I don’t usually keep track of what I’ve read when. I’ve tried apps such as goodreads etc but have been poor at updating. Possibly I don’t have a great desire to track such things. Other folk post annual posts of what they’ve read and they are often interesting things to read and even add to my enormous TBR (To Be Read) section – I say section because I reckon it’s bigger than the average bookcase.

I’m sorta conscious that in the last year or so, I have been more deliberate in ensuring that I read. I have I think 3 key interests that suck my time:

• reading
• playing (playstation etc)
• watching

and I tend to feel that only two of those can be current at a time. At the moment, I’m playing Skyrim and reading; other times I am reading and watching stuff; it is generally rare that watching and playing are a double. I think.

My sense is that I have read more than usual in the last year so I thought I’d compile a list and see what it looked like. This proved challenging yet fun. I checked:

• purchase dates for ebooks
• purchase dates for print books
• published dates
• browsing through my shelves
• repeatedly browsing through my shelves
• 2021 blog posts
• photos

Purchase dates are so easy in these times of internet and pandemic. There will be an email somewhere.

Some dates in my research lacked specificity. There is a total of 51 titles but one is a short story (a recently discovered story from Philip K Dick’s teenage years). There’s a few novellas in the list but I’m good with that. That means a total of 50 books read which is pretty close to one a week. I suspect this is one of my best years. Of course, the number I’m scared to count is how many books arrived in the last year. I suspect it’s higher. Much higher.

Here is a list of what I read in the last year-ish or thereabouts.

• A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
• Foundation by Isaac Asimov
• Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
• Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
• The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
• The Magic of Recluce (Saga of Recluce Book 1) by L. E. Modesitt Jr
• The Director Should Have Shot Me by Alan Dean Foster
• The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin
• The One Impossible Labyrinth by Matthew Reilly
• Umbrella Academy Vol. 3 by Gerard Way
• Spellsinger at the Gate (first two books) by Alan Dean Foster
• Walking Home by Simon Armitage
• In Darkness Visible by Tony Jones
• Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett
• The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu
• The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
• Master of the 5th Magic by Lyndon Hardy
• Secret of the 6th Magic by Lyndon Hardy
• The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
• The Case of the Bleeding Wall by Joe Lansdale and Kasey Lansdale
• A Case of Conscience by James Blish
• Blue Octavo by John Blackburn
• A Beastly Business by John Blackburn
• The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville
• The City and the City by China Miéville
• The Fencing Master by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
• Sabriel by Garth Nix
• Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
• The Cosmic Puppets by Philip K Dick
• The Slave Race (short story) by Philip K Dick
• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
• Dispersion by Greg Egan
• Daughter of the Empire by Raymond Feist
• Heads by Greg Bear
• Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe
• The Gold-Jade Dragon by Janeen Webb
• Speculative Horizons: Edited by Patrick St-Denis
• The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
• Hounded by Kevin Hearne
• Hexed by Kevin Hearne
• Hammered by Kevin Hearne
• Assail by Ian Cameron Esslemont
• The Absolute Sandman Vol. 3 by Neil Gaiman
• Slightly Foxed But Still Desirable by Ronald Searle
• The Old Guard Book One: Opening Fire by Greg Rucka, Leandro Fernandez
• The Old Guard Book Two: Force Multiplied by Greg Rucka, Leandro Fernandez
• The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
• Subterranean Press Tales of Dark Fantasy 3: Edited by William Schafer