of reading 48 books! So here’s a summary of my reading in 2019, including some stats, some favorites, and some books I hope to read in 2020. None of these lists are in any particular order.

My Reading in 2019

My Goodreads Year in Books is here, and according to that I read 12,488 pages across 48 books, which is about 2,400 more pages (and 15 more books) than I read last year. 56% of those books were nonfiction (slightly beating out last year to be the highest percentage of nonfiction I’ve ever read), 8% of those books were poetry, and I reviewed only 54% of the books I read this year. I also only read one of the top 5 books I’d hoped to read in 2019.

Looking back on my reading this year, I didn’t actually read a lot of stellar books. Sure, I read a lot of ones that were “good,” but not a lot that stood out to me as “this could be a favorite of the year.” So I only picked out four favorites for 2019, and I’m setting a goal to read better books in 2020.

My Top 4 of 2019

1. Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich

This book made me think differently about so many things, from American culture in general to labor rights to the way I think. It was stunningly eye-opening, and I don’t think I’ve ever been red-pilled so hard in my entire life (not in the incel sense, just in the general nothing-is-what-you-thought sense). If you’re looking to come away from a book realizing that everything you knew was a lie, this is your book. Also, f*ck Calvinism.

2. The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow

A character-driven, emotional ride that I loved so much because I basically am the main character. The concept is great, and even though it’s a slow-burn I loved how viscerally real it felt. It’s very rooted in the main character, so if you don’t like her, you probably won’t enjoy this very much, but Greta and I are pretty much the same person (or would be if I were in her situation), so I thought it was fantastic.

3. That Inevitable Victorian Thing by E.K. Johnston

This one I loved more for the world than anything. Sure, the characters were good and so was the story, but it was really “a very small story in a very large world,” as the author’s note describes it, and I thoughly enjoyed it. It wasn’t dark or gritty or violent, just a nice story about a princess in an alternate-history version of modern-day Canada going on vacation and falling in love. All in all, just a good little book.

4. How to Change your Mind by Michael Pollan

Can drugs treat depression? Not like antidepressant drugs, but psychedelics? There’s more research behind it than you might think, and you’ll read all about it in this book. From scientific research to the author’s own experiences, How to Change Your Mind explores psychedelic use and how drug trips might be useful for treating medical conditions. Absolutely fascinating, and made me interested in trying some psychedelics.

2019 Books Worth Mentioning

Biggest Opinion Change

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi was a wild ride to read, and I’m not talking about the story itself (which was actually pretty good). I went from adoring it to avoiding reading it (although I eventually finished it after all) because of the worst YA romance in the history of YA romances that came up about three-quarters through. Honestly, if it wasn’t for that romance, this book would have ended up in my favorites of the year list. The final verdict ended up being “pretty good,” but that romance killed a lot of my enjoyment of the story.

I Actually Enjoyed a Horror Novel!

The 1% by E.Z. Morgan started off as a horror story that my husband found on Reddit, but the author published the complete story as a book, and it’s great. Very dark and incredibly gory (if you have a weak stomach or don’t like medical things, this is most definitely not your book), but it’s an excellent story detailing four generations of doctors and their twisted attempts to create perfection through plastic surgery. Told out of order, it’s almost like a puzzle to put together the complete story, but it’s amazingly done. The first horror book I’ve ever read that I wholeheartedly enjoyed.

Reading Goals for 2020

1. Total reading goal: 48 books.
2. Read more fiction (at least 50%, or 24 books).
3. Read better books.

Here are five books in particular I hope to read this coming year:

1. Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan. A holdover from last year’s list (my library unfortunately doesn’t have a copy currently) that I’m still excited about. A fantasy story with forbidden love, some queer rep, and some justice and revenge. It does have some trigger warnings I’m a little worried about, but overall I hope to get my hands on it soon.
2. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. I have heard GREAT things about this from Goodreads, and it has me excited to try it. A fantasy heist book with queer rep? Sign me up!
3. Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire. This is a story about those chosen children who stumble into magical worlds and save the day and what happens when they come back to their own worlds. It sounds like it might have themes of trauma and where to go when you no longer fit into the space you once filled in the world, and I’ve also heard great things about this (and the author in general).
4. Forest of a Thousand Lanterns by Julie C Dao. An East Asian reimagining of the Evil Queen legend sounds great. I’m hoping for a dark and atmospheric story watching a girl slowly choose to become evil to get the throne she was promised.
5. Sarah, Son of God by Justine Saracen. I’m not usually much for historical novels, but I can’t get over how much I love this title. Plus I really like the idea of reimagining history and especially biblical texts (I’m like 80% sure the heretical text in this book is biblical?) in a queer light.

