Some of my Facebook friends are doing it, so I’ll do it too, though here, not there. Well OK, maybe there too.
The list is below. The photo shows all of them in order of finish, except that the 2022 SF novels, along with the last four nonfiction books, are stacked flat at the far end. The shelf was full.
Two of the books I Did Not Finish, as indicated. A fair number of these — hmm, 15 or so, mostly the older SF novels but also a couple nonfiction — were re-reads.
Early in the year, after revisiting or finishing off some nonfiction, I decided to sample some relatively popular current SF novels. Thus McGuire, Kowal, Chambers. Not enthused by any of them. Midyear I revisited some SF classcs, by Clement, Heinlein, Moorcock, Silverberg, Pangborn… Anderson. And at the end of the year, given a chance to cast thumbs up or thumbs down on titles for Locus’ annual Recommended Reading List, I gathered a shelf of a dozen and half 2022 SF novels that looked interesting, and worked my way through about half of them. (I’m focused on SF novels, though the Locus RR has many other categories.) As votes from others came in, and individual titles were guaranteed a position on the final list (it took 3 or 4 votes), I postponed those titles in favor of others whose inclusion was in jeopardy. Thus I read not one but two fat Stephen Baxter novels, which I liked, though as it turned out the first one I read was a 2021 book, as I should have noticed. I read three novels acclaimed by others but which I didn’t care for, all for similar reasons, by Mandel, Nagamatsu, and Onyebushi. Of the 2022 novels I’ve read so far, I liked the Priest and Reynolds the best. Others I expect to like, but which I’ve postponed because others had already recommended them, guaranteeing them a spot on the RR list, are by Nayler, (J) Egan, McAuley, Tidhar, and Roberts. After a January break to read other things, I’ll get to those in February and March, in order to vote intelligently in the Locus Poll.
I take notes on everything I read but don’t always get around to writing them up here on this blog. Those I have can be found at this category, but they’re mostly nonfiction. I’ll try to do a round-up of brief reviews of the 2022 novels I’ve read, and individual posts for the four nonfiction books I closed the year with.
63. MacAskill, What We Owe the Future (2022)
62. Harari, Unstoppable Us (2022)
61. Shermer, The Moral Arc (2015)
60. Dawkins, Flights of Fancy (2022)
59. Onyebushi, Goliath [DNF] (2022)
58. Baxter, The Thousand Earths (2022)
57. Nagamatsu, How High We Go in the Dark (2022)
56. Borowitz, Profiles in Ignorance (2022)
55. O’Leary, 51 (2022)
54. Reynolds, Eversion (2022)
53. Priest, Expect Me Tomorrow (2022)
52. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology (1940)
51. Tyson, Starry Messenger (2022)
50. Dozois, The Best of the Best Volume 2 (2007)
49. Wallach, Longpath (2022)
48. Baxter, Galaxias (2021)
47. Mandel, Sea of Tranquility (2022)
46. Kasner/Newman, Mathematics and the Imagination (1940)
45. Al-Khalili, The Joy of Science (2022)
44. Swirsky, January Fifteenth (2022)
43. Gregg, If Nietzsche were a Narwhal (2022)
42. Dozois, Geodesic Dreams (1992)
41. Dawkins, The God Delusion (2006)
40. Gamow, One Two Three… Infinity (1961)
39. Orwell, Animal Farm (1946)
38. Olson, Houston, We Have a Narrative (2015)
37. Harris, The Moral Landscape (2010)
36. Wright, Nonzero (2000)
35. Kaku, The God Equation (2021)
34. McRaney, How Minds Change (2022)
33. Holleran, The Kingdom of Sand (2022)
32. Anderson, Tau Zero (1970)
31. Smil, Numbers Don’t Lie (2020)
30. Brin, Polemical Judo (2019)
29. Robinson, The Ministry for the Future (2020)
28. Scalzi, The Kaiju Preservation Society (2022)
27. Pangborn, A Mirror for Observers (1954)
26. Silverberg, The Stochastic Man (1975)
25. Moorcock, Behold the Man (1969)
24. Heinlein, The Star Beast (1954)
23. Clement, Mission of Gravity (1954)
22. Onfray, Atheist Manifesto (2007)
21. DK, Big History (2016)
20. Dobelli, Stop Reading the News (2020)
19. Prothero, God Is Not One (2010)
18. Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (1994)
17. Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (1986)
16. Plait, Bad Astronomy (2002)
15. Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (DNF) (2015)
14. Butler/et al, Kindred Graphic Novel (2017)
13. Butler, Kindred (1979)
12. Kowal, The Calculating Stars (2018)
11. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama (1973)
10. McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway (2016)
9. Keyes, Algernon, Charlie and I (1999)
8. Keyes, Flowers for Algernon (1966)
7. Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth (2019)
6. Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality (1997)
5. Snyder, On Tyranny (2017)
4. Zakaria, Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World (2020)
3. Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018)
2. Paulos, Once Upon a Number (1998)
1. Paulos, Innumeracy (1988)
I’ve always kept lists of books that I read each year, since I was age 15. In recent years I’m fairly wonkish in maintaining these lists. In addition to author, title, and date published, as shown above, my spreadsheet has columns for actual pages, credited pages, start date, finish date, date notes completed, and date posted on blog. Then there are roll-up columns including one that’s a running average pages read per week, which ideally should be 700 (100 p/day), but for two years now has been only about half that — 357 pp/week in 2022. The number varies from year to year, depending on what else I’m busy with, and how substantial the books are. Tracking such progress does actually promote achievement, at least for wonkish people like me.
Just as the exercise of posting my list of books read, makes me conscientious about reading better and better books next (this) year.
