As you may have read from my post about my favorite books of 2025, I’ve decided to start writing my post about my favorite books of 2026 now, throughout the year, as I read them. This way I’m hoping to have more immediate feedback on the books, not struggling through some hazy memory of 8-12 months ago. It’s also hard not to be more influenced by books I read more recently as opposed to ones I read early in the year. I don’t do reviews and I don’t keep notes or make ratings, maybe I should but maybe this will fill the void, at least for now.

As I stated, my intention for 2025 was to read more non fiction and I think I accomplished that. I’ll try to run the numbers and provide some hard evidence. My intention for 2026 is to read more literature, the classics if you will. We’ll see how that goes. I’m going to try to stick with more non fiction as well.

At the end of 2025 and into the beginning of 2026, I made an effort (and am continuing to make an effort) to read some of the “Best of 2025” books, mostly as voted on my Goodreads readers. Here’s the winners from last year:

So far, I’ve read My Friends, Atmosphere, Not Quite Dead Yet, Onyx Storm, and Everything is Tuberculosis. The Compound is next up. While not a winner per se, a lot of people seemed to be talking about The Dream Hotel. I started it, got maybe half way through and just couldn’t finish. To depressing, to real life for right now. I feel like there are a lot of 1984-esque books out there right now and I just don’t need to read them.

As I mentioned in my favorites of 2025, My Friends is right up there with Atmosphere and could have been my favorite book of 2025. I just finished it, so it’s up for 2026 and will be very hard to knock off. It’s the first book by Fredrik Backman I’ve read and it was brilliant. The story was deep and rich but the best part is the characters, you feel a strong connection with them and it doesn’t take long to want to know what happens next.

I’ve also read the Emily Tesh books, both of which I thought were great. One if very Logan’s Run like while the other is Harry Potter like. Interesting that a sci-fi and then fantasy came from the same person and both are great, I love to see that kind of diversity.

As I stated last year (every year?), I don’t have any expectations for the number of books I read in any given year. I did have an “intention” for 2025 to read mostly non fiction. Looking back at my favorite books each year, a surprising number of them were from the non fiction books I read. While I feel like I read “more” non fiction this year, it definitely wasn’t mostly non fiction. I haven’t run the numbers, maybe I will later, and I was doing well right up until I got on the John Sanford – Lucas Davenport kick. I read all 35 Lucas Davenport novels and the 2 Letty Davenport ones. Hmm…

Despite no expectations, 2025 was another banner year, tying 2022 for the second most books read in a year for me, with 116. As with all years, I don’t recall most of the books I read. If I read a summary I’ll remember them or maybe just bits and pieces. That’s okay, the pleasure is in the journey.

2025 started off with Neuromancer by Willian Gibson. Tough read. Apparently it will be a TV series (or movie?) coming out this year. Interesting. The Peripheral got cancelled after 8 episodes/1 season right after a controversial ending, so bummer. I also read Persuader by Lee Child, which season 3 of Reacher was based on. I’m having a harder and harder time watching Reacher. I also read Cold Storage by David Koepp, which is also apparently being made into a movie. It felt a little pedestrian to me, the alien virus/zombie thing feels like it’s been done more than a few times now. I am looking forward to the movie Project Hail Mary, based on the great Andy Weir novel, which will be in theaters this summer.

As always, series played a large part of the books I read. I reread all the Robert Langdon novels by Dan Brown. I went to Italy this year and wished I had read Angels and Demons before. The books are still good but honestly, The Secret of Secrets was a disappointment. As I scroll back through all the books read, I don’t have a lot of strong feelings about most of them. Other “disappointments” if you want to call it that were: On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything by Nate Silver and The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Actually, The Dawn of Everything could have been good, it was just WAY TOO LONG! The Rift by Douglas E Richards finally broke the camel’s back for me. I’ve been telling myself not to read any more of his novels, as I just find his style so annoying now but have never listened. I generally like Andrew Mayne and enjoyed Mr. Whisper but was deeply disappointed by Imposter Syndrome, the second book in the series. I plan to read the final book in the trilogy, I hope it’s much better.

