Books 2022

I try to make a list like this every year.

Goodreads generated a view of some of the books with cover images here. I only used Goodreads for tracking my reading for part of the year, as the site stopped working for me – I became unable to add new books because of a bug, and I learned that support for such issues is non-existent; you get what you pay for, and they provided me no option to actually pay for getting this fixed so I left the site. I have switched to The StoryGraph for keeping track of the books I read, and they handle stats like these somewhat differently and they don’t generate the same kind of list. I think you also need an account on the site in order to see stats like these, I’m asked for a login when I try to access a link to my stats page for 2022 in incognito mode, so I didn’t think it made sense to share that link; however I have shared a relevant screen shot from the stats page below. The Storygraph’s rating scale is more fine-grained than that of Goodreads, but the scale is roughly similar.

The primary variable that came into focus this year for me was the page count, not the book count, because I realized in October that this might be the year where I actually had a realistic chance to manage to read 100 book pages per day on average over the course of the year, something I have never managed to do before. This was also the reason for the high number of pages read in November in particular (below). I made it with a few days to spare. The stats page on Goodreads logs the page count for the year at 13.749 pages, which is incorrect because three books had missing page counts from the book profile pages and so their page counts are not included in the total. Wolverton’s Nuclear Weapons book did not have a page count on Goodreads but my Kindle version has 268 pages, which should be added to the total, as should the 240 missing pages from The Ritual Animal: Imitation and Cohesion in the Evolution of Social Complexity and the 150 missing pages from the publication Cybersecurity. For The Storygraph I have 23.404 pages logged, distributed in this manner throughout the year:

That number is however too high, as it includes 4 books I do not want to include in the count because they are Dilbert books; those 4 publications make up in total 704 pages which should be subtracted as well. There is zero overlap between the two sites – I was recorded as being in the middle of reading multiple books on Goodreads when the site stopped working, but this is irrelevant for the stats as I know that logged pages linked to books not finished are not included in the Goodreads total (they are however included in the Storygraph stats); this is something I have been annoyed about in the past. So altogether this makes the total page count equal to 13.749 + 268 + 240 + 150 + 23.404 – 704 = 37.107 pages, which is slightly more than the 36.500 cut-off which would be required in order to have reached the goal of 100 pages per day.

Until October, when I was realizing the 100-pages-per-day goal might be achievable, I don’t think I actually cared all that much about trying to find the exact edition of the specific book I was reading in contexts where many editions exist, and so in some contexts I’d assume specific page counts of the books I actually read might have been different from the page counts logged; I am aware of at least one major mismatch: Wiegers & Beatty’s Software Requirements 3 was logged as 672 pages on The Storygraph, however my own Kindle version of the book actually has 1248 pages. However I’m assuming such measurement errors should average out, so I have not added those specific ‘missing pages’ because they might be offset by other errors in the other direction elsewhere which I have not taken note of.

As for the number of books completed, the number for the year is 35 (Goodreads) + 78 (The Storygraph) – 4 (Dilbert) = 109. No unfinished books are included in that number, although I also read the first few hundred pages of the book Data Engineering with AWS during the year (…pages which, again, were not included in the total because Goodreads disregards pages linked to unfinished books), but I did not manage to finish that one due to the fact that work was taking up too much of the ‘mental surplus’ required to actually read and understand a book like that at the time, and I just never got back to it – I might do that this year. I also started reading Sanderson’s The Way of Kings at the end of the year and that book is also not featuring on the list despite contributing a few pages to the total page count.

Most of the books I read last year were fiction books, but some of the non-fiction books I read throughout the year are not easy reads and I’m reasonably satisfied with the amount of non-fiction reading I did throughout the year, although I didn’t read ‘enough’ of it towards the end of the year in particular, because (good) non-fiction takes longer to read than fiction and I sort of really wanted to hit that page count goal. In terms of the categories I have used, 20 books were non-fiction, 6 were miscellaneous (these tend to be categorized as non-fiction elsewhere, but I reserve that category for textbooks and similar – if they were to be coded as non-fiction as well then I completed one non-fiction book every second week on average over the course of the year), and 83 fiction books.

The average page count of the books I read throughout the year was ~340 pages (37.107/109), which is rather high and one of the reasons why I wasn’t really all that focused on a book count endgoal this year.

…

In the list below the numbers in the parentheses are the ratings I gave the books, and the letters following the ratings code for the book category (f = fiction, nf = non-fiction, m = miscellaneous).