2018 in Books

2018 is over. Somehow. That year somehow felt four years long and super short at the same time. But even though I didn’t meet my reading goal for the year (48 books), I read some really good books and I’m looking forward to reading more in 2019. So here are some stats for my 2018 reading, my top 5 list for the past year, some notable reads that didn’t make the top 5, and the top 5 I want to read in 2019. None of these lists are in any particular order.

My Reading in 2018

My Goodreads Year In Books is here (and includes a few that I read but didn’t review). According to that, I read 10,051 pages across 33 books. 54% of those reads were nonfiction (my highest nonfiction percentage ever), and I reviewed 87% of the books I read. I also read 4 of the top 5 books I wanted to read in 2018.

Top 5 of 2018

1. Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust

I said in my review that I think this might be one of the best fairy tale retellings I’ve ever read, and I’m not just saying that to say that. This retelling of Snow White makes both the Snow White character and the queen stepmother into relatable, sympathetic characters, integrates fascinating magic flawlessly into the plot, and manages to hold interest even though the threat to the princess’s life doesn’t start until about halfway through the book. And it has a happy ending. What more could you want?

2. Mask of Shadows by Linsey Miller

I like nonbinary characters. And I like assassins. And I like deadly competitions. This book has all three. From a genderfluid main character who is woefully underskilled for what they’re doing but might just succeed from pure determination to a well-realized world with unique countries, some court drama, and truly evil villains, as well as a cute but not overdone romance, Mask of Shadows is full of things I like to see in books.

3. Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber

Do you ever feel like your job serves no purpose and shouldn’t exist? Do you make a lot of money but aren’t even sure what it is you do for your company? You may have what David Graeber calls a “bullshit job,” and he explains all about them in this book. The only job I’ve had in my entire working career that wasn’t a bullshit job in some capacity was a waitressing position, and thanks to Graeber, I know I’m looking at more of the same in my future – but hey, at least I know why!

4. Quiverfull by Kathryn Joyce

This is definitely a more personal choice (as you’ll notice if you read my review), but Quiverfull really impacted me and it definitely makes my top 5 just for that. It’s an impassionate look at the phenomenon of Quiverfull families, a fundamentalist Christian movement, and I loved the sociological bent of the writing and how completely thorough it was. I grew up in a belief system adjacent to the Quiverfull movement and even I learned some things. It tugged on my heartstrings and gave me a lot of feelings as well as new information.

5. The Second Mango by Shira Glassman

This book is just plain fun. Though not without its problems (as I mention in the review), this story about a lesbian queen who is joined by a female warrior on a quest to find a girlfriend is a pretty lighthearted, overall thoroughly enjoyable little story. There’s not a whole lot of tension, but there are a lot of different adventures contained in one, and it has a very happy ending. Plus it features a chronically ill protagonist of color and is written by a bisexual Jewish woman, so it’s great in the diversity arena, too!

2018 Books Worth Mentioning

I Wish It Was Good

Fight For You by Kayla Bain-Vrba was actually one of the five books I was most excited to read in 2018, which is why it’s such a bummer that it wasn’t good. The pacing was terrible, the world wasn’t developed, and the characters never grew, but by far the worst part was how ridiculously sexualized the main characters were. I considered titling this section “Most Disappointing” or “Too Unnecessarily Sexual,” but eventually settled on “I Wish It Was Good” because that really sums up my feelings about this story. The premise was good and it could have been an enjoyable story, it just was poorly done and ended up being just a generally bad read.

Think Differently About Mental Health

The entire goal of Lost Connections by Johann Hari is to get you to think differently about mental illness (or at least anxiety and depression). And it succeeds. Through a lot of first-hand accounts and a surprising amount of research, Johann lays out a method for healing depression and anxiety that doesn’t rely on drugs, therapy, or medical intervention at all – connection. He encourages people to think about mental illness in a context of connection and community instead of pills and hospitals. And, according to all the research he cites, it might not be as far-fetched as it sounds.

