I had a few reading goals this year: read at least one book a week on average, read every day, and ensure I wasn’t just reading books by cis/het white guys. Missed the first and second one, but succeeded on the third one.
Each one is rated from one to ten. Six, for fiction, is “not bad, but has some flaws” or “needed a stronger edit to cut out fluff.” A six for non-fiction is likely “good information, but drags quite a bit.” Sometimes a non-fiction book is either padded beyond what’s necessary, or the author did a ton of research and is determined to show it in the book whether it’s more detail than necessary or not.
A seven or better means that a book was compelling and I’d recommend it without hesitation. A nine or better means that I will probably recommend the book whether anybody asks or not… If it wasn’t reaching a six or better, I stopped reading and moved on.
What I read…
- The Final Girl Support Group — Grady Hendrix (6.5/10)
- Deeplight — Frances Hardinge (7/10)
- Space Oddity — Catherynne M. Valente (7/10)
- Of Monsters and Mainframes — Barbara Truelove (8/10)
- Some Desperate Glory — Emily Tesh (6/10)
- The Cat Who Could Read Backwards — Lilian Jackson Braun (6/10)
- Parable of the Sower — Octavia E. Butler (8/10)
- The Illegals — Shaun Walker (6/10)
- Half of a Yellow Sun — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (6/10)
- The Galaxy, and the Ground Within — Becky Chambers (8/10)
- Slaughterhouse-Five — Kurt Vonnegut (9/10)
- Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng — Kylie Lee Baker (7/10)
- The Secret History of the Rape Kit — Pagan Kennedy (6/10)
- Direct Descendant — Tanya Huff (7/10)
- Feet of Clay — Terry Pratchett (8/10)
- Code Girls — Liza Mundy (6/10)
- Monsters — Claire Dederer (6/10)
- Assassins Anonymous — Rob Hart (7/10)
- Consider Phlebas — Iain M. Banks (6/10)
- The Jakarta Method — Vincent Bevins (8/10)
- The Apocalypse Codex — Charles Stross (7/10)
- Thinner — Stephen King (6/10)
- When the Moon Hits Your Eye — John Scalzi (6/10)
- Maskerade — Terry Pratchett (8/10)
- The Drowning House — Cherie Priest (8/10)
- From a Certain Point of View — 43 authors (6.5/10)
- Yellowface — R. F. Kuang (9/10)
- The Day of the Dissonance — Alan Dean Foster (7/10)
- To Be Taught, If Fortunate — Becky Chambers (8/10)
- Damned — Chuck Palahniuk (8/10)
- The Woman They Could Not Silence — Kate Moore (6/10)
- The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War — David Halberstam (7/10)
- The Imaginary Girlfriend — John Irving (7/10)
- I Heard You Paint Houses — Charles Brandt (7/10)
- Nuclear War: A Scenario — Annie Jacobsen (6/10)
- Record of a Spaceborn Few — Becky Chambers (8/10)
- Light from Uncommon Stars — Ryka Aoki (9.5/10)
- A Closed and Common Orbit — Becky Chambers (8/10)
What I didn’t…
These are the books I picked up and then put back down after deciding they weren’t for me. I’ve gotten much more willing to drop books that aren’t doing it for me, these days. Life is too short, there are too many books.
- Ubik — Philip K. Dick
- Womb City — Tlotlo Tsamaase
- Night Magic — Thomas Tryon
- The Blind Assassin — Margaret Atwood
2026
My 2026 goals are similar to last year, with a few new ones. For example: to finally read a few classics that I’ve never tackled, such as Moby Dick, and some longer non-fiction that I have put off like Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty. Also, expanding my reading beyond just books; I have a Clarkesworld subscription and want to be sure to read each issue this year as well as some back issues.
I got some good responses late last year when I asked for recommendations on social media. I hope to tackle a number of those this year. See y’all in the book stores!