Below is the list of books I read in 2022:

1 All Clear (5, f). Connie Willis. Short Goodreads review here (quote from the review: “This is one of the best books I’ve ever read”).

2. Fire Watch (2, f). Connie Willis.

3. Lincoln’s Dreams (3, f). Connie Willis. Goodreads review here.

4. Microbiology, A Very Short Introduction (4, nf. Oxford University Press)

5. The Name of the Wind (5, f). Patrick Rothfuss. My very short Goodreads review simply states: “This is an amazing book.” Recommended.

6. The Wise Man’s Fear (5, f). Patrick Rothfuss.

7. The Slow Regard of Silent Things (5, f). Patrick Rothfuss. Goodreads review here.

8. Furies of Calderon (4, f). Jim Butcher.

9. Adaptation and Natural Selection (3, nf. Princeton University Press).

10. Academ’s Fury (3, f). Jim Butcher.

11. Cursor’s Fury (3, f). Jim Butcher.

12. Captain’s Fury (3, f). Jim Butcher.

13. Princeps’ Fury (2, f). Jim Butcher.

14. The Missing Readme: A Guide for the New Software Engineer (4, nf. No Starch Press). Work-related.

15. The Great Troll War (3, f). Jasper Fforde. Short Goodreads review here.

16. First Lord’s Fury (2, f). Jim Butcher.

17. Introduction to PLCs (2, nf. Carolina Academic Press). Short Goodreads review here.

18. The Metamorphosis (1, f). Franz Kafka. My very short Goodreads review simply stated: “Boring and implausible.”

19. The Thursday Murder Club (4, f). Richard Osman.

20. The Man Who Died Twice (5, f). Richard Osman.

21. 97 Things Every Data Engineer Should Know (2, nf. O’Reilly Media). Work-related. Goodreads review here.

22. Magpie Murders (4, f). Anthony Horowitz.

23. Moonflower Murders (3, f). Anthony Horowitz.

24. The Word Is Murder (5, f). Anthony Horowitz. Short Goodreads review here.

25. The Sentence is Death (4, f). Anthony Horowitz. Very short goodreads review here.

26. A Line To Kill (4, f). Anthony Horowitz. Very short goodreads review here.

27. The House of Silk (2, f). Anthony Horowitz.

28. Moriarty (4, f). Anthony Horowitz.

29. Nuclear Weapons (4, nf. Princeton University Press). Very short Goodreads review here.

30. The Goblin Emperor (5, f). Very short Goodreads review here.

31. The Ritual Animal: Imitation and Cohesion in the Evolution of Social Complexity (2, nf. Oxford University Press). A mixed bag, as I wrote in my Goodreads review here.

32. Supernova (4, nf. Princeton University Press). In my Goodreads review I called the book ‘A nice little primer on this topic’.

33. The Witness for the Dead (3, f). Goodreads review here.

34. Cybersecurity (2, nf. Princeton University Press). Not really coverage at a level deep enough for this to be particularly useful in my position, but I did grab it in part for work-related reasons (wanting to know if this might be an easy primer it would make sense to recommend to some colleagues at work).

35. The Angel of the Crows (2, f). Katherine Addison. Short Goodreads review here.

36. The Grief of Stones (2,25, f). Katherine Addison.

37. What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear (1,5, nf. Beacon Press)

38. The Man With a Load of Mischief (2, f). Martha Grimes.

39. Death Of An Old Goat (4,5, f). Robert Barnard. Short review here.

40. A Little Local Murder (4,25, f). Robert Barnard.

41. Death on the High C’s (2,25, f). Robert Barnard. Short review here.

42. The History of Time: A Very Short Introduction (1,25, nf. Oxford University Press). Short review here.

43. Blood Brotherhood (2, f). Robert Barnard.

44. Unruly Son (4, f). Robert Barnard.

45. Posthumous Papers (2,25, f). Robert Barnard.

46. Death In A Cold Climate (3,5, f). Robert Barnard. Review here.

47. Mother’s Boys (4,25, f). Robert Barnard. Very short review here.

48. Little Victims (4, f). Robert Barnard.

49. Out of the Blackout (2, f). Robert Barnard.

50. Corpse In A Gilded Cage (4,5, f). Robert Barnard. Very short review here.

51. The Disposal of the Living (2, f). Robert Barnard. Short review here.

52. Political Suicide (4,25, f). Robert Barnard.

53. The Skeleton in the Grass (3,5, f). Robert Barnard.

54. At Death’s Door (f). Robert Barnard.

55. A City Of Strangers (0,0, f). Robert Barnard. Review here.

56. Designing Data-Intensive Applications (5, nf. O’Reilly Media). I would probably have added this book to my list of favorite books on Goodreads if I had still been using Goodreads at that point in time. This book is loong (1052 pages), but it’s full of good stuff. I have been sharing information from this book with colleagues in my team. The book is a big part of the reason why the 10+ books above it on this list were all fiction books – it wasn’t that I wasn’t reading any non-fiction during that period, but rather that this book takes a lot of time to read and understand.

