2022 was a difficult year in a lot of ways. I started drifting away from many things that brought me joy, and reading was one of them. As for why this happened, stress of changing jobs, stress of trying to sort out home renovation projects, being social and doing a fair bit of traveling, and picking up some other hobbies all contributed. I will address those shortcomings next year, but for now, the recap.
On the chart above, you can see the order in which everything was read from top to bottom, and a bar indicating roughly how long it took to read, measured in days. The right-hand-most edge of the cover image aligns to the day that I started reading that entry. If you cannot see a bar, that was a book read in a single day (which does not happen too often, but it happens). Teal corresponds to non-fiction writings, orange is fiction, and purple is a technical or professional book.
Project Hail Mary (by Andy Weir)
This book may have singlehandedly knocked me out of my reading funk for the next year. I read this in one sitting while next to a pool while on vacation in Hawaii. One sitting! Andy Weir really makes use of a polished writing style that prevents a heavy sci-fi storyline from being inaccessible to the lay reader. There are only a select few characters in the novel, so Andy’s vision for science and technology, and how these things drive the overall resolution of the narrative, really requires an engaged imagination on the reader’s part. A few twists and turns ensure the book is fun to read from cover to cover. Without spoiling parts of the book, I cannot say much more, but if you were a fan of The Martian and like a good space sci-fi romp, this is a great read.
Into the Wild (by Jon Krakauer)
I started reading this book on Christmas Eve (as part of the family tradition of book sharing on the night before Christmas), but I did not finish it until into 2023, so I will render my review in next year’s recap.
A bad year in reading, but a good reminder that sometimes this habit ebbs and sometimes it flows. The most important part is sticking with it.
Here’s to more reading in 2023! 🎉