Feb 18, 2023 ∞

Couldn’t turn down a visit to Flyleaf Books, either. 📚🃏

Feb 5, 2023 ∞

Currently reading: Fight Like Jesus by Jason Porterfield 📚

(Note: not what it might sound like. 🕊️)

Jan 22, 2023 ∞

📚 2022 Book Review

Welcome to my yearly summary of books!

Table of contents:

Intro - my process and tools
The Books - which books I recommend
Analysis - some introspection and goalsetting
Previously - links to prior years

Note: I will use Bookshop affiliate links when available, throughout this post. You don’t have to buy from my bookshop, but if you do, I put that money back into more books.

Intro

I use and recommend Libby for getting ebooks and audiobooks from the library. Most books I borrow digitally, but there are exceptions:

Books I plan to re-read
Deluxe or art-filled editions
Books I will use as a referenrce
Books I enjoyed and want to keep around

For those cases, I get physical editions via Bookshop. And lest you think I don’t really do physical books: my household has 15 brimming bookshelves.

I take copious highlights and notes, and save them to Readwise. Here’s how. Highlights and notes are especially important for me with digital books, where spacial-temporal recollection is not as easy, but spaced-repitition and note-linking can make up for it (and then some).

I track my reading in The StoryGraph. I prefer it because not Amazon and because it incorporates some data elements other than ratings which are useful for describing and finding books. I’m hoping micro.blog’s bookshelves feature continues to improve, so that I could rely on book tracking directly in my blog, as well. (Today, it doesn’t handle book search well nor let us use our own Bookshop links, but we’ll see what the future holds.)

I keep my to-read/wishlist as a Bookshop list, for ease of sharing and gift-giving.

The Books

Let’s start with the recommended ones, collected in this Bookshop collection or visually:

And here are all the books I read, individually, and in reading order (within rating):

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ :

The Six Deaths of the Saint (Into Shadow #3) - Alix E. Harrow (see also)

👍:

🤷‍♂️:

The Fat Switch - Richard J. Johnson (superseded by Nature Wants Us to Be Fat above)
Bury Your Dead (Inspector Gamache #6) - Louise Penny
Lexicon - Max Berry
On Juneteenth - Annette Gordon-Reed
Roadside Picnic - Arkady & Boris Strugatsky
The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Alex Haley
All We Can Save - Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine K. Wilkinson
Nimona - Noelle Stevenson
Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel
Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo
Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama - Bob Odenkirk
Everything Happens for a Reason - Kate Bowler
Persephone (Into Shadow #2) - Lev Grossman
The Little Book of Hygge - Meik Wiking

👎 (authors and links removed because I feel bad about even putting these in, but wanted to show the broader view):

Keeper of the Lost Cities (Keeper of the Lost Cities #1)
Tell the Machine Goodnight
The Prophet
A Calling for Charlie Barnes
The School for Good Mothers
The Garden (Into Shadow #1)

Did you read anything I did? What’d you think?

Based on looking at my list, is there anything you’d recommend?

Analysis

This was an mixed year for reading goals. I exceeded by book goal (55 out of 53) but missed by pages goal (15,868 out of 17,500). I’ll go for 60 books next year, but keep the 17,500 page goal.

Similar to my normal ratio, I read 63% fiction this year:

I continue to add to my intentionality in reading, seeking a variety of voices, formats, styles, etc. With such a long list of things I’d like to read, I’m also trying to be wiser about what I should read sooner than later such as things related to health or permaculture.

Here’s to a good year of reading!

Previously 📚:

Jan 22, 2023 ∞

I gave readow.ai as many of the books as it could find from my ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 📚 list, and then deleted some results (things I’ve read or am reading, multiple items from the same series), and these are the books it recommended to me.

Jan 15, 2023 ∞

Finished reading: A Man Called Ove: A Novel by Fredrik Backman 📚

A rare Five ⭐️ Read.

Jan 9, 2023 ∞

Currently working through: (My) Principles by Ray Dalio (and me) 📚

Jan 3, 2023 ∞

Finished (re-)reading: Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb 📚

Jan 1, 2023 ∞

Currently reading: Home-Scale Forest Garden by Dani Baker 📚

Dec 25, 2022 ∞

📚🥃 My people know me.

Not pictured: awesome cutting boards that are still on the way and a meaningful family ornament.

Dec 23, 2022 ∞

flashback friday:

Every room is a library, if you try hard enough 📚

Dec 19, 2022 ∞

📚 A rare addition to the ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ shelf:

The Six Deaths of the Saint by Alix E Harrow

Only 30 pages, but I will never forget it.

Dec 2, 2022 ∞

📚 Seven books to get to know me: (In no particular order)

Nov 28, 2022 ∞

📚 This is the most meta-Sanderson quote.

“The trick is to never stop looking. There’s always another secret.”

(Sorry, I’ve probably shared it before.)

Nov 23, 2022 ∞

📚

more here

Nov 8, 2022 ∞

📚 Newest additions to our Library of America collection.

These and our Everyman’s Library collection are such incredible treasures.

If you gave up on physical books, try one of these as an exception. Highly recommended.

Sep 12, 2022 ∞

I didn’t know about the artificial sweeteners part, but my experience aligns to the rest: after a handful of days without sugar and refined carbs, the urges went away.

Sep 3, 2022 ∞

📚 Good HPB haul today.

Aug 14, 2022 ∞

📚 We’re reading Atomic Habits in book club, so I pulled the free bonus resources together in my notes.

Aug 13, 2022 ∞

📚 Book reading challenge pizza party, colored our own bookmarks, had treats, took a nature walk, and played a question game. 💜

Jul 31, 2022 ∞

📚 Not going to say anything about the book I just finished (because it was crap), but I’m doing well on this year’s challenge.