2025 & 2026 Reading Challenge discussion

2014!

January
1. Brian K. Vaughan - Saga, Volume 1 (graphic novel)
2. John Scalzi - Fuzzy Nation
3. Frank Swain - How to Make a Zombie: The Real Life (and Death) Science of Reanimation and Mind Control
4. Brandon Sanderson - Steelheart
5. Brian K. Vaughan - Saga, Volume 2 (graphic novel)
6. Jim Butcher - Small Favor
7. Sun Tzu - The Art of War
8. Connie Willis - The Best of Connie Willis: Award-Winning Stories
9. Erik Larson - The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
10. Jim Butcher - Turn Coat
11. Mary Roach - Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

February
12. Mike Carey - The Unwritten, Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity (graphic novel)
13. Joseph Heller - Catch-22
14. Rick Yancey - The 5th Wave
15. Jim Ottaviani - Feynman (graphic novel)
16. Peter S. Beagle - The Last Unicorn
17. Shirley Jackson - The Tooth
18. Siri Pettersen - Odinsbarn (N)
19. Neal Stephenson - The Confusion
20. Mike Carey - The Unwritten, Vol. 2: Inside Man (graphic novel)
21. Veronica Schanoes - Burning Girls
22. Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and Slow

March
23. Ann Leckie - Ancillary Justice
24. Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind
25. Jim Butcher - Changes
26. Brandon Sanderson - Mitosis
27. Mike Carey - The Unwritten, Vol. 3: Dead Man's Knock (GN)
28. Mike Carey - The Unwritten, Vol. 4: Leviathan (GN)
29. Stephen King - Doctor Sleep
30. A. Lee Martinez - Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain
31. John E. Douglas - Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit
32. Neal Stephenson - Anathem

April
33. Rob Thomas - The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line
34. Grant Morrison - We3 (GN)
35. Frøydis Simonsen - Hver morgen kryper jeg opp fra havet (N)
36. Grant Morrison - Joe the Barbarian (GN)
37. Mike Carey - The Unwritten, Vol. 5: On to Genesis (GN)
38. Mike Carey - The Unwritten, Vol. 6: Tommy Taylor and the War of Words
39. Robert Sheckley - Dimension of Miracles
40. H.G. Wells - The Island of Dr. Moreau
41. Karen Russell - Sleep Donation
42. Marion Zimmer Bradley - The Mists of Avalon
43. Jim Butcher - Side Jobs: Stories From the Dresden Files
44. Charlie Human - Apocalypse Now Now

1. Brian K. Vaughan - Saga, Volume 1 (graphic novel)
4 stars

This was recommended to me by the same person who led me to Locke & Key, and that person is clearly my favourite resource for graphic novels.

This is mostly pre-amble and build-up, but it has great things; interesting storytelling, lovely art, spaceships, ghosts, and lurid romance novels. I look forward to reading the next volume.

2. John Scalzi - Fuzzy Nation
4 stars

I haven't read the classic "Little Fuzzy" which this novel is a sort of reboot of - to my knowledge, it is one of the painfully dated classics of science fiction, and I'm not missing anything - but I have read a lot of Scalzi, by now. This is, well, more of the same. I find it much less annoying than Redshirts, at the same time less charming than Old Man's War, but the latter might just be due to having tired of the smartypants-style over time and exposure. It's okay, I'll still read Scalzi stuff whenever it shows up, but I really do hope he'll expand and do... more.

3. Frank Swain - How to Make a Zombie: The Real Life (and Death) Science of Reanimation and Mind Control
3 stars

First: This was given to me by the 2013 Secret Santa! Thank you!

I enjoy the strange part of the non-fiction shelves, which became obvious as I read this, as it was mostly a jumble of topics I've already read about at length - from voodoo to parasites to intriguing Russian science experiments. It skims over everything, making it a bit of a frustrating book to an interested reader, but a funky title probably makes up for a lot in a gift-giving or shelf-displaying context. (And it did introduce me to "mad honey" and rhododendrons.)

All in all, you don't particularly need to read this if you're like me and have already been through books about parasites, rabies, and a handful of Mary Roach. And possibly some amount of zombie fiction. ...I think this kind of bookshelf is probably common to a lot of us who grew up on a steady diet of x-files and goosebumps.

Glad you enjoyed Saga so much! I really want to try it to see if I like it. The second book probably has more action I guess.

Adriana, go for it! I have the second book from the library waiting for me to give it a look. :) (Living next door to the city's graphic novel library is a luxury!)

