2025 Master List

Somehow it is 2025, and this will be my tenth year of maintaining this book blog. I truly do not know how the time has passed, but that's the nature of the game, I guess. 

Last year I read the fewest books since 2017, when I somehow only managed to read 12 books all year. I would like to do better than that this year, and better than the 26 I read in 2024, although I do have a good sense of why I didn't have a ton of time or focus for reading. Last year I watched many many movies, and a fair amount of television, and also I got distracted by events of the world, for better or for worse. And this year I would like to at least try to find the pleasure in reading again, and in building out a TBR pile that makes me excited and doesn't make me feel burdened. I think I have a good handle on that right now, but we'll see. As is my standard, I have more books to start this year than I did at the beginning of 2024, but let's see how I can do. I'd like to read more books I love this year, which probably means I need to be more ruthless about giving up on a book when I know it won't be one I love. I would also like to reread more books this year as well. Here's hoping. 

2025 list is below!

2024 Master List

 

Well, somehow we've reached my ninth year of publishing this book blog! If that sounds like an improbably long time to you, it feels even more wild to me, since I persist in thinking of this blog as being my 'new' thing. However, it's also true that we've cycled back to another presidential election year, which was the entire impetus behind its creation in 2016 - a method of anxiety moderation. I can't say I actually know how much help or harm focusing on my reading list provided that year, or in 2020 for that matter, but I do know that I continue to value having a place to write about the things I read that's not part of a whole commerce system where my opinions on books will be added to a rating aggregate. I completely understand the value to authors (and potentially readers) of those ratings, but I like not having to consider those things when I give books fairly arbitrary grades.

Anyway, this is a list of books I currently own or have out from the library that I have never read before and that I want to attempt to read this year. It continues to be a pretty weird assortment of books I've owned for a decade plus, newish releases that I'm already behind on, and other titles I come across and decide need to be added to the pile, along with my book club books. As always, I would like to read all of them in 2024, but my secondary (and more realistic) goals are to read at least 52 books, and to start 2025 with a smaller list than I have right now. Of course, that would require me to not add new books to my reading pile, and we all know how well that's gone over the past 8 years. And the real goal is to read a bunch of books that I love and that I want to tell other people about. So here's hoping I can achieve that one if nothing else!

2023 Master List

Here we are again! Last year was an odd one for me, certainly for reasons beyond my reading list but it showed up there, too. I read 36 books in total, but 12 of those were in January and another 16 were in March-May, so for most of the year I read very little. A lot of the year my focus was on other kinds of media, or on writing, so looking back on my list wasn't particularly surprising, but it definitely clarified how I had approached different parts of my year, and what I spent my leisure time on. 

A couple of days ago I was talking with friends about annual reading goals, and the desire to actually read through our entire 'to be read' piles, and the fiction of how satisfying that would be. I said that sometimes I think I could actually do it, I could actually read the 2.5 books per week I would need to in order to make it through all of the books that are on the list below the count. But of course, in order to do that, I would also need to not add any additional books to my list in a year. Which inevitably means that even if I got to 'book zero' by the end of 2023, it would be a lie, because I know there are books coming out in 2023 that I will want to read! The list is always repropagating itself, because even if I somehow managed to read all of the books out of the millions and millions that have already been written (a task that I will obviously never complete), there are always new books to be added, and thank god for that.

However! I do still find value in both the overall attempt, fruitless though it always is, and also in the satisfaction I do genuinely derive when I finally cross off a book that's been on this list since I started this blog almost seven years ago, or when I end up adding five new books to this list because I read one book by an author and realize I want to read everything else they've written, too. And that, in the end, is the real reason I continue to keep this list and blog, because I love reading and I want to have a nice time reading things that are worth it to me to read. The first book I started reading this year already feels like a great one; here's hoping that continues through the year. Let's see where I land.

