Books Read 2021

As mentioned in my previous post, I use Goodreads’ gamification of reading to track what I’ve read throughout the year. Not because I can’t remember. Well, mostly not that. But, from a morbid sense of seeing where all my “free” time went.

In 2020, I had selected a goal of 52 books for the year. But, that was before the pandemic got going and I spent the final 9 months of the year at home 99.9% of the time. So, I crushed that goal by getting through 80 books.

I didn’t figure 2121 to be quite that bad, but I feel like my reading speed and rhythm had improved somewhat, so I picked 65 books for the new year. Well, it was pretty much the same and the results were too. I read 80 books in the course of the year.

And much like the previous year, the list was dominated by fiction, woodworking, and various not-fiction topics like, weirdly (for me) economics. The breakdown:

• Woodworking, furniture making, or historical furniture – 8 (down from 9)
• Alternate History – 1 (down from 11)
• British Naval Thrillers – 5 (even)
• Sci-fi – 35 (down from 47 last year)
• Fantasy – 6 (new)
• Skill building – 3 (new)
• Non-fiction, history, economics, sociology, privacy, morality/human rights – 21 (up from 13)

The non-fiction category was dominated by binges on Niall Ferguson and Tyler Cowen (his podcast is highly recommended). Where the Sci-fi category was dominated by a binge on newly discovered author Brandon Q. Morris and a re-read of the Expanse series after talking my wife into watched the Amazon adaptation. Likewise the debut of the Wheel of Time series prompted a reread of that epic if only to refresh my memory of just how divergent the series is/will be.

The list:

Let’s see what 2022 brings…