Reading Numbers;
Total reading time tracked; 615 hours, 48 minutes
Fiction reading time tracked; 457 hours, 19 minutes
Nonfiction reading time tracked; 126 hours, 17 minutes
Monthly Reading Chart
Monthly Reading Time Chart
Jan-April was… probably my hardest quarantine months. I had a bad throat infection in February, and times were generally dark in those months. Now, almost a year out, it’s interesting to see that that is reflected in the stats. Something to keep an eye on in future tracking.
It's quite fun to see how well my reading time tracks with how many books/pages of something I actually read. I read a decent amount that’s not tracked as books (see Pale and PGtE further down this post), but it’s quite evenly spaced out. The discrepancy in June is probably due to the fact that I was reading League of Legends lore at that time.
I also dislike both pages and books as metrics to track reading - one page of Intuition Pumps and one page of Coraline are not the same thing - and would much prefer StoryGraph to track words read, but alas.
Genre Breakdown
The genres are not exclusive - there are at least some marked both SciFi and Fantasy because they add up to 51 by themselves.
The fiction/nonfiction divide is 41/11 as well, which is...probably less nonfiction than I would have liked. Something to consider for 2022.
It is nice to see short stories represented here - even if only 3 (collections) - as it was a deliberate choice I made sometime last year to read more short stories.
The YA stuff is Brandon Sanderson and Earthsea.
The LGBTQIA+ is A Memory Called Empire and its sequel A Desolation Called Peace, which, sure they could fit in that category but it's not the first place I would put them (they don't have any other genre tags besides "fiction").
Art is GEB, which, while technically true is also quite funny.
My 2021 5-star reads
I read 10 books which I awarded 5-star reviews this year, so here's a little breakdown of each of them.
There Is No Antimemetics Division, qntm
Discussed here
Anathem, Neal Stephenson
Discussed here
The Anthropocene Reviewed, John Green
This book is very, very difficult to put into words. The Anthropocene Reviewed is a collection of 44(ish) non-fiction essays written by John Green. For casual readers of his work that may seem outside his purview, but after reading I think it is the work of his I have enjoyed the most.
The 'hook' of the book is that he reviews 'facets of the human-centred planet on a five-star scale'. If that doesn't immediately interest you, that's fine. The hook isn't all that good. Luckily, it only describes a fraction of the book. On a deeper level, Green lays out what it is to be human in a world in which we are, as a species so powerful, and as individuals so powerless. Sometimes it makes you feel big in a small world, and other times small in a big world. It touches on all the big subjects (Love, Death, Time) but also on many smaller ones, like velociraptors, and Mario Kart.
On a structural level, the book is a memoir of sorts. The Introduction recounts Green's activities after the release of his previous book Turtles All The Way Down, to set the stage for the first essay. From there, we are taken on a journey starting from Green's childhood (e.g. "Halley's Comet" , "Scratch 'n Sniff stickers") through adolescence (e.g. "The Hall of Presidents") and into adulthood (e.g. "Hiroyuki Doi's Circle Drawings"). Holistically, the book might be said to recount Green's experience as a person growing up and living in the Anthropocene.
Each essay also has a narrative structure of its own, winding its way through corners of Green's mind that are at once deeply personal and ubiquitously human. The essays take us by the hand and lead us through topics joyful and mundane, but is not afraid to pause and ponder the heaviest aspects of life, sometimes within a couple of sentences of each other.
Green has said that he likes stories where (paraphrasing) "you laugh the whole way through, only to find yourself crying at the end". And to me, Green has managed to do that in this book. It is blisteringly funny, but manages, without fail, to also ring profound, to leave me with a sense of aching for the state of the world, imperfect and majestic, paltry and glorious, that it is.
The Great Ordeal, and The Unholy Consult, R. Scott Bakker Aspect-Emperor #3 & #4 (Second Apocalypse #6 & #7)
Scott Bakker's "The Second Apocalypse" series is hard to put into words as well. On the one hand, that's because it's long (83hrs over 7 books so far), but also because it deals in different concepts and tropes, one cluster of which is familiar to fantasy readers, another to rationalists/hobbyist philosophers, and you really need both to engage fully with a summary of it. These two books cap off the second overall arc of the story, and I cannot do it any justice in trying to summarise the story so far. Therefore, I will slightly pitch to you book 1;
This is a dark fantasy story set in a medieval/renaissance world. As the name of the series suggests, there was a "First Apocalypse", in a past age, and there's in-world religion about a time when the Great Evil One will awaken again.
What makes the series so immensely appealing to me is the interplay between the ~4 viewpoint/main characters of the first 3 books: Druvas Achamian, a Mage whose dreams is haunted by visions of the first Apocalypse, Esmenet, a prostitute who leaves her job to accompany Achamian and more.
The next two characters will need some more explanation of the lore and world-building of the series - the second part of what makes it so great.
One of the cultures of the series, the Dûnyain, have discovered a science of rationality, which is described below.
For two thousand year they had pursued their sacred study, breeding for reflex and intellect, training in the ways of limb, thought, and face— all for the sake of reason, the Logos. In the effort to transform themselves into the perfect expression of the Logos, the Dûnyain had dedicated their entire existence to mastering the irrationalities of history, custom, and passion— all those things that determine human thought. In this way, they believed, they would eventually grasp what they called the Absolute, and so become true self-moving souls.
