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.

Ah, one of those dreaded “best of” posts. As you can see from my Books page, I managed to read/listen to 71 books this year. Granted, several of them were short stories or novellas, but still, a new record for me! Given this new PR, I thought I would post my 3 favourite books from this year.

While many were good or very good, and a few terrible, these 3 make my best of list because they had super characters, great storylines, and unique twists and turns that kept me thinking about these books long after I finished reading them. All three of these fit into the hard science fiction genre, which is one of my favourites in addition to non-fiction science books.