2021 – A (Reading) Year in Review

Mostly a reading recap, that is. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the reason that my blogging has dropped to almost nothing of late: Laura and I welcomed our son into the world on November 26th. I’ve been able to maintain my reading pace, which is awesome, but finding time to write about things has been tough. In fact, I’m realizing that my last post was a “one year into the blog” post, which seems redundant right next to this one.

I don’t look like I’m that far behind, actually. I have one review I should write and won’t (Magic for Liars – it was decent, but nothing extraordinary), a book I nixed after trying way too hard for way too long to read, and two books of a trilogy that I will write about when I’m done with the third book. So I’m not quite as far behind as I thought.

So now let’s take a look at some highs and lows of my 2021 reading!

Total Books Removed From The List: 44. Last year this was a “books read” stat, but I feel that in the context of this project it’s important to think big picture and look at what was crossed off the list. Of those 44 books, 11 were removed by invoking Rule Three. I’m not only pumped by the overall number, but I’m also pretty pleased that I had it in me to quit on that many stinkers.

Favorite Book: The Punch Escrow by Tal Klein. It’s pretty rare to find a “beach read” book that will be thought provoking as well, but this one did a pretty good job. One of the interesting things about reading a lot of sci-fi is that eventually someone will try to tackle the stickier bits of either teleportation or time travel. This one does a great job with the former.

Biggest Disappointment: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. For years I have heard from folks that I respect that this is a great book. And I tried really, really hard to get into it and make some progress. But it was just so damn plodding that I couldn’t make it through. I even mentioned it to a friend who had read it years ago and she tried to re-read this…and came to the same conclusion.

Other Highlights:

• I have not purchased a Kindle book in over a year. This is a major accomplishment, and I’m surprised that Amazon hasn’t sent someone to do a wellness check on me.
• As of today I have logged 368 consecutive days of reading. Is that a lifetime record? Perhaps. But it’s certainly a fantastic way to churn through the backlog I’ve accumulated.

As 2022 starts, I’m looking forward to the “I need to buy more books” portion of the list: sometimes I own book one of a trilogy, but not the other two…that sort of thing. But I’m not looking forward to it for the reasons you might think. I’m hoping that I’ll be a VERY tough critic of those initial books and save myself a few bucks when it comes to the follow-ups!