2022 Master List

 Well, we made it to 2022! That's...something, I suppose. And the vast majority of the books that had been on this list last year have also made it onto this year's list, along with the twenty or so that I've already added to my physical and digital TBR piles. I have been reconsidering the entire premise of this book blog in recent days, since it's not as if I don't have more books waiting to be added to this list, either by buying them or taking them out from the library. This is not really a decluttering task or anything like that, because there will always be more books than I have space, or time, for. 

But! My current justification for continuing a quest that I have never come particularly close to completing is that all of these are books that at one time or another, I either bought for myself or was given, and every year I've read at least one of them that's made me go huh. So that's the reason I've held onto this. And some of them can immediately be given away at that point, but there's still something nice about that process. 

The other reason I have decided to continue with this whole thing this year is that I would like to add activities that are more mindful to my days. A lot of these books will also be escapes in various ways, but I would like to be more conscious of what I'm deciding to spend my hours and days on, rather than the constant itch scratching of twitter and other endless scrolling distractions. That doesn't always need to be filled by reading, but overall I think I'll have a better grasp on my days this way. Will it work? Maybe! I'd like to give it a shot, at least. 

As always there is a list of other books I would like to reread if I can manage it as well; I expect that the first two months of the year will involve a lot of time indoors in my apartment, and if I manage things right I'm hoping to get out the gate running. So let's aspire to some reading. 

And here are the books!

2021 Master List

We made it to 2021! Allegedly, at least. Last year I succeeded in reading not quite as many books as I had intended to, but I still read more than I had since 2016, which given everything that happened last year is a huge win. 

This year I am starting out with 101 books on the list. This will increase; I now have a separate google doc where I've been adding books that I want to read but that aren't officially on my to be read list, because I don't own them yet, and also haven't requested them from the library. Even without that, this list will still expand no matter what as a result of book club books and new books by authors who I will always read whatever they publish. However! In addition to having the goal of finishing all 101 of the below books this year, I have a more aggressive one, which is to finish them all within the first six months of the year. This is in part because I feel like I should be able to generally, but also because I expect that the first six months of 2021 will still be fairly locked down for me, and I would like to have goals to focus on that I have some amount of control over. Will I succeed? Who knows, but I'm gonna give it a shot.

I think about 25 or so of the books below have been on every Master List I've created since I started this project in 2016; I would really, really like to read all of those, most of which are at the beginning of this list. 

I am also going to be more aggressive this year about putting aside books that are Not For Me after the first hundred pages or so. Reading is an act of pleasure and of learning for me, and if I'm not getting one or the other (or both, of course) then continuing to try to read a book isn't worth my time.

Here is to reading and other nice things in 2021, which already feels like a bit of a tall order, but I'm going to do my best. 

2020 Master List

Well! As is an annual tradition at this point, I am here to announce that I did not read all of the books on my list last year. I did in fact read 49 books, which is more than the 41 I had read in 2018, and in general my reading habits reflect good things about how I'm doing: I'm able to focus well enough to read almost a book a week, on average, and I'm interested enough in narratives and histories and people to want to read in the first place. And since I started 2019 with 77 books on my To Read list, that must mean I'm starting 2020 with a goal of reading 28 books, right?

...there are slightly more books on my list than that. Almost a hundred. And the list by the end of the year will be closer to 160, since I add three books a month to my list without trying as a result of various book clubs. So yeah, I'm starting out at 125 /o\ But that's actually \o/ because I love reading, and I love that there are so many books out there I want to read, and I also love having a goal, even if it's one I have repeatedly failed to meet. There are about 35 books on this list that have been on my To Read list since at least 2016, the year I started this whole book blog, and I would really really love to actually get those read!!! It's been hard for me to actually tackle the backlog, though, in large part because this past year I also started really using the library hold system, which is an incredible enabler. I constantly have too many books checked out at any given time, as well as too many books on hold, but I also don't seem to be STOPPING, so oh well. I'm not really looking at changing this plan anytime soon, especially since this year I will need distractions badly for unknown reasons that I'm not going to dwell on here. 

