At this point it’s pretty clear that
2021’s book-per-week pace was an anomaly, presumably
due to the plaguetimes, that I’m continuing to step back from. That said, I
found this to be a difficult year for reading, and basically in general. I
frequently found myself without the energy to focus on a book, even light
fiction, and I think I might have been less tolerant of books that in other
years I might have powered through.
Aswithpreviousyears, I
continue to log each book to Blurt as
I finish it. This post is a recap of the year, lightly editing those posts, and
grouping books into categories:1
All books are novels that I read for the first time, unless otherwise noted.
Within each category, they’re listed in the order I read them. As usual, I
liked far more books than I disliked, even if I had proportionally more dislikes
than previous years.
The pinnacle
Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World
(Irene Vallejo, 2019; trans. Charlotte Whittle, 2025; nonfiction): This was a
fascinating trip back to the birth of writing and, more importantly, of various
forms of books, how they were copied, stored, sold, and valued, and a million
short digressions, each of which Vallejo tied neatly back into the narrative.
As usual, non-fiction meant slow reading, but it was quite good, and also has a
lovely and witty index.
(This book sung in a neat harmony with
Ada Palmer’s Inventing the Renaissance, which I
read earlier in the year, and which looked back at the same authors and books
from the other end of our timeline. The title of the book in the original
Spanish was El Infinito en un Junco, which I gather means “infinity (or the
infinite) in a reed”, frankly much better than the English title.)
The Dog of the South
(Charles Portis, 1979): This was amazing; every character was such a weirdo,
such a wild card, that I never knew what was going to happen next, and was just
along for the ride. Portis treated each of them with respect, and the overall
effect was maybe something like a less cruel, less political
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (meant in a good way, or “/pos” as the kids
would say).
This was one of those that I kept thinking about for some time after I
finished it. I loved Portis’s vision, language, and affection for his
characters.
Recommended
The Ministry of Time
(Kaliane Bradley, 2024): This book managed the neat trick of being,
simultaneously, a sci-fi novel, a thriller, and a romance novel, and pretty good
at all three. Sometimes I entertain myself by explaining today’s world to
Samuel Pepys; this book took some of that work
off my shoulders, for a little while.
Matter
(Iain M. Banks, 2008): Culture series, book 8. Some mind-blowing ideas, and
a really good expansion of scope, and fundamentally a good story — let down a
bit at the end by an epilogue whose tone feels a little sour compared to the
rest.
Thinking With Type, 3rd edition
(Ellen Lupton, 2024, nonfiction): This was a sort of introductory survey of all
things typography and typesetting. Some of it was material I knew pretty well;
a lot of the rest wasn’t stuff I know well or have put into practice. (Though
as I wrote this I suddenly had a flashback to the high school newspaper.) This
will definitely stay on my small typography reference shelf.
A Drop of Corruption
(Robert Jackson Bennett, 2025): Ana and Din series, book 2. The follow-up to
The Tainted Cup, this was another
fantasy-set murder mystery, this time with a clear anti-autocratic subtext.
Bennett makes the subtext explicit in an afterword, laying into the fantasy
genre, and A Song of Ice and Fire and its derivatives in particular, for their
love of autocracies.
Inventing the Renaissance
(Ada Palmer, 2025, nonfiction): This was a history of the Italian Renaissance,
and something of a
history of a history of
it, and shifted at the end to address “progress” and what that means. Casual in
tone, but rigorous in structure and argument; quite readable, but long, and I
needed to break it up with a couple other books.
Slow Horses
(Mick Herron, 2010): Slough House series, book 1. First book in the series
that’s the basis of the TV series I’ve been meaning to
watch. Anyway, it was really good — clever, and deeply cynical in the way an
espionage novel can be cynical (maybe not quite as much as Le Carré), which I do
enjoy every so often.
A word of warning: This edition of the book was horribly copyedited, with
search-and-replace typos, quotation marks instead of apostrophes, and missing
and incorrectly-placed paragraph breaks. Mostly just eye-bleedingly
obnoxious, but sometimes it actively hindered my understanding of the story.
Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales
(Heather Fawcett, 2025): Emily Wilde series, book 3. Probably the best of
the now-three books, and I kind of hope it’s the last, because this feels like a
good endpoint for Wilde’s story.