Some further minutiae are described here
For years he walked the innumerable paths of the Probability Trance, plotting future after future, searching for the thread of act and consequence that would save the world.
The Dûnyain have no contact with the outer world - only their own city. In their remote society their abilities are equalised by the fact that they all have access to it, but normal people are like open books to them.
Anasurimbor Kellhus is a Dûnyain monk who has been sent by his community to kill his father - another Dûnyain who left their ascetic society to go live among the other peoples. Kellhus appears among society and quickly realises that he can use his abilities to quickly accomplish his goals, which the book leaves slightly ambiguous.
Cnaiür urs Skiötha is a "savage" who, in his youth, was visited by Kellhus' father and saw how easily he was able to manipulate other people. When as an adult he meets Kellhus, he recognises the same cunning.
These characters all come together to form a very, very tight character drama, which is played out to a backdrop of the Return of an old evil god, machinations of current cults, regular ol' political powers struggles, religious war and jihad, and more. It also leans heavily into the dark aspects of its genre, especially in the middle/later books.
Tiamat's Wrath and Leviathan Falls, James S.A. Corey (The Expanse # 8, reread & #9)
The conclusion to The Expanse was well executed and delivered on all the major points it had to deliver on. I don't have much to say here, other than that it's a worthwhile read. Daniel Greene did a mini-review of it here.
Words of Radiance, Brandon Sanderson (The Stormlight Archines #2, reread)
Words of Radiance is probably only the 3rd best, of the 4 published so far, main-series SA books. That doesn't mean it doesn't contain its own moments of brilliance, however ("Honor is dead. But I'll see what I can do.").
Sanderson writes "invisible" prose - you're not meant to pay all that much attention to it - and lays most of his attention on world- and character-building. WoR delivers on both of these fronts, and though it is a daunting challenge to follow up the first book in the series - and especially so when the main viewpoint character of the first book is slightly sidelined here in the second - but it is up to the task, and sticks the landing. I'm keeping a good pace to have reread most of Sanderson's work by the release of Stormlight Archive 5 in two years.
Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking (Daniel Dennett)
Intuition Pumps makes this list purely for the density of high-quality ideas it mentions, and the introductions it gives to some topics like machine-language code. Many things resonated with other things I've read, and highlights were the sorta operator, competence without comprehension, "beware the prime mammal", free-floating rationales, and the centre of narrative gravity.
The Scout Mindset, Julia Galef
I read Scout Mindset in April and didn't take good notes in it, so I'm probably going to revisit it within the year, but the basic premise - treat your beliefs as if you were a scout, not a soldier - provides mileage for months.
Tangent on the two serials I'm reading
I will also use this post to talk about two of my favourite serial novels, namely Pale, and the Practical Guide to Evil. The serial novel was a popular form of publishing back in the 1800s, when newspapers would get weekly or monthly installments of a story, each of them relatively self-contained, and readers would follow the story at that pace. Many famous stories were originally published serially (even if that wasn’t the author’s preferred way), including Asimov’s Foundation, Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, and Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo. The form took a hiatus for a while, but reappeared with the advent of web serialisation. Though arguebly most popular in comic book or cartoon format, web serialisation is also an option for novel writers - see topwebfiction.com for a taste. (Warning; before you read on, be warned that both the Guide and Pale are long works of fiction, and though I don’t think length is a detriment, I do think it can be a challenge modifier for reading works of fiction. Therefore, I do not unilaterally recommend them, even though I think they are brilliant.)
The Guide is a traditional epic fantasy, inspired by classical fantasy fiction such as D&D and Tolkien, but its brilliance comes through in its metanarrative components. In the world of Guide, story “tropes” are part of the “rules”, and our main character learns to read and recognise these tropes and use them to her advantage. That comes on the top of an already wonderfully realised fantasy world with excellent world-building, characters, and setting. Though the Guide builds off of the Tolkien and D&D inspired fantasy races (humans, elves, goblins, dwarves, etc.) it has probably the best execution of these races that I have seen anywhere, highlighting and extremising many of the “quirks” of these races, so that they are not only “human but long-lived”, “human but short”, or “human but green skin”.
Pale, in one sentence, is a magical girl murder mystery-cum-bildungsroman. The story starts off as three 13 year old girls; Avery, Verona, and Lucy, are approached by a local council of “Others” - the novel’s catch-all word for magical creatures - and ask them to become Practitioners (magicians) to investigate who killed the Carmine Beast, a magical authority of the local area. It is uncertain at first why the council would ask this of our three protagonists, but whatever the reason, the girls show themselves as plenty of capable, as they start to solve the mystery. The story is set mainly in Kennet, a made-up town in Canada, and the chapters rotate between each of the girls’ viewpoints. The story shines through its magic system, magical ecosystem, and the main three characters. The author is excellent at creating rules-based magic systems, and as the characters’ knowledge grows, so does ours, and it is exceedingly satisfying to see them solve problems using their knowledge, as according to Brandon Sanderson;
An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic
Pale is set in the same universe as one of the author’s other series, Pact, but otherwise has no relation to it. One of the author’s other works, Worm is one of my all time favourite novels.
Thanks for reading! This post was supposed to come out some days ago, but I’ve been indisposed for the last 5 days due to bad side effects after a vaccine booster shot. This post was quite fun to write, I think mostly for the reviews, so there might be more of that in the future.