Reading


/Reading is an ongoing list of books that I've read, organized by year, in approximate chronological order.

The list is mostly fiction, because I read mostly fiction. It intentionally omits technical/programming books because those don't seem interesting to track. And I only log books that I finish, since I can't very well rate a book that I didn't complete.

This isn't really a set of recommendations, it's primarily a tool to encourage myself to read more. I love to read and books are probably my favorite objects in the world. Fiction can be nourishing, transportive, and something resembling magic.

Ratings

Each book listed below includes a very subjective star rating. The scale here is small and defined to make it easier to rate each book. I also reference these ratings whenever it's time to clear some bookshelf space and donate books.

  •  
    0 stars for books that I did not enjoy
  • 1 star for books that I enjoyed
  • ★★
    2 stars for books that I very much enjoyed
  • ★★★
    3 stars for books that I loved

Statistics

Since 2015, I've logged 142 books.

95 (about 66%) of those books were written by women and 60 (about 42%) were written by people of color. Simply keeping those statistics has helped me improve those percentages quite a bit. This reading log is a tool to help me read more and also to read more diverse authors.

Books

2024

  • ★★
    Colour Scheme
  • ★★
    This Other Eden
  • Walkaway
  • Owlish
  • Ruin
  • Checkerboard Hill
  • ★★
    Audition
  • Lioness
  • ★★
    Untethered
  • Chinese Fish
  • ★★
    Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
  • Open City
  • Citizen
  • Backwaters
  • ★★
    Western Lane
  • ★★
    The Puppets of Spelhorst
  • Silver Sparrow
  • Foster
  • Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts
  • Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
  • ★★
    No One Is Talking About This
  • ★★
    The Lying Life of Adults

2023

  • ★★
    All the Lovers in the Night
  • ★★
    Birnam Wood
  • ★★
    Stuart Little Bookshop
  • Teaching a Stone to Talk Bookshop
  • The Three-Body Problem
  • How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
  • ★★
    Small Things Like These
  • Beautiful World, Where Are You
  • ★★
    Matrix
  • The Axeman's Carnival
  • Last Things
  • Conversations with Friends
  • ★★
    Normal People
  • Liberation Day
  • ★★
    The Trumpet of the Swan
  • ★★
    The Ocean at the End of the Lane
  • ★★
    Another Brooklyn
  • Interior Chinatown
  • Our Missing Hearts
  • ★★
    Severance
  • ★★
    Auē
  • Snow Crash
  • Laserwriter II
  • ★★★
    Breasts and Eggs
  • Heaven
  • ★★
    The Great Gatsby
  • ★★
    Kindred Bookshop
  • The Night Circus
  • What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
  • Draft No. 4

2022

  • ★★
    The Once and Future Witches
  •  
    The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
  • The Best American Short Stories 2021
  • The Tokyo Zodiac Murders
  • The Office of Historical Corrections
  • Crying in H Mart
  • James and the Giant Peach
  • The Luminaries
  • The Left Hand of Darkness
  • Tales from Earthsea
  • The Garden Party
  • ★★★
    The Other Wind
  • ★★★
    Charlotte's Web
  • ★★
    The Housekeeper and the Professor
  • Sourdough
  • ★★
    The Mermaid from Jeju
  • ★★
    Station Eleven
  • Mexican Gothic

2021

  • Harlem Shuffle
  • The Pine Barrens
  • The Library Book
  • Girl, Woman, Other
  • Imago
  • Adulthood Rites
  • Dawn
  • ★★★
    The Memory Police
  • ★★
    The City We Became
  • On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
  • An Acceptable Time
  • Many Waters
  •  
    A Swiftly Tilting Planet
  •  
    A Wind in the Door
  • A Wrinkle in Time
  • Never Let Me Go
  • Transcendent Kingdom
  • ★★
    Parable of the Talents
  • ★★
    Parable of the Sower
  • Purple Hibiscus
  • ★★
    An American Marriage
  • Acceptance
  • Authority
  • ★★
    Annihilation

2020

  • The Heavens
  • Sing, Unburied, Sing
  • The Water Dancer
  • There There
  • ★★
    Americanah
  • ★★
    The Story of the Lost Child
  • Wolf in White Van
  • ★★
    Tehanu
  • The Farthest Shore
  • ★★★
    The Tombs of Atuan
  • ★★★
    A Wizard of Earthsea
  • ★★
    Mother Night
  • ★★
    The Underground Railroad
  •  
    The Witch Elm

2019

  • ★★
    Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
  • ★★
    The Story of My New Name
  • ★★★
    My Brilliant Friend
  • Little Fires Everywhere
  • ★★★
    Pachinko

2018

  • Everything I Never Told You
  • Frankenstein
  • Lincoln in the Bardo
  • Until the Celebration
  • And All Between
  • ★★
    Below the Root

2017

  • Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
  • Dear Life
  • ★★
    Homegoing
  •  
    Number9dream
  • ★★
    Slade House
  • ★★★
    The Bone Clocks
  • The Stories of Your Life and Others
  • ★★
    The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
  • The Wind Up Bird Chronicles

2016

  • ★★
    CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
  • Fox 8
  •  
    Dark Matter
  • Inherent Vice
  • The Thing Around Your Neck
  • ★★
    The Decagon House Murders
  • ★★★
    Watership Down
  • Jailbird

2015

  • And Then There Were None
  • ★★★
    God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
  • Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
  • ★★
    Murder on the Orient Express
  • ★★
    Tenth of December
  • The Murder of Roger Ackroyd