Quite a few books deserve honourable mentions, as they were all good, just not quite up to the few favorites I had this year. Many of the non fiction books were good: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The Spy and the Traitor, The Art Thief, Think Again, American Predator, and Not the End of the World. I also like Orbital: A Novel, you can definitely see why it won the Booker Prize. The Lucas Davenport novels were all good, I mean you (at least I) can’t read 35 of them if they aren’t pretty good. I was surprised I enjoyed Rebecca Yarros’ The Empyrean series so much, Fourth Wing was great. Finally, The System: A Novel of the Deep State by Barry Eisler was good. I like Barry Eisler, his John Rain novels are some of my favorites and while I don’t buy into his particular view of things, The System was entertaining.

Similar to Remarkably Bright Creatures last year, my favourite book of the year was Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid, it must be something about 3 name authors. Such a great story, and as someone who grew up in the era of the space shuttle, it was great to be taken back to that point in time. I have to say, I’ve been reading Goodreads “best of 2025”, and those guys are onto something. Atmosphere won in the historical fiction genre and I can tell you right now, My Friends by Fredrik Backman could easily be my favorite book of 2026 (it won best fiction). Also on the fiction side, Dennis E. Taylor kept the ball rolling for me this year with Flybot, a good stand alone novel. Dennis is probably the author who writes the closest to the way I think.

On the nonfiction side, 3 books really stood out to me. The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson was great. He is such a good story teller and the amount of research that goes into each book is crazy (I loved Dead Wake). It was genius to concentrate on the 6 months leading up to the civil war, to give you such a clear picture of how things evolved. So much has already been written about the civil war I didn’t need to relive all those battles. This books is visceral, the tension is palpable, so much so I don’t see myself going to Charleston any time soon, if ever.

Like many others, I read Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection. This was my first John Green book. His passion and dedication are remarkable, as is his level of research. I learned so much from this book. We’ve all heard of TB and probably been tested for it but I had no idea the extent of havoc it has reaped upon humanity. Finally, probably my favorite non fiction book was An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong. It was fantastic. Ed’s ability to describe sensations for things we literally have no basis for is amazing. I love science and Ed makes the entire animal kingdom come alive with this incredible book. He does a fantastic job of putting you into the “bat’s shoes”, along with many the other animals.

Epilogue: As I write this post in mid January I realize I’m having a hard time explaining the details of why I loved my favorite books so much, many of which I read many months ago and MANY, MANY books ago. To that end, I think I might start writing my favorite books of 2026 now, especially given how much I’ve like the first few books I’ve read. See you soon.

I don’t have any expectations for the number of books I’ll read in any given year. For whatever reason, 2024 started out with a bang and things just progressed from there. One hundred and thirty books is a new record for me, by some margin. It could have been a fair bit more but I ran out of steam over the holidays. Unlike last year, there are a number of books I thought were great this year, along with many entertaining books I can’t recall.

I read more nonfiction last year than in previous years and while they were still a small fraction of the total books I read, they feature prominently in the books I’ll mention. Given this occurrence over the past several years, I’ve decided that I will read mostly nonfiction for 2025. As in past years, I also read books related to TV series or movies and as usual, was typically disappointed by the screen version.

To that end, I read Jeffery Deaver’s Colter Shaw series and found them enjoyable. Sadly, the CBS series Tracker, which is based on these books was pretty terrible. Granted, I only watch 2 or 3 episodes, so maybe I’ll go back and try it again at some point but geez, not a good start.