Tao Te Ching
(Lao Tzu, c. 4th century BCE; trans.
Ursula K. Le Guin, 1997; nonfiction, reread): I managed to finish this right
before the end of the year; I’d finished the main text early in December, but
not Le Guin’s translation/rendering notes. I don’t understand most of this, but
most of what I understand resonates, and a lot of what I don’t makes me think.
Good
Polostan
(Neal Stephenson, 2024): Bomb Light series, book 1. Even though I was warned
that it was a surprisingly-normal-sized book, I was still disconcerted by its
very normal size. That turns out to be a bit deceptive though: The story is
very clearly unfinished at the end of the book (though many parts are wrapped up
nicely). Two more of these and it’ll feel like a more typical Stephenson opus.
I would have expected this to be up in the
Recommended section, but absolutely nothing about the book has
stuck with me since I read it a year ago.
The Wordhord
(Hana Videen, 2023, nonfiction): This was a fun amble through some Old English
vocabulary, not especially deep or challenging, but fun and interesting.
The Girl in the Tower
(Katherine Arden, 2017): Winternight series, book 2. Followup to
The Bear and the Nightingale. I
enjoyed this one, too, and it had more consistent drive than the first, but
Arden relied on a particular plot contrivance trope a little too often for my
taste. I’m not sure when I’ll get to book 3.
The Tomb of Dragons
(Katherine Addison, 2025): Cemeteries of Amalo series, book 3. The latest in
the series that started with either
The Goblin Emperor or
The Witness for the Dead
depending on how you’re counting. (I guess this would be book 4 if counting
from the former.) Like the others, this book is generous and compassionate,
both towards and among its major characters. It focuses on reparations for sins
committed by previous generations, which Addison handles thoughtfully.
But two things: First, some offscreen cartoon villainy undercuts some of the
care and thought that went into the resolution. Second, the book’s setting
and language demand a lot from the reader, and the story picks up immediately
after the previous left off; usually I like not reading awkward “remember this
from the previous book” insertions, but if any book wants them, it’s this one,
and it doesn’t have any. Do not pick this up as your first in the series.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
(Walter M. Miller, Jr., 1959, reread): I came back to this at least 25 years
since I first read it. I liked most of it, a kind of bleakly- or
cynically-hopeful story of preservation of knowledge in a cycle of humanity’s
self-destruction. Alas, the end of the book centers on a Catholic argument
against suicide, which I found fairly offputting.
Dead Lions
(Mick Herron, 2013): Slough House series, book 2. The followup to
Slow Horses. This had the same things going for it as the
previous, including (which I didn’t mention) something of a sense of humor.
Bonus: This edition of this book only had a handful of typos, one inexplicable
but most inconsequential. (I enjoyed this as much as Slow Horses, but as a
not-first-in-the-series book, it gets demoted one rank by default.)
Not recommended
Mordew
(Alex Pheby, 2020): Cities of the Weft series, book 1. I picked up this book
solely for its Feiffer-esque
front cover (very reminiscent of Gormenghast) and the description on the back.
It was Weird, grotesque, such that after I started reading it at bedtime, I had
bizarre dreams inspired by book imagery, and thus banished it from the bedroom.
Was it good, did I enjoy it? I’m not sure, but it was definitely compelling.
That said, at first I thought I’d probably get on to the next book in the
series, but I find I have no desire to pick up another, even after (or perhaps
because of) detoxing from this. Gormenghast it was not; those books had a
kind of odd care for their characters, and I found little but contempt and
cruelty in Mordew.
The Will of the Many
(James Islington, 2023, did not finish): Hierarchy series, book 1. I bought
a copy based solely on its cover and heft, but found myself disliking every
character, none of whom seemed capable of uttering a simple true statement.
(Maybe there’s a theme here.) I set this aside about a third of the
way through, by which point I was convinced it wouldn’t change.
“Published recently” means that year or the year before. For books with
multiple authors, “distinct authors” counts each separately, which might skew
the counts a little towards nonfiction.
The categories are shamelessly stolen from
Ken and Robin Consume Media,
which applies (most of) these categories to movies and TV
shows in addition to books. ↩︎
