stats
- total: 35
- fiction: 23
- nonfiction: 12
- written by women: 17
- written by poc*: 5
- tech books: 1, if you count Ruined by Design
reflections and goals for next year
I read a bunch of novels that didn’t really leave an impression on me. That’s obviously a high bar since books are a personal thing, and I don’t “fault” any of these books for it.
I’ve also been trying to read more non-fiction books, which I’m satisfied with this year.
Next year, I’d like to read more tech/programming books. I’m partway through several at the moment but I seem to have trouble finding the discipline to actually finish these books.
the full list
(reverse chronological order; favourites are bolded)
- The Plant Messiah - Carlos Magdalena
- The Testaments - Margaret Atwood
- Permanent Record - Edward Snowden
- The Water Dancer - Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo
- Neuromancer - William Gibson
- The Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood
- Conversations with Friends - Sally Rooney
- Milkman - Anna Burns
- In the Distance - Hernán Díaz
- The Word for Woman is Wilderness - Abi Andrews
- No Is Not Enough - Naomi Klein
- The Boy Who Could Change the World - Aaron Swartz
- Still Life with Oysters and Lemon - Mark Doty
- Ninety Percent of Everything - Rose George
- How to Do Nothing - Jenny Odell
- Ruined by Design - Mike Monteiro
- Daring Greatly - Brené Brown
- The Overstory - Richard Powers
- Dare to Lead - Brené Brown
- Weapons of Mass Diplomacy - Abel Lanzac
- The Future Is History - Masha Gessen
- Organizing Solutions for People With Attention Deficit Disorder - Susan C. Pinsky
- Warlight - Michael Ondaatje
- Pattern Recognition - William Gibson
- Normal People - Sally Rooney
- The Lonely City - Olivia Laing
- Sabrina - Nick Drnaso
- Sing, Unburied, Sing - Jesmyn Ward
- The Madwoman Upstairs - Catherine Lowell
- Being Mortal - Atul Gawande
- The Intuitionist - Colson Whitehead
- Blue Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson
- Green Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson
- Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson
* based on a loose (incorrect) definition of poc, wherein I’m basically trying to account for non-white perspectives. For example, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has written about the experience of being a Nigerian person living in Nigeria (where such a person would not be a person of colour) vs living in the United States, but I would have included her in my loose definition of poc. Also, you wouldn’t necessarily “know” whether someone was a poc unless they are known for writing or talking about race, and trying to assign them to “poc status” on their behalf would be both presumptuous and defeating the point.