Damn, This Man Can Write

My fiance finally talked me into reading a Stephen King novel and suggested I try Salem’s Lot. Did I like the book? Well, I’m not really sure. I know I don’t plan on reading any more Stephen King (not the kind of thing I’m interested in, really), but I still haven’t decided how I feel about this book. One thing I can say, though: Stephen King can write. This is one of the best-written books I’ve ever read, full of vivid descriptions and, though it’s slowly paced, it’s done so in a way that keeps up the narrative tension. Stephen King’s books are not my style, but I can see why people love him.

Must-Reads for 2019

1. The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow. One of the queer book blogs I follow on Tumblr recommended this as being similar to Mask of Shadows, and we all know how much I loved Mask of Shadows. Overall it sounds like a high-stakes fantasy with queer characters, which is right up my alley.
2. Stand Firm: Resisting the Self-Improvement Craze by Svend Brinkmann. I’m very interested in self-improvement, and some of my reading choices have probably shown that. This book is all about why (and how) we should resist the urge to adopt a self-help mantra. I’m open to being convinced.
3. Of Ice and Shadows by Audrey Coulthurst. I thoroughly enjoyed Of Fire and Stars, and I’m excited to see what happens with this sequel – I’m hoping especially for more of the characters I loved.
4. Boundaries by Anne Katherine. I tried reading Cloud and Townsend’s famous book on boundaries, but it was so excessively religious I couldn’t get through the first chapter. I’m hoping this book will give me the same information about setting and maintaining boundaries without trying to shove god down my throat.
5. Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan. A fantasy book with a premise (beautiful girls taken to serve the king) that sounds like the story of Esther in the Bible – though I’m not religious anymore, I did always enjoy that story. Plus forbidden love, some queer rep, and some justice and revenge. It does have some trigger warnings I’m a little worried about, but overall it sounds like just the kind of thing I will love.

2017 in Books

I haven’t done one of these since January of 2015, but it’s the end of the year again and I’m back on the reviewing bandwagon. So here is my annual roundup of my 2017 reads – my top five favorites, as well as some notable books that didn’t make the top 5 and the top 5 books I’m looking forward to reading in 2018.

None of these lists are in any particular order.

Top 5 of 2017

1. The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrutskie

Sea monsters + pirates + a protagonist of color + lesbians = fantastic. The Abyss Surrounds Us has everything I look for in a book: amazing characters with great arcs, skillfully-done romantic tension, one of the best settings I’ve ever read (did I mention training sea monsters?), a delightfully complicated and fast-paced plot, and an ending that made me feel Epic Battle Feelings. This is one of the first explicitly queer books I read, and it was great.

2. Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst

Court drama books have never really been my thing, but this book changed that. I loved the juxtaposition of the friendship (and later romance) between the smart, capable, bookish princess and the unconventional tomboy princess. The setting seemed like a pretty standard high fantasy setting, but at the same time unique and interesting. The magic system (and even the prejudice against magic users) was cool and interesting. And there’s a little bit of trope-smashing. I don’t have enough good things to say about this book.

3. Rising Strong by Brené Brown

Rising Strong is … powerful. I love Brené Brown as an author and have adored every one of her books that I’ve read so far, but in my opinion Rising Strong is the most valuable (and that’s saying something). It goes over a research-based process that Brené has discovered/developed for dealing with failure and emotional setbacks. And it really works (I can say so from experience – see my review for potentially triggering details). I learned so much from this book and it’s now my go-to gift for people graduating from high school.

4. The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

Probably the most creative book I’ve read in a while. I picked it up expecting a thin paperback and not a 500-page epic, but it’s worth every page. There’s a strong female friendship between two polar opposite girls (one who’s selflessly “good” but doesn’t think she is and one who thinks she’s good and is obviously too self-centered to be) and both girls get some absolutely AWESOME character growth. The setting is also fantastic, with a lot to explore, and honestly I’d love to go there. Overall, a great book.

5. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

I’ll confess: I read this back in July and I still haven’t used any of these principles to tidy up my living space, even though I’ve been in my new house since August. But I’m including it here anyway because it was an extremely inspiring read. It made me want to get my crap together – or, more accurately, get rid of my crap. It was also a thoroughly enjoyable read. My opinion may change after actually putting these principles into use (although I doubt it), but for now, it makes my top five favorite reads of the year.

