16 books in 2019: πππππ
26 books in 2020: πππππππππ
38 in 2021: πππππππππππππ
An encouraging trend.
Iβve never read more books in a single year, and it feels good. Iβve continued to use reading to detach my iPhone from my brain-stem, often carrying a book around and reading in short periods instead of fiddling with my phone. I didnβt play video games at all this year, replacing it with reading β keen to play a little next year though, if the new PS5 games are good. After three years of consistent reading, I feel like Iβve made significant progress breaking out of βthe shallowsβ.
To cap off the year of reading. Hereβs some simple stats/facts:
- Worst book: 100 Plus
- 11,800+ pages, apparently
- 11/38 from women authors (gf rightly nags me about this)
- 18/38 second hand books
I read a lot of famous and well regarded books this year, and they were so good I couldnβt pick a favourite. That said, these are a top 5 in terms of how much they durably affected my emotions and thinking.
- The Grapes of Wrath
- The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musing on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary
- The Nickel Boys
- Debt: The First 5,000 years
- Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind The Rise of the Radical Right
As in the 2020 post, clicking the book cover takes you to a short review.
Below are the covers, titles, authors, and ratings of the 38
books I read this year. Click them to read my short review.

Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology
K. Eric Drexler
β β β

Steppenwolf
Hermann Hesse
β β β β

The Sciences of the Artificial
Herbert A. Simon
β β β β

Zen in the Art of Writing
Ray Bradbury
β β β

The Dispossessed (Hainish Cycle, #6)
Ursula K. Le Guin
β β β β β

The Left Hand of Darkness (Hainish Cycle, #4)
Ursula K. Le Guin
β β β β β

Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson
β β β β β

An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
Will Larson
β β β

The Psychology of Computer Programming
Gerald M. Weinberg
β β

Debt: The First 5,000 Years
David Graeber
β β β β β

Beautiful World, Where Are You
Sally Rooney
β β β

Showstopper! the Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft
G. Pascal Zachary
β β β

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
Jane Mayer
β β β β β

Flowers for Algernon
Daniel Keyes
β β β β β

Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1)
Kim Stanley Robinson
β β β β

The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
β β β β β

The Nickel Boys
Colson Whitehead
β β β β β

The Quiet Revolution
Jim Cairns
β β

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
β β β β β

The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
Neal Stephenson
β β β β

The Song of Achilles
Madeline Miller
β β β β

100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, from Careers and Relationships to Family and Faith
Sonia Arrison
β

Silent Spring
Rachel Carson
β β β β β

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Michelle Alexander
β β β β β

Down and Out in Paris and London
George Orwell
β β β β
Iβve set my 2022 reading goal at 40 books.