I read all of Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme series and a few other short stories. I watched the original Denzel Washington movie version and the new(er) series (from 2020, which was canceled after 1 season), both of which were okay. I felt like neither of them really got the relationship between Rhyme and Sachs right, which may have been on purpose but bugged me. I reread Dark Matter by Black Crouch in advance of the Apple TV+ series but have only managed to watch the first episode. I probably need to give this one more runway. Finally, I read The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth. It’s always interesting to read such old books, especially from a technology standpoint. The TV series, created by Sky Studios and then brought to the US by Peacock was decent. I’m not an Eddie Redmayne fan and didn’t really feel he was the best choice for the Jackal. I had similar feelings about Lashana Lynch, who plays Bianca. She didn’t really work for me as she was portrayed.

Fortunately, I was only really disappointed by one book this year. Sadly, it was James Rollins’ Arkangel. I still like the Sigma Force characters but they and/or the stories have lost the edge for me. Not sure how much longer I can continue with them. It was interesting that I read a couple of books based on the story of the Golden Library, so that helped soften the blow a little.

Here are a couple of honourable mentions before I get to my overall favourites. Perhaps strangely, I really liked Good Boys by Jeremy Robinson. He can definitely be off the wall and this book is no exception but it way better than I expected. Finally, A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarko was a great read. I had seen the documentary, so had a good sense of it going in. I like his writing style, The Emerald Mile was one of my favourites of 2022. The book and the movie are both worth your time.

On the fiction side, there were 3 books that really stood out from the rest. I read Tana French’s The Searcher last year and really liked it, despite it not making my favourites list. This year’s The Hunter was great. I think familiarity with the characters helped. You don’t have to wade through all the backstory of why Cal moved to Ireland and Trey’s family. I am eagerly awaiting the next book in this series.

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt was just flat out great. Loved the story, the characters. So good. Reminded me of the movie My Octopus Teacher, which I also loved. I strongly recommend everyone read this book, you will not be disappointed.

Dennis E. Taylor (who is Canadian) makes a huge comeback with his Bobiverse book 5 novel, Not Til We Are Lost (which just recently became available in ebook format). I may write more about this book (and the series) but for now, NTWAL felt like coming home. It reads very much like book 1 to me and it’s style matches the first 3 books. I have warmed slightly to book 4 over the years and maybe it was a necessary evil to get the Bob’s to where they are now so that book 5 and the ones that follow can move forward. My one gripe would be with the entire Howard and Bridget Jaberwolky escapade. It felt like it’s sole purpose was to have something substantial for those characters to do and it just doesn’t fit with the rest of the book. I mean, it’s okay, but I read this book many times and in the last several instances, just skipped every chapter that dealt with that story line. It’s such an offshoot, it doesn’t provide anything to the central theme of the book. Regardless, it’s great to have Dennis and the Bob’s back on familiar ground.

On the nonfiction side, I read/reread most of Malcolm Gladwell’s books. I really like his style, the background, the data. Not sure I have a favourite, they are all good. If I had to pick, I think Outliers was the most interesting to me, given his hypothesis going in and what he actually found. Blink and Talking to Strangers were also great and eyeopening. The fact he’s Canadian also doesn’t suck 🙂

Like many others, I read Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia, also a Canadian. I liked this book for several reasons: I think Peter gets a bit of a bad rap due to some of his earlier work and this book clearly states how he uses data to make decisions and where he has changed his mind because of new research. This topic fascinates me and I feel like Peter is someone out there trying things but with a purpose, with rigor, unlike say Bryan Johnson, who just comes across as a hack. Besides, we have to live long enough so that we can be uploaded into Dennis’ replicant matrix!

While I wouldn’t call this year’s reading pace sedate, it definitely felt more relaxed, so that was great. Almost all the books I read this year were continuations of a series I had already started. The challenge with reading book 3 or 4 of whatever, is it’s often been years since I started the series and I can’t remember anything that happened. The price of reading a book or 2 a week on average I guess. My solution this year was to reread all the previous books in the series before reading the new one, which really helped in the “picking a new book” department. I also decided to go back and reread a few of my favorite books from the past, which I really enjoyed.

