I started reading again last month after several years completing another degree, so I only set a goal for myself of 10 books. According to my StoryGraph goal, I’m at 7 so far… I should probably increase my goal.

I’ve read 13 and my goal was 9. Three of those were Stormlight Archives books, which are all over 1,000 pages. Three were Star Wars Canon books (Thrawn) and the 3 I’m currently reading are the legends Darth Bane series. I also read Project Hail Mary, No Country for Old Men, Essex Dogs (LOVED it), TMNT The Last Ronin, LOTR Fellowship of the Ring, Stephen King’s Fairy Tale (probably the least favorite of my read list this year) and the third Expanse book.

I’ve not read nearly as many books as I would’ve liked so far this year (four total, five if you count the graphic novel Maus). I just finished Cloud Atlas by David Michell (highly, highly recommended) and now it’s on to Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I read a bit of Atlas Shrugged out of curiosity as well and that book squarely holds down this year’s ‘least favorite’ position for the moment. It’s clear that I’m not the demographic that Ayn Rand is writing for. I don’t have any releases I’m particularly looking forward to, but I’ll be shamelessly stealing everyone else’s ideas from this thread.

I’m 21 books in for 2023 so far. I didn’t really set a goal or anything, I go through phases of reading a lot then not. In March I got hooked on the Dresden Files and read all 17 of the main books back to back lol very addicting reads.

At the beginning of the year I was on a sci-fi horror kick which was new for me and super enjoyable! Some standouts were:

Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes
Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

All of them were what I would call fun and entertaining reads if not anything ground breaking.

I’m up to 20 read and I’m currently working on 21, 22, and 23. I know it’s a bid odd to read three books simultaneously (especially for a slow reader), but I’ve got my books in different contexts. One is my bed time book, Book 5 of Mistborn, which I’m slowly warming up to after devouring books 1-3. My living room book is House of Leaves, which just takes time to get through and can’t easily be binged. My commuting book is The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, which is excellent but also bums me out (the perfect going into work book).

Right now my favorite for the year is probably Age of Surveillance Capitalism. It’s not exactly revealing new ideas but more it’s expanding upon those ideas into terrifying new depths. Excellent book and well worth a read.

I’m excited to finish the Mistborn series this year and I’ll hit my goal of 25 books easily. I’ve already got books 24, 25, and 26 planned out. I’d love to hit 40 books this year but I’m not sure that will happen. I’ve not read that many books in one year since before middle school.

Least favorite reads? I picked up a Ray Kurzweil book about the singularity and put it down at 10 pages. It just felt so self congratulatory that I couldn’t really get into it. Plus the argument felt supported by extreme cherry picking.

I also enjoyed but was a bit disappointed in NK Jemisin’s sequel to The City We Became, titled The World We Make. It felt like a book that didn’t need to be written and didn’t really add to the characters or the world of the story. It was entertaining and evocative as all of Jemisin’s works are, but it didn’t leave as strong an impression as City which was disappointing.