I am also, for the first time in about five years, full swing in the throes of a major fandom passion, and I'm also playing a game on my Switch that demands a lot of time and attention, and I'm doing some traveling and will also be volunteering quite a bit as the year goes on, so like! Will I achieve my reading goal this year??? Probably not! But I am gonna give it my best shot, because what the fuck else am I gonna do.  

END OF YEAR UPDATE:

Well, I did not end up reading 125 books in 2020! But I DID read 84, which, given everything that 2020 was, I think is pretty impressive! I have carried over just about a hundred books to start off 2021 with, and we'll see how that goes. The list below is all of the books I did in fact read this year.

2019 Master List

Hey, look at this! I'm posting my master list for the year and it's still January. Progress!

Last year I read 41 books, which didn't come close to the 96 books I had on my list, but was far more than the 12 I read in 2017. And this year I have 77 books on the to read list, so I am slowly but surely chipping away at this pile. My goal for this year is to read all of them, or about two books per week, with the understanding that I will inevitably acquire new books I also want to read and my book club should start up again in a couple of months and so getting that number up to 104 is pretty realistic. Especially since I already have 29 books in my 'want to read' tab on iBooks, which I haven't included in this list because I don't actually have those books yet. There's a lot out there to read! I also want to do three (possibly four) deliberate rereads: it's been almost three years (!) since I read the Lymond Chronicles for the first time, so I want to do that, and I want to reread all of Guy Gavriel Kay's books (especially since his new one is coming out in May), and I want to reread the Graceling series, and I possibly want to finish the Anne of Green Gables series and read her other books, too. Oh and I want to reread Uprooted and Spinning Silver. Depending on how fast I actually manage to read this year, those rereads may count toward the 104 or they may not. But below the cut are the new to me books I intend to read this year, with some of them becoming an annual tradition at this point.

2018 Master List

What's that, you say? It's March? Well, we may be two months into the year but I haven't read any books at all for the first two months, so we're starting this now. Here's my list of books to read this year. It's most of the books that were on this list from last year, plus a bunch of new ones that I've gotten. Last year I managed to read twelve books; this year I would like to read more than that. Let's go.

2017 Master List

Here is my list of books to read in 2017! There are currently 55 books on the list, which compared with the 132 that I was trying to read last year seems VERY SHORT. However, I can add more books to this list, unlike last year's, when I was deliberately not acquiring new books to read. There are other books that I'm interested in reading this year that I don't own yet (or have requested from the library), like the Rivers of London series and Six of Crows, but I'm not going to add them to the list until I actually have a copy of them. It's so strange, I really do feel like I should be able to just knock all of these books out, but given that we're nine days into 2017 and I've only read one novella so far, my reading pace will have to pick up a lot for that to be the case! Let's see how it goes.

2016 Master List

EDITED: So this is now the list of 98 books I read between March 24, 2016 and December 31, 2016. It's not all of the books I read in 2016, because I didn't include any of the books I read in the first three months of the year (or any of my rereads), but it's everything I read as a part of this project, with links to all of the corresponding posts. 

Here is the list of the 132 books I am attempting to read between now and November 8th! The first 106 books on the list are fiction, which means that a little less than a quarter of the books are nonfiction, so I will be planning to read about one nonfiction book a week. In addition, 33 of the books are marked with a W notation after them; I expect to need a week (at least) of reading time to finish each of those books, so when figuring out what to read next, I'll need to balance steady progress on those bigger/more challenging books with daily reading of faster books. The good news is that there's enough variety in the list that I should always be able to find something I'm in the mood for on any given day; the bad news is that's because there are SO MANY BOOKS TO READ. However, I'm feeling very optimistic as I get started! Let's see how long that positive thinking lasts :D

I will be updating this post as I make my way through the list and marking books when I've finished them. There is no rhyme or reason to the order of the books beyond fiction 1-106 and nonfiction 107-132.

List of books is under the cut!