Category: Culture

I seem to be on track on posting every two years. I continuing to use 35 as my annual reading goal which isn’t difficult for me to hit. Let’s look at the books I read in 2025.

I continue to read mostly eBooks, most from the local library. Goodreads does have some gamification happening, but I’ve been mostly ignoring this, still it’s pretty neat to see that I was a very consistent reader this past year. I read 35 books (just) for a total of 12719 pages. My average rating was 3 stars.

The shortest book I read, The City Inside, was only 244 pages. The longest book, Apocalypse of the Dead, was 503 pages. Both of these I rated at 2 stars, so I wouldn’t recommend you spend time on either. On average my books were 363 pages in length.

Lock In, the first book I read in 2025, was the most shelved on goodreads. This is no surprise as John Scalzi is a well known author and writes fantastic stuff (I rated this a 4 star). The least shelved was Crescent written by Homer Hickam (3 star) this was part of a series (Helium-3) and for whatever reason I only read 2 of the series. I suspect my library didn’t have a copy of the 3rd book

Let’s touch on highs and lows. 8 books got 2 stars from me. 9 were given 4 stars, with the remainder being 3 stars.  Overall a pretty good spread. A 3 star book is worth the read, but didn’t really grab me. A 4 star (or above) would be a recommended read.

My 4 star books:

• Lock In – Anything by John Scalzi is a good read IMO.
• Terminal Alliance – First in a series, the rest were ok.
• The Prom Goer’s Interstellar Excursion – A fun, light, read.
• Nobody – Ever feel invisible?
• Learning to Swear in America – I really enjoyed this.
• Finder / Driving the Deep – Two books, both excellent.
• Rubicon – Cyberpunk / Military / AI.
• Hammajang Luck – Amazing debut novel.

I continue to read regularly, and I would recommend you try to do the same. It’s a good way to bring in information that is longer form than the internet which has become all click-bait headlines, and short form video. If you can’t read, try an audio book – I did listen to Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography (not counted in my reading challenge), it was excellent another one I would recommend. Also, consider trying to expose yourself to new points of view with the content you consume – I leave a lot of what I read up to chance, but I have been intentionally trying to keep my authors diverse – selecting more female authors, or biasing my choice towards someone from another culture.

It seems I remember to post about my reading every second year. I’ve been using 35 books as my goal for a while now, usually I’m able to read more but I have the occasional miss – 2023 being one of those years where I only completed 30 books. In 2022 I managed 36 of 35.

I almost exclusively read eBooks checked out of my local library using Libby. This is convenient and free. I’m not a very picky reader, so I’ll sort randomly in the Science Fiction category and pick something I haven’t read. From time to time I’ll pick an author I’ve previously read or one that I’ve had recommended.

In the past my default rating was 3 of 5 stars, almost everything was a 3. I’ve become more critical and have started to hand out more 2 star reviews, as well as been more liberal with 4 stars.

My 2023 books

• 9 books 2 star
• 17 books 3 star
• 4 books 4 star

What stands out is some of the best and worst reading experiences. A bad rating from me is subjective, the book might be good but it didn’t suck me into the story like a great book does. The 4 star reviews are books I’d recommend to others.

The Bone Clocks had been on my wish list for a while, I’m not sure where I got the recommendation but it has a 3.84 star average rating. Unfortunately this is one of my 2 stars this year, it took me nearly 40 days to slog my way through the 624 pages. There were certainly interesting parts in the story, but I never found myself wanting to just keep reading.

Looking over my list of 2 star ratings, a good number of them were given to the last book in a series – either a series I read this year, or a sequel to a book (or books) I’d read previously.

My first 4 star was The Design of Everyday Things. It was actually the hackaday podcast that turned me onto this (again), but that was the nudge that got me to read it. While it is one of the rare non-fiction books in my reading, it was well worth the time. I enjoyed that it gave me new insights into how things work.

Hard Wired was another 4 star. I will admit it was a bit formula, but for me it was a page turner taking me less than 5 days to make it through it.

Next up is Otaku with 4 stars, this was a surprise for me. I certainly didn’t expect this type of book from a former NFL player’s debut novel. It felt like it was set in a Blade Runner like future, or maybe Neuromancer is a better comparison.

My last 4 star book Autonomous had been on my wish list for a bit (since 2020). In this case it was a great recommendation and I’m glad I had it on my list. It’s got a lot to give: pirates, reverse engineering, dystopian future and cyberpunk. How could I not love a book like this?

 

I’m still tracking my reading with Goodreads, which continues to be primarily eBooks sourced from my local library. I missed doing a summary post in last year, in brief I read 35 books (11,714 pages) in 2020. This was fewer than in 2019.

2021 was a lot like 2020, but somehow I read a lot more books. 64 books (20,858 pages). My goal was 35, and I’ll probably use that as my goal for 2022.

It seems the image dump of the titles is roughly the order I read them in. You can see I read a fair number of series. For the most part to find new material I searched what was available to borrow in random order. I got a few nice surprises.

I really enjoyed the Sandman Slim series. The Diabolic series also stands out as a fun read. I generally rate most books 3 stars, but this year I was more critical and gave out more 2 star reviews than I had in the past. Only The Terminal Experiment and Sandman Slim got 4 stars from me.

With so many rich media experiences, I still think it’s important to disconnect and read. Better still to pick up a paper book and give your eyes something different to stare at. The local library is a great resource not only for books, I discovered that the magazine selection and software presentation was pretty good on my tablet.