Tag Archives: reading

2023 Reading Stats

I’ve shared my total reading numbers for 2023—184 total—and my favorite fiction and nonfiction books. Now let’s talk stats.

Raw Numbers

184 is certainly a ridiculous number. It’s my second highest ever.

Not bragging: But as much as I talk up the number (I even put it in the title of my own book), let’s be honest—that’s just clickbait. The number doesn’t matter. Don’t bother comparing. I know some people who love books but only manage a few a year. I know someone else who regularly tops 300 per year. So don’t get hung up on the numbers. Get hung up on the books.

Continue reading 2023 Reading Stats

Top 10 Nonfiction of 2023

I read 184 books in 2023 and here are my favorite nonfiction reads.

I normally don’t read a lot of nonfiction (only 18% of my reading in 2022), so this is usually a shorter list. But I went on a memoir spree and found a ton of good ones—with nonfiction hitting 43% of my reading!

So this year we get a top 10 list:

  1. This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us by Cole Arthur Riley – I listened to the audiobook and was initially put off by the author’s monotone, but once I got into the groove it was really compelling. Extremely well written, to the point that I want to read it again in print so I can underline the morsels.
  2. Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More With Less by Jim Vandehei, Mike Allen, Roy Schwartz – The best book on writing I’ve read in years. I keep buying copies for my contributors.
  3. Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs.-Christians Debate by Justin Lee – The best book I’ve read on the gay debate in the church.
  4. Rapture Practice: My One-Way Ticket to Salvation by Aaron Hartzler – This growing up in a Christian subculture memoir hit way too close to home.
  5. Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality by Sarah McBride – This one made me cry.
  6. Love Thy Neighbor: A Muslim Doctor’s Struggle for Home in Rural America by Ayaz Virji with Alan Eisenstock – Really incredible story.
  7. A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney – The story of his son dying, which is just awful, but it’s poignant and honest in that “well, fuck” kind of way.
  8. I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times by Monica Guzmán – We need more of this if our democracy is going to survive.
  9. Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House by Cliff Sims – As much as I dislike Trump, I’m not a fan of the tell-all books gushing with juicy details. But the Smart Brevity guys referenced this one, so I checked it out, and the style was super engaging.
  10. When They Call You A Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele – I put this one off for a while, but glad I finally got to it.

Honoroable Mentions

And a few more worth mentioning:

  • Birding While Indian by Thomas C. Gannon – Really enjoyed this mix of Indian politics and birding, which clued me into the gamification of birding, something I found intriguing (who knew I’d enjoy keeping lists?!).
  • Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation by Jon Ward – I read several deconstruction memoirs and this one was perhaps the most interesting.
  • Love Leadership: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World by John Hope Bryant – Business books are often awful, but this one really engaged.

Note on Trends

I noted last year that I read a couple LGBTQ+ memoirs and enjoyed them and would probably do more this year. I did. A lot. Three of those made it to my top 10, and I read a bunch more. The Christian ones were the most intriguing, which led to a related field of deconstruction memoirs. By the end of the year I stumbled into birding memoirs, and that pushed me to spend Christmas money on binoculars and start exploring birding.

More Reading

If you want to read more, check out my booklet 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading Again.

And how about previous top non-fiction lists: 2022202120202019201820172016201520142013, and 2012.

You can also see this year’s top 10 fiction and reading stats for the year.

Top 10 Fiction of 2023

I read 184 books in 2023, and here are my favorite fiction reads:

  1. Where Peace is Lost by Valerie Valdes – Really fun and unique world building that just sucked me in. Very enjoyable.
  2. Inquisitor: Rise of the Red Blade by Delilah S. Dawson – The best Star Wars book I’ve read, following a a broken Jedi who flips to the dark side after the fall of the Republic.
  3. Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah – A really brutal and fascinating story that reminded me of the 1980s movie Running Man about death row turned sports entertainment.
  4. Apocalypse Yesterday by Brock Adams – The best post-apocalypse story I’ve read in a while.
  5. The God of Endings by Jacqueline Holland – Perhaps the most unique and engaging vampire story I’ve read in a while.
  6. Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas – A vampire romance that avoids all the tropes of Twilight.
  7. Secret Identity by Alex Segura – Really fun mystery set in the world of comic book creation.
  8. A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker – Freakishly prescient, this pandemic story would have hit differently a few years ago.
  9. How to Stop Time by Matt Haig – One of those fascinating stories with an intriguing premise and then you just have to see how it plays out.
  10. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion – An unexpected romance in my top 10? It works so well because of the rock solid voice of the probably autistic main character. I’m a sucker for a good voice.

Honorable Mentions

I read a lot of good books, so here are a few more to mention:

  • The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei – A space mystery that was really kind of simple, but I enjoyed it.
  • Pieces of Blue by Holly Goldberg Sloan – I’ve really enjoyed her middle grade stuff and her first adult novel just as good.
  • Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck – I really have a hard time reading classics, so I was surprised how much I enjoyed this one.
  • Wanderers by Chuck Wendig – A complex, intertwined story about a weird issue (shades of Stephen King) that just pulled me in.
  • 2034: A Novel of the Next World War by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis – Near-future story of was between the U.S. and China that’s frighteningly real.

More Reading

If you want to read more, check out my booklet 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading Again.

And how about previous top 10 fiction lists: 2022202120202019201820172016201520142013, and 2012.

You can also see this year’s top 10 nonfiction and reading stats for the year.