2017 Books Worth Mentioning

Book I Wanted to Love

Essentialism by Greg McKeown. This came highly recommended, and I was really excited about it. Unfortunately, I’ve followed a blogger (Michael Hyatt) who teaches similar principles for many years and I learned nothing new. Worth reading if you’re not a major Michael Hyatt fan, but I got nothing out of it.

Weirdest (Possibly Ever)

Lizard Radio by Pat Schmatz. I described this in my review as “It’s a dystopian novel and a fever dream and Alice in Wonderland if Alice was part lizard and Wonderland was an agricultural camp,” and that kind of describes it. This book blends imagination and reality into something very unique and totally weird. Not necessarily a good book, but definitely an interesting one.

The Class Consciousness Award

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I have a lot of problems with all of Malcolm Gladwell’s work that I’ve read (mainly that it’s more theoretical than practical), but I loved that Outliers talked about how being born into a specific set of circumstances affects your eventual success. Though it’s not very nuanced, it’s a good starting place to learn about class privilege.

Shockingly Bad

I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. It’s rare that a book I didn’t finish makes a “year in books” list (in fact, it’s never happened before), but I had to mention this one because it’s incredibly bad. Financial books often fall into classism and fatphobia, but this one also somehow included misogyny and didn’t even pretend not to be classist. It was also pretentious and condescending despite presenting no unique information. Overall: bad.

Must-Reads for 2018

1. Bruja Born by Zoraida Cordova. I enjoyed the first book in this series, Labyrinth Lost, and I’m excited for the second. (Also hoping it has more gay than book one.) It comes out in April.
2. Braving the Wilderness by Brené Brown. As I’ve said, I absolutely love Brené Brown, and this is her new book. (I actually already own a copy, I’m just really excited to read it.)
3. Body Respect by Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor. This book is highly recommended by my favorite eating disorder recovery blogger, and I’m hoping to get a lot out of it. (Also hoping to get some talking points for when weight/diet conversations happen.)
4. Fight for You by Kayla Bain-Vrba. This is only a novella, but it’s lesbian romance between a dancer-turned-gladiator and the best gladiator in the arena, so it sounds exactly like the kind of thing I would love.
5. The Second Mango by Shira Glassman. A fantasy queen searching for a girlfriend, a female warrior with a dragon, and an evil sorcerer all sounds like fun. Plus it’s written by a bisexual Jewish woman.

2014 in Books

I don’t know how this happened, but it’s 2015. 2014 has been a year of huge changes for me – mainly because I left for college in August. And I only read 89 books this year, 44 fewer than 2013 – the first time since I started tracking my reading in 2010 that the number has dropped below 100. A little disappointing, but still not bad.

So, to start the new year, I’ve put together three lists: My top 5 favorite books of 2014 (since I can never decide on just one), some 2014 reads worth mentioning that didn’t make the top 5, and the 5 books I’m most excited to read in 2015. None of the lists are in any particular order.

My Top 5 of 2014

1. 

   Image from Madeline Henry

   Blackout (Darkness #1) by Madeleine Henry. I had a deadline of one week to read and review this book, which I agreed to against my better judgement … and ended up devouring the entire book during the busiest week of my year. The characters, concept, and amazing execution blew me away, and I would be happy to read book two with a yesterday deadline if that means I get it soon.

2. Etiquette and Espionage (Finishing School #1) by Gail Carriger. Steampunk is my current obsession anyway, but steampunk, in high-class Victorian England, at a finishing school, that teaches girls to be spies? Absolute perfection.
3. New Sight by Jo Schneider. Giving a new twist to the idea of psychic powers, this Indie urban fantasy added beautifully dark, gritty tones of insanity and addiction to the traditional master-your-powers-help-the-good-guys plot.
4. Win the Rings (Cracked Chronicles #1) by K.D. Van Brunt. Despite a vague blurb, bland cover, and seemingly nonsensical title, this Indie book was amazing. Tense, action-packed, amazing concept, and told from two perspectives that gave the best of both worlds – the hunter and the hunted.
5. The Rithmatist (The Rithmatist #1) by Brandon Sanderson. This is the second year in a row a Sanderson book has made my top 5, and for good reason. Fascinating and original magic systems, great characters, a delightfully complicated plot, and I never could decide on a prediction for the bad guy.

Books Worth Mentioning in 2014

Surprise Hit/Didn’t Expect to Like: Ballad of the Northland by Jason Barron. It looked boring, but it was a fascinating look at life in rural Alaska.