57. The Masters of the House (3, f). Robert Barnard.

58. Death and the Chaste Apprentice (2,25, f). Robert Barnard.

59. A Fatal Attachment (2, f). Robert Barnard.

60. A Hovering Of Vultures (1,5, f). Robert Barnard.

61. Unholy Dying (2, f). Robert Barnard.

62. Mort (5, f). Terry Pratchett.

63. The Law (4, f). Jim Butcher.

64. Touched by the Dead (1,75, f). Robert Barnard.

65. With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa (5, nf. Oxford University Press). Eugene Sledge’s book is very much worth reading if you’re interested in WW2 war memoirs.

66. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (3,5, nf. Penguin Group). Review here.

67. Software Requirements 3 (5, nf. Microsoft Press). Review here. Work-related. I would have added this book to my list of favorite books on Goodreads if I had still been using Goodreads. This was the only book I blogged last year, blogpost here.

68. What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions (5, m.). Very short review here.

69. A Confederacy of Dunces (2,25, f). John Kennedy Toole. Review here.

70. Troy (3, m.). Stephen Fry. Review here.

71. How to: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems (4, m.). Randall Munroe.

72. The Bullet That Missed (4,5, f). Richard Osman.

73. Still Life (3,5, f). Louise Penny.

74. Biofabrication (2,75, nf. MIT Press).

75. A Fatal Grace (2,25, f). Louise Penny.

76. The Cruelest Month (1,25, f). Louise Penny.

77. Hunting: A Cultural History (1, nf. MIT Press). Review here.

78. How to Take Over the World: Practical Schemes and Scientific Solutions for the Aspiring Supervillain (3,5, m.). This book is quite funny and I recommended it to a colleague who happens to be a Marvel fan.

79. Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors (5, m.). Matt Parker. Very short review here.

80. Neurolinguistics (4,5, nf. MIT Press). I think I recommended this one to one of my brothers and one or two colleagues, it’s a very nice little book.

81. Death and Croissants (4,5, f). Ian Moore.

82. Death and Fromage (4,5, f). Ian Moore. Very short review here.

83. Death and Papa Noël (3, f). Ian Moore.

84. Forever and a Day (2, f). Anthony Horowitz. Short review here.

85. With a Mind to Kill (2, f). Anthony Horowitz. Short review here.

86. Trigger Mortis (2, f). Anthony Horowitz.

87. Casino Royale (2, f). Ian Fleming.

88. Live and Let Die (2, f). Ian Fleming.

89. Moonraker (2, f). Ian Fleming.

90. Diamonds Are Forever (2,25, f). Ian Fleming.

91. From Russia With Love (2, f). Ian Fleming.

92. Dr No (2,5, f). Ian Fleming.

93. Rethinking Human Evolution (3, nf. MIT Press). Review here.

94. Zero Minus Ten (1,75, f). Raymond Benson.

95. The Facts of Death (2, f). Raymond Benson. Very short review here.

96. The Final Empire (5, f). Brandon Sanderson. Very short review here.

97. The Well of Ascension (5, f). Brandon Sanderson. Review here.

98. Code That Fits in Your Head: Heuristics for Software Engineering (3, nf, Addison-Wesley Professional). Work-related, I shared insights from this book with some of my colleagues.

99. The Hero of Ages (4, f). Brandon Sanderson.

100. The Alloy of Law (5, f). Brandon Sanderson. Very short review here.

101. Shadows of Self: A Mistborn Novel (5, f). Brandon Sanderson. Very short review here.

102. The Bands of Mourning (5, f). Brandon Sanderson.

103. Mistborn: Secret History (2,25, f). Brandon Sanderson. Short review here.

104. The Lost Metal (4,5, f). Brandon Sanderson.

105. Elantris (5, f). Brandon Sanderson. Short review here.

106. The Emperor’s Soul (4, f). Brandon Sanderson. Review here.

107. High Time to Kill (1, f). Raymond Benson.

108. Intellectual Property Strategy (1,5, nf. MIT Press). Review here.

109. The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 1774-1777 (m.). Review here.