4. Steelheart - Brandon Sanderson
4 stars

This is, in many ways, exactly what I want when I look to the YA shelves - fast read, engaging and larger-than-life characters, epic(!) battle, equally epic consequences. I also have a soft spot for superhero tropes, which adds to the enjoyment of this story. Newcago is a wonderfully different dystopian setting - and there is no cloying love triangle.

(I loved the hunger games, I did - but the gazillion copies of the lovetriangle-dystopia-unbelieveable-setting thing...? Nope.)

5. Brian K. Vaughan - Saga, Volume 2 (graphic novel)
4 stars

it feels like the story just hasn't quite started, but maybe it's actually just playing with my expectations of what the story is.

Saga is about relationships, really. Spaceship forests and unbelievably cool robot royalty and bounty hunters and comet-eggs and all, the relationships make up most of the story. Not in a very sappy romance-y way either, but maybe it would be like that if it wasn't framed in this particular style of art.


6. Small Favor
3 stars

At the 10th book in a series, some things are obvious - I must be amused by this stuff, or I wouldn't have come this far, and if I read the 10th, I'll probably also read the 15th.

I have a lot of nagging problems with these books, and most specifically with the character Harry Dresden, but - you know - it's okay. Series about private investigator types, magical or not, have a certain set of tropes to live up to, and this at least comes wrapped in the occasional genuinely funny scene.

(I really did enjoy the read, but trying to write about it afterwards, all I can focus on are the problems. Of course.)

7. Sun Tzu - The Art of War
3 stars

It's kind of tricky to rate a book like this. I can only rate what the read was like for me, and that was something like "As expected, knew very well what it was before reading, was not surprised, was not particularly blown away by style or prose, is nice to cross off the stuff-i-should-have-read-list".

8. Connie Willis - The Best of Connie Willis: Award-Winning Stories
5 stars

I love Connie Willis. Her enormous time travel novels are books that stick with me, in a way few books do. It's to do with atmosphere, characters, interactions, all of it; Her narrator voice is good-natured, some things exaggerated and others simplified, but it's all coherent and thoroughly engaging. The short stories are much the same.

As a bonus, at the end of the book, some of her speeches are included - like the Grand Master acceptance speech. They make me like Willis even more than I already did.

9. Erik Larson - The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America
3 stars

I was sort of disappointed with this. It could be because I chose the audiobook version, which unfortunately had a narrator I don't particularly like. Or it could just be that I'm not at all sufficiently interested in architecture, which was a big chunk of the book, and rather too interested in serial killers, like this "American Jack the ripper".

It IS amusing to follow the thread through this time and place in history, to note all the firsts, the inventions, the iconic names of people all bunched up like this - but to me, it got a bit lost as I was bored through the woes of designers and directors.

10. Jim Butcher - Turn Coat
4 stars

The series is getting better - a lot from previous books converges in this one, while at the same time providing new questions and foreboding, well, foreshadowing. It's not strange for an author to improve significantly on the way from book 1 to book 11 in a series - when the world and the characters keep growing aswell, it's all the more pleasing to me.

I already know some of what happens in the rest of the series, but, thankfully, I've never really been bothered by "spoilers". The story isn't diminished, to me, just by knowing a few answers already. (I don't think I could have coped with the internet at all if I raged over spoilers...!)

11. Mary Roach - Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife
4 stars

While this might be my least favourite of Mary Roach reads so far, it's still a fun read. From attempts at weighing the soul to reincarnated kids in India, table-shaking mediums and cleverly designed "near-death experience" test setups - all of these things are interesting things, which is probably why I love Mary Roach so much; like me and most six year-olds in the world, she instantly recognises the parts of a subject worth the geek-out, like what happens when I read one interesting wikipedia article and dig myself 8 pages deeper through related links and forget about dinner.

12. Mike Carey - The Unwritten, Vol. 1: Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity (graphic novel)
4 stars

JK Rowling has been talking about who should and shouldn't have married, just as I started reading this Harry Potter-inspired thing. Not to indicate they're very much alike, because they're not. In Unwritten, Tom Taylor just wants to live life as something other than a big action figure of the hero his father created in his wildly popular books; Tommy Taylor. Tom is not Tommy. Right?...

13. Joseph Heller - Catch-22
4 stars

Technically, this was a re-read, but as the previous read took place in what I have to refer to as the year of the Great Brain-fog, I couldn't remember it at all.