Why We Don’t Read Friends’ Novels: Theory of Mind by Jacob Gorczyca. There was a good story in there (somewhere), but it should have gone through several more rounds of editing before it was published.

Classic I Wish I’d Read Sooner: Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. A unique and fun fantasy with great characters and a fantastic setting.

Made Me Realize I’ve Outgrown Middle Grade: Liberty Frye and the Witches of Hessen by J.L McCreedy. It wasn’t a bad book, but it was just too young for me.

Far Too Dark: Tea Cups and Tiger Claws by Timothy Patrick. Only book ever to get the “too dark” distinction, I loved the sweeping multigenerational story but hated how horrible the characters were to other people.

Zombie Book I Actually Liked: Confessions of the Very First Zombie Slayer (That I Know Of) by F.J.R. Titchenell. Blending zombie action with exactly the kind of humor I like, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

 Top 5 for 2015:

 

1. Firefight (Reckoners #2) by Brandon Sanderson. The first book, Steelheart, was amazing (honestly, anything Brandon Sanderson writes is amazing), so I’m really looking forward to reading more of this fabulous series.
2. Exposure (Virals #4) by Kathy Reichs. I’ve loved the Virals series since I discovered it, and after the way Code, the third book, ended, I need to know what happens.
3. UnWholly (Unwind #2) by Neal Shusterman. Unwind has been a favorite for a while, so I was thrilled to find it was first in a series (I actually just bought this book – now I have to get around to reading it).
4. The Shadow Throne (Ascendance Trilogy #3) by Jennifer A. Nielsen. I absolutely loved the first two books in this series, even though it’s middle grade, and I’m looking forward to finishing the series.
5. Data Runner (Data Runner #1) by Sam A. Patel. Couriers running information in a high-tech world, including cool aliases and conspiracies – sounds like a fun, action-packed ride.

So that’s my year in books. What were your favorite books of 2014? What books are you looking forward to reading in the coming year?

2013 in Books

Well, it’s the beginning of a new year already. 2013 seems to have gone really fast for me. I only managed to read 133 books this year, 54 less than last year. Still, I think that’s pretty good.

I’ve put together some lists of books. My favorite books of 2013, other books I read in 2013 that didn’t make the top 5 but are worth mentioning, and the 5 books I’m most excited to read in 2014. None of these lists are in any particular order.

Top 5 Favorites of 2013:

1. The Raven Boys (Raven Cycle #1) by Maggie Stiefvater, which not only didn’t agree to my maybe-this-will-be-okay expectations, it knocked them down, trampled them, and made me wonder where I got such idiotic ideas.
2. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. I wasn’t really expecting much from a tearjerker about cancer kids, but I ended up falling in love with the heartbreakingly beautiful romance.
3. The Last Dragonslayer (The Last Dragonslayer #1) by Jasper Fforde, which I’m glad I gave a chance. Its screwball storytelling is a perfect blend of smart and silly, realistic and ridiculous, ordinary and oddball.
4. The Crystal Ordeal (Legends of Leone #1) by M.G. Dekle, an Indie book that surprised me. I couldn’t read this book at night because the male lead would make me laugh so hard I’d wake up my family.
5. Steelheart (Reckoners #1) by Brandon Sanderson, a dark, suspenseful, action-packed not-exactly-superhero story with an urban vibe. Any book that can make me draw wrong conclusions is impressive, but a book that can trample them this fantastically earns definite bonus points.

Other Books Worth Mentioning:

1. The Last Guardian (Artemis Fowl #8) by Eoin Colfer. The last Artemis Fowl book was bittersweet for me – it was a fabulous ending to a fabulous series, but I was sad to see a series I’ve loved for so long end.
2. Allegiant (Divergent #3) by Veronica Roth – a book I thought I’d like, but didn’t. I liked the first two books in the series, but this one killed off too many characters that (in my opinion) didn’t have to die.

Top 5 Want to Reads in 2014:

1. Cress (Lunar Chronicles #3) by Marissa Meyer
2. The Dream Thieves (Raven Cycle #2) by Maggie Stiefvater
3. Firefight (Reckoners #2) by Brandon Sanderson
4. Exposure (Virals #4) by Kathy Reichs
5. UnWholly (Unwind #2) by Neal Shusterman

How about you? What are your favorite books of last year? What books are you excited to read in 2014?

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