Sci-fi books continue to be a big genre for me. I read Wool by Hugh Howey, which was made into an AppleTV+ series called Silo, as well as “newer” science fiction titles from Emily St. John Mandel (a Canadian!) and Christopher Paolini’s 2020 award winning To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. The follow up book, Fractal Noise, was not as good. I reread Martha Wells Murderbot series but was disappointed with the new addition, System Collapse. Amazon did two original series of sci-fi shorts: a third installment of The Dispatcher series, which I really liked, and then the more traditional offering called The Far Reaches collection. How It Unfolds and Slow Time Between the Stars were very good. Sadly, I’m still eagerly waiting Dune part 2.

I read Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child. I liked season one of the Amazon series “Reacher” and have already started in on season 2. I saw Christoper Nolan’s, Oppenheimer. Interesting. I thought it was well done. Long, probably spent too much time on the interviews that ended in his security clearance being revoked but still good.

No real blockbusters I was looking forward to this year, although new books from Dennis E. Taylor, Jason Kasper, Andrew Mayne, and Jeremy Robinson, who wrapped up his crazy 15 novel crossover thingy, were all good. If there was a disappointment this year it would probably be James Rollins’ Tides of Fire. I just wasn’t interested in the science behind this novel (although it’s been in the news a fair bit) as much as prior novels and the “Sigma Force” spark seems to be dwindling. The Bobiverse books continue to be my go to, feel good books and I read (all!) of them a lot this year. I have to say, book 4, Heaven’s River, is growing on me.

I spent some time updating my book database app. It’s an iPhone app that drives all the data you see on the Books page. I added each book’s comment section to the data stored, which has been invaluable for “remembering” what books were about. I also converted its backend storage to SwiftData, a new database framework from Apple. I still save json files, as one of those is read by custom php to produce the Books page.

Okay, my favourite books of 2023. Like last year, I wouldn’t really put any of these books ahead of the other, they are all about the same. I thought Emily St. John Mandel’s trilogy, Station Eleven (now an Amazon series, which I have not watched), The Glass Hotel, and Sea of Tranquility were great. My only regret is that I read Sea of Tranquility first, as it is the closest to science fiction and it was on Obama’s 2022 best books list. They were definitely more “literary” than I usually read but they were great and I loved the Canadiana. If you plan to read them, please read them in order! Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry was fantastic. Of course, it’s also been made into a TV series (on AppleTV+). This seems to be true of so many books now.

There you have it. I hope 2024 is filled with exciting new books for everyone out there.

After last year, I wanted to slow my reading progress and hopefully find more joy in it, rather feeling like a hamster on a wheel. Of course, that’s not really how it turned out. For whatever reason, I flew through quite a few books early in the year and things just went from there.

Like last year, I read a lot of series, so that helps to really stack up the number, and for the most part, I enjoyed them. It does make picking “favourite” books harder though, as you can’t really pick one book from a series as a favourite. I suppose I could pick a series, like I did last year but…

I read a few “classic” sci-fi books this year in Dune and The Peripheral. Interestingly, both have found their way onto a screen, one as (finally!) a very good movie and the other as an Amazon Prime series. The finale of The Peripheral Amazon series was way out there, so while I’m somewhat interested to see where they go with it, I’m not as invested as I was early on. Eagerly waiting Dune part 2.

No real blockbusters I was looking forward to this year, although new books from James Rollins, Steven Konkoly, Jeremy Robinson, and Andrew Mayne were all good. If there was a disappointment among this year’s reads, I would have to say it was Starry Messenger by Neil deGrasse Tyson. I’ve really like some of his earlier work, and while this one was “okay”, it just felt too “both sides ism” for me.