This has been the favourite book of so many people I've known. I wasn't honestly sure I understood why, until I hit the last 25% of the story. The parts before are necessary build-up, but for me, reading momentum only set in for that last quarter.

(Trying and failing a few times, I don't have it in me to say anything about the story right now, apparently!)

14. Rick Yancey - The 5th Wave
3 stars

Decent YA! I realise that doesn't sound very great, but my first reaction to this was just to be relieved it wasn't yet another totalitarian/love-triangle setup. Here, there are aliens. Cool! There's a tough protagonist girl who does have boy problems, but isn't absolutely destined to end up with the guy who starts out as the main attraction. That's also cool.

This book had a lot of likeable aspects, and as I chose the audiobook, I'll add that the narration was nice, too. I'll probably look for the next part, as this must be the start of, I assume, a trilogy.


15. Jim Ottaviani - Feynman (graphic novel)
5 stars

I didn't know a lot about Feynman to start with, which means a lot of this story was a surprise to me, and had me in tears several times over. As always, reading about crazy magical physics makes me wish I had studied it, too. I'm also very interested in reading some of Feynman's books, now - so this is a 5-star read for that thing I like; making me want to know more. Also, graphic novel non-fiction? Awesome.

16. Peter S. Beagle - The Last Unicorn
4 stars

I was about 70% through this before it dawned on me that I had read this before, somewhere in my library-haunting pre-teens, in a translated copy with a pastel cover. It's never been a very well known title around here, I think - though it deserves to be, because it's exactly the sort of thing I liked to read between Narnia and the Neverending Story.

17. Shirley Jackson - The Tooth
3 stars

I'd never read Shirley Jackson before. Not even "The lottery"! But now I have, and I enjoyed it. It's easy to see how this author has been an inspiration to others, like Stephen King.

I loved the reading, though I get terribly frustrated with the kind of short story that just... breaks off its arc, leaving me without a natural ending, very dissatisfied. Not the case for "The lottery", but a couple of the other stories included in this collection were guilty of it.

I'm also not quite sure I understood the story "The tooth", or if I was even meant to understand more than I did, heh.

18. Siri Pettersen - Odinsbarn (N)
4 stars

First Norwegian read of the year; A YA fantasy with a Norse-inspired setting, never directly tying into mythology in this book, which is the first of three - but making a lot of promises, including the title, "Child of Odin".

I had fun reading this - it was engaging and had me swept away in epic acts of heroism and whatnot, which is just what I want from YA-ish fantasy.

19. Neal Stephenson - The Confusion
5 stars

Ha, I've had this listed as 'currently reading' since forever. Part of the reason for that is I started it as an audiobook, and audiobooks require me to be engaging in activity suited for listening, which isn't always. Another part of the reason is, no matter how much I love the author and the story, sometimes I just get sort of... world fatigue. I need to leave this bookworld for a bit and return when I feel sufficiently refreshed. It might be a chronic illness-thing, or just an I-need-different-stimuli sort of thing. I know some think it's weird, but I think it's weird to be ok with reading long series back-to-back - it would exhaust me.

Anyway, this. Baroque cycle. It's lovely. Neal Stephenson makes me laugh a lot, and at the end of this, cry a lot. All of his characters are alive, with clear motives that make sense.

I admit I like the political/philosophical parts better than the buccaneering adventures of Jack Shaftoe, but that doesn't mean I dislike or don't care about Jack. Just that I'd like to get back to reading about physics and banking asap.

It's hard to explain to someone who doesn't know Stephenson, an if they do, they understand without explanation, I think.

20. Mike Carey - The Unwritten, Vol. 2: Inside Man (graphic novel)
3 stars

This is still a litle slow going, but the premise is interesting, and the odd appearance of Joseph Goebbels is eclectic enough to keep me reading.

21. Veronica Schanoes - Burning Girls
3 stars

This is a nebula-nominated novella I downloaded for free many months ago, probably because of the keyword 'Russian', because I have a soft spot for Russian culture in SFF. The story is not all that memorable, though. Pacts with demons you cannot cheat, being witchy, and whatnot.

22. Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and Slow
4 stars

I liked this book a lot, at least in the first half or so. After that I found it to sort of harp on about the same thing repeatedly, but maybe I'm just... not detail-oriented enough. I would happily recommend this to anyone interested in the psychology of decision-making or human mind oddities in general, though.

(For most of the example tasks, I found that I'm the kind of person who is always suspicious of 'too easy' and looks for the 'trick' without being urged to - which doesn't make me unique, but it's odd to use this to sort yourself into one column or other.)