2023 Reading List

I read 184 books in 2023. I think it’s safe to say my COVID reading slump is officially over.

You can also check out my previous reading lists: 202220212020201920182017201620152014201320122011201020092008200720062005200420032002, and 2001.

If you want to read more, check out my booklet 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading Again.

You can also see my top 10 fiction, top 10 nonfiction, and reading stats for the year.

Continue reading 2023 Reading List

Quitting a Book is OK

I repeat this mantra often, and it’s especially true when I’ve been in a reading slump. I just saw it summarized nicely by Angela Whited, the community sales coordinator and storyteller at Red Balloon Bookshop:

Whited also revealed another secret about reading more books: If a book is boring, she’ll quit.

I’ve always struggled with that idea. Quitting a book feels like defeat. I started it. Why not finish it?

But those books are a grind and the process feels arduous and less enjoyable.

Whited said that’s OK.

“You can quit in the middle if you don’t like it,” she said. “You only will live so long. You would never read all the books you want to read. And so this is how we read so many books at the bookstore. We don’t finish the ones we’re not loving. You’ve got your to-be-read pile. Are you ever going to get through it? I’m not going to get through mine. It’s OK if you don’t love it. That book is for somebody else.”

-Myron Medcalf, “My quest to read more books led me to ‘reading therapist’ in St. Paul,” Sept. 9, 2023, Star Tribune

Reading Like Mad in 2023

I’m on some kind of wild reading binge in 2023. Last year, I read 87 books the entire year. This year? 87 books as of yesterday.

Reading a lot of books is no big surprise for me.

But this is quite the start to a year of reading.

So what happened? Why am I so into books this year? And how am I possibly making it happen? I’ve written a whole book on this topic, but I can share a few thoughts about what’s different this year.

Continue reading Reading Like Mad in 2023

Top 5 Nonfiction of 2022

I read 87 books in 2022, and here’s my favorite nonfiction reads. I don’t read very much nonfiction (16 out of 87, so 18%), so it usually has to be something I’m really interested in. And this year I struggled through several 2-star books (and even a 1-star book).

  1. Outlove: A Queer Christian Survival Story by Julie Rodgers – A fascinating and difficult memoir about being gay in the church. From conversion therapy to excommunication, it’s not exactly joyful reading. But necessary.
  2. Raising Ollie: How My Nonbinary Art-Nerd Kid Changed (Nearly) Everything I Know by Tom Rademacher – Billed as a parenting nonbinary kids memoir, it’s more about raising unique kids and being a teacher and trying to deal with all the crap our culture throws at us.
  3. Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story by Bono – A few hundred pages too long, this memoir is at times insightful and at times self indulgent (but what do you expect from a rock star).
  4. United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good by Cory Booker – Talk about self indulgent, that’s the definition of a politician memoirs. However, Booker manages to be humble. He’s always admitting mistakes and giving credit to others.
  5. All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto by George M. Johnson – As nutjobs try to ban books left and right, this one is frequently in the crosshairs. For no good reason. If you’re not gay, you probably have no idea what LGBTQ folks go through as they come of age. That’s why we need books like these.

On that note, definitely a theme this year with my LGBTQ nonfiction. Might keep it up in 2023 as I just picked up Danica Roem’s Burn the Page from the library.

More Reading

If you want to read more, check out my booklet 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading Again.

And how about previous top non-fiction lists: 2021, 20202019201820172016201520142013, and 2012.

Top 10 Fiction of 2022

I read 87 books in 2022, and here are my favorite fiction reads:

  1. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin – Such a fun story telling the history of a video game company, but it’s really about friendship.
  2. The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson – A generational novel about the Dakota in Minnesota. Haunting.
  3. The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi – Just a dumb, fun, sci-fi book. I even wrote about how fun it is to have the right book at the right time.
  4. Light Years From Home by Mike Chen – Another joyous read. I think I started my year with some real clunkers and to finally read a book that was so good was just lovely.
  5. Dooku: Jedi Lost by Cavan Scott – As much as I love Star Wars, it’s rare for a Star Wars book to be that good. This story is. It gives the backstory of Count Dooku, the Jedi turned Sith who makes brief appearances in the prequel movies. The book is really a script and as an audiobook it’s a full production.
  6. Dead Space by Kali Wallace – A slow build of a sci-fi thriller.
  7. Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell – The final installment of the Simon Snow trilogy, this one felt like a book-length version of the Scouring of the Shire (that’s the closing chapters of the Lord of the Rings trilogy where the real battle is over but the hobbits head home for one last adventure). Surprisingly, a great series.
  8. To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers – Her books often seem to be short on plot, and this one has some of that as well, but it’s also just a fascinating dive into sci-fi exploration.
  9. Cog by Greg van Eekhout – Robots! I’m a sucker for a robot story, and this is a fun one, especially the way the author captures the voice.
  10. Scattered Showers by Rainbow Rowell – I don’t like short story collections. But this is an exception. Rowell has a delightful ability to tell ‘meet cute’ romantic stories, and this one is full of them. As a bonus, several of the stories feature characters from her novels, but in a way where you can enjoy them as standalone stories but also find some joy when you discover the connection.
Continue reading Top 10 Fiction of 2022

2022 Reading List

I read 87 books in 2022. It’s up from last year, so that’s a win.

You can also check out my previous reading lists: 20212020201920182017201620152014201320122011201020092008200720062005200420032002, and 2001.

If you want to read more, check out my booklet 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading Again.

Chart of total books read each year.
Continue reading 2022 Reading List