I didn’t read Dennis E. Taylor’s new singleton book, Roadkill? I don’t even know the title, yikes! Bobiverse books 1-3 were still strongly represented though. I’ve even started to write a few posts about the books, trying to explain some of the science. The other thing you may notice is the Pinterest widget/embeds are now gone, replaced by something I coded myself. The Books page now shows all books read every year (instead of only the last 50) and the covers conveniently like to their Amazon Kindle page.

Okay, my favourite books of 2022. Despite being the much smaller percentage of my reading volume, non-fiction titles continue to dominate. I wouldn’t really put any of these books ahead of the other, they are all about the same. The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko was fantastic. It had an unfair advantage as one of the trips I took this year was rafting the Colorado, so this book was such a great setup for that. American Prometheus, by Kai Bird was also great. A bit detailed at times but a very interesting perspective on Oppy. Christoper Nolan is making a movie, Oppenheimer, based on this book, really interested to see how that turns out. Also interesting that Oppenheimer was finally “cleared” of all wrongdoing and/or suspicion this year and issued an apology for his treatment and the stripping of his security clearance in 1954. Finally, Blake Crouch continues to impress, this year with Upgrade. Interesting idea and very interesting perspective.

There you have it. I really don’t want to read over 100 books again next year, I need to savior them, and hopefully remember more of them, although that is probably asking too much. May all your reading dreams for 2023 come true.

Sorry for the really large header images but one can’t get enough of these amazing photos taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.

While 2021 was another sucky year with respect to all that’s happening in the world, it will definitely go down as my all-time book reading record, with well over 100 books read this year.

Sadly, the Pinterest widget only displays the last 50 pins in a board, so you’ll see less than half the books I read but it’s the only easy option for now.

I powered through quite a few series this year, which is one of the reasons for the high book count. Not having to think about/find the next book to read is a big deal when you are reading 2-3 books a week.

Many of the series were entertaining and I definitely recall wanting to “get back” to them to see what happened next. Having said that, when I think back over the year, only one series really stood out as a favourite. Singletons continue to dominate my favourites.

Like last year, this year’s big disappointment was a highly anticipated book, Infinite 2, by Jeremy Robinson. Infinite was one of my favourite books in 2019 and I reread it in preparation for the sequel. Unfortunately, Infinite 2 just didn’t work for me. The fact that I can barely remember the plot line as I type this speaks volumes. Also like previous years, I continue to reread the Bobiverse books, albeit only books 1 through 3. They never get old.

Okay, here are my favourites from 2021. Andy Weir continues to be one of my favourite authors and while Artemis was good, The Martian, and this year’s addition, Project Hail Mary, were GREAT! Walter Isaacson also continues to be one of my favourite authors, his biographies are amazing and The Code Breaker, which features the story of Jennifer Doudna, is no exception. The bulk of the book was written before it was known that she would share the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on gene editing and CRISPR. Finally, the series I was most excited about this year was “Season 2” of Dean Koontz’s Nameless. Season 2 was a fitting conclusion to what was an excellent Season 1. I think it would have been very interesting if Koontz had decided to write this as a full novel as opposed to a bunch of short stories but the result is still great.

I hope you had a great reading year and I’m looking forward to 2022, with lots of releases already on the calendar.

2020 was another good reading year for me with 64 books read. While this post comes late, better late than never in some cases.

It was challenging to choose 3 favourites from the past year. While there were many good books, not as many stood out strongly as they had the year before. Possibly the biggest disappoint was the release of the much anticipated Bobiverse Book 4, “Heaven’s River” by Dennis E Taylor. The first 3 Bobiverse books continue to be my all time favourites and I reread them frequently. Sadly, Book 4, while I understand the evolution of the narrative, took a completely different path from the previous 3 and went far more dystopian. The Bobiverse has always been an uplifting, escape for me and Book 4 was definitely not. In fact, I recently reread the series but only the first 3 books, excluding the 4th.

Enough chatter, here are my 3 favorites from 2020. The most interesting aspect of these picks is they are all non fiction, which makes up a small percentage of the books I read each year.