23. Ann Leckie - Ancillary Justice
5 stars, favourite

I loved this. It's space opera, it challenges norms, it has characters who relate to each other, and whose relations I care enough about to make it unputdownable.

If this is on your to-read list, it's possibly because you noticed the nebula nomination, or, more likely, because you've observed some of the comments about "the gender thing".

It's hard to say much about it without it being a spoiler, so I'll settle for this: It's not a thing. It's not a problem. It has reasons, it pulls you into the universe, and it makes you have to think about some things you perhaps wouldn't, otherwise.

24. Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind
5 stars

I debated the rating on this - I gave it 5 because of the pageturner-factor, the fact that it clearly kept me wanting to read more - and it's an interesting world, really. I don't think Kvothe is as much of a Mary Sue/Gary Stu character as reviewers often mention - I certainly find him annoyingly thoughtless at times. I'll read the second novel, but maybe not until a release date is out for the third and last volume.

25. Jim Butcher - Changes
5 stars

I didn't see a fivestar Dresden book coming, to be honest. But here we are. Butcher's writing has improved along with the world/character-building over the previous 11 books, and this one is simply... good. It also ends with an enormous cliffhanger, which would have made me crazy if I was reading it as it came out.

26. Brandon Sanderson - Mitosis
4 stars

Short story from the universe of Steelheart. It's cosy.

27. Mike Carey - The Unwritten, Vol. 3: Dead Man's Knock (GN)
3 stars
28. Mike Carey - The Unwritten, Vol. 4: Leviathan (GN)
3 stars

...Three stars, in this case, means "It's a fairly interesting idea, and I'm perfectly willing to follow along, but it's not quite exceptional enough for me to recommend it to anyone else, yet". In short, though, the Unwritten series is a bit of a riff on the Harry Potter success, and a love letter to books and reading in general. If you love literary references, you'll probably be into this.

29. Stephen King - Doctor Sleep
5 stars

When I was younger - like, 8-10 years old - I was a hungry reader with inadequate access to reading material. The one thing I kept coming across was the translated Stephen King books in the grocery store, set on a shelf next to less interesting pocket books with pastel colours and ladies in dresses on the covers. So Carrie, Pet sematary, Rage, It, Insomnia and others were definitely a part of my, uh, upbringing.

And here's the sort-of-sequel to The Shining. It's a very different type of book, but it fits.

At this point, Stephen King is a bit like Terry Pratchett for me; They both have signature genre styles, but in addition to that, they fill their characterizations and stories with a sort of familiar kindness. It seems like a strange thing to say, but Stephen King makes me act nicer to people, too.

30. A. Lee Martinez - Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain
3 stars

This probably benefited from its narrator in audio format; the narration was really excellent. The story, though, probably wouldn't have kept me amused otherwise.

31. John E. Douglas - Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit
3 stars

If, like me, you've already read Kessler's book (Whoever fights monsters), you can safely skip this one. Really. About 60% of it is exactly the same case summaries as Kessler's book, then there's a good portion that reads like a straight-up autobiography, in a somewhat unfortunate tone. I have always had a huge interest in reading about extreme behaviours and personalities - which means serial killers, most of the time - and the work done to understand/incapacitate them, but I don't need to read the same stuff several times.

32. Neal Stephenson - Anathem
5 stars, favourite

I bought this in hardback when it came out, and I didn't read it before now. I deserve a slap for that.

I had some expectations going in; I know the style of the author, for example, and I knew this was considered 'more science fiction-y' and appeared in lists with 'theology' in the title. I knew there'd be some sort of monks.

But I had no idea how much I'd appreciate the characters, the post-post-post-apocalyptic setting, the odd bits of constructed language, the science discussed, and so on. It just pushed all of my yay!-buttons, and I wish it had been twice as long.

April
33. Rob Thomas - The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line
3 stars

Fan-service, right? You don't have to get this if you're not already sold on the Veronica Mars tv-series. I saw the movie, I bought the book in audio format because it's narrated by Kristen Bell, and I'll probably get the next one, because I can't let go. But if you're not an established VM sort of person, then you can probably find a better private detective noir mystery thing to read.

34. Grant Morrison - We3 (GN)
3 stars

I'd heard a lot about this one and probably had too-high expectations. Not that it's bad; it's a quirky/violent "talking animals" story, playing around with the tropes, depicting over-the-top gore, and cute little pets, and so on. I need a little more than that to gather a lot of enthusiasm now, but hand it to fifteen year-old me, and it's a hit.

35. Frøydis Simonsen - Hver morgen kryper jeg opp fra havet (N)
3 stars

The Norwegian title translates more or less to "Every morning I crawl up out of the sea", which is a clue to all the scattered evolutionary/biological/zoological detail employed to talk about heartbreak.

I guess my review is "OK". I don't care a lot for plotless/storyline-less fiction, so it's not exactly the fault of the book, it's just not a great match for me.

36. Grant Morrison - Joe the Barbarian (GN)
2 stars

This graphic novel has all kinds of good ingredients; The author, the quality of the art, the quirky storytelling - it just never clicks for me. It might click better for the younger audience I think it is intended for.

37. Mike Carey - The Unwritten, Vol. 5: On to Genesis (GN)
3 stars
38. Mike Carey - The Unwritten, Vol. 6: Tommy Taylor and the War of Words
3 stars

The Unwritten, uh, continues. I think these two volumes are better than the previous two, if only because they start to flesh out and explain how this world and this magic works. They can't be read without having read the series from the start, which means I find it hard or impossible to talk about them to someone who haven't, so I'm sticking with my previous recap: If you like literary references and feel romantic about stories, this is for you.

39. Robert Sheckley - Dimension of Miracles
2 stars

I got this audiobook from the "Neil Gaiman presents"-selection, not because I care particularly about Gaiman, but because it is frequently compared to Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker books - and I like those. This bored me, though. Some neat concepts, but most of the humour turned out to be that particular brand of awkward/embarrassment/"let's never allow the painful moment to end" sort of thing I can't abide. Thus my two stars - but if you like, I dunno, The Office, then this probably works.

40. H.G. Wells - The Island of Dr. Moreau
2 stars

HG Wells is important, in many ways, and so is this novel, for reference value and whatnot. It's short, and not a very bitter time investment. But it inevitably makes me hyper-aware of how much great science fiction is out there for me to read, and I have put in a lot of hours in the older parts of the genre already - I don't need to spend more time with slack stories that cannot provide what I have come to expect from plot and characterization and all of it. It's not really about the displays of the politics/opinions of the time in which the books were written, but those things don't help, either.

The audio narration was quite pleasant, though; Simon Prebble has become a favourite voice (he also does a fantastic job on Stephenson's Baroque Cycle).

41. Karen Russell - Sleep Donation
3 stars

The author is new to me, but this novella made me interested in her other books. Piqued my interest because of title and description, kept me happy with a story and style I'd describe as very Atwood-ian.

42. Marion Zimmer Bradley - The Mists of Avalon
3 stars

This is a tricky book to rate. I came to honestly enjoy spending time in its universe, but if I hadn't been a neurotic must-finish-every-book type, I don't think I would have made it past the first 200 pages of this. I might really have lemmed it if I'd been intimately familiar with Arthurian legend already; that was, ultimately, what kept me interested. Having known a million references to round tables and Morgaine and Lancelot and holy grails and all that stuff, and been exposed to countless retellings and inspired-by's, I've never really had a look at the, uh, actual story. And this doesn't really qualify, as it is clearly a very skewed telling of it, but it gave me an overview I didn't have before, at least.

The author does almost too good a job of describing the religious climate, and especially the 'truths' about women. Enough to keep me simmering with irritation throughout - which is unpleasant, even if it's what the author is actually trying to achieve.

43. Jim Butcher - Side Jobs: Stories From the Dresden Files
3 stars

Listed as "12.5" in the series, this is a collection of scattered short stories about Harry Dresden, ending with a novella taking place directly after the great cliffhanger ending of book 12. It's a collection that makes it so, so obvious how the writing has improved since the start of the series - which is sort of nice. It's also a little bit uncomfortable - I am aware of some problems with female characters and genitalia related stuff in these books/stories, and I think the problem is I feel like it should bother me more, but I find it plays well into the noir-part of the genre, and the stories are engaging enough to quickly move attention to less dubious things.

44. Charlie Human - Apocalypse Now Now
3 stars

I bought this enthusiastically after a ton of limelight on io9 and other blogs - but I don't think I ever found out what it was about, prior to reading. So I was a bit taken by surprise as I found a harsh high school environment in South Africa, which then turned into a Tarantinoesque violent urban fantasy adventure.

It was a quick and mostly fun read, though. Very light, well suited for train rides or similar. (And some light servings of South African history in there, more than simply the apartheid lessons I remember from school.)