James – Percival Everett (finished, very cool book, I loved Huck Finn as a kid so this was a really fun retelling)
Dissolution – Nicholas Binge (finished, one of my new favorite books, I love a fucky timeline and a slightly unreliable narrator)
The Grace Year – Kim Liggett (finished, cool concept but the execution was lacking to me, maybe just because I was coming right off of reading Dissolution but the writing also felt amateurish at times)
Original Sin – Jake Tapper (didn’t finish, I got about halfway through and felt like I got the gist, pretty infuriating stuff knowing how many people knew Biden was not fit to run and kept it from us til it was too late for a viable Dem to take his place)
Amusing Ourselves to Death – Neil Postman (finished, a book about media from 1985 that surprisingly still feels pretty relevant)
This Is Your Mind On Plants – Michael Pollan (finished, made me want to actually read the Omnivore’s Dilemma after bullshitting all my reading journals about it in high school)
The Hidden Life of Trees – Peter Wohlleben (finished, not sure if it’s the translation or if he’s just an eccentric tree man but i absolutely love the way this is written)
Six of Crows – Leigh Bardugo (finished, WOAH! I loved this, lovely morally gray cast of characters and lots of twists and turns I couldn’t anticipate)
Crooked Kingdom – Leigh Bardugo (finished, also loved this, ending made me a little mad but it’s fine)
Shadow and Bone – Leigh Bardugo (finished, I liked this but less so than the Six of Crows duology, I feel like her writing is just a bit greener)
The Familiar – Leigh Bardugo (finished, this was great, I don’t always enjoy historical fiction but I really liked this)
Siege and Storm – Leigh Bardugo (finished, enjoyed this one better than Shadow and Bone which I feel like is uncommon for 2nd installments)
Upward Bound – Woody Brown (finished, really liked this one, made me do a lot of self reflecting on how I interacted with the high needs autistic people I’ve worked with in the past, for better and worse UPDATE: since writing this I’ve read several articles suggesting that this book is, essentially, fraudulent, due to the discredited method of “facilitated communication” used by the supposed author and his mother, which is prone to suggestion and outright fabrication by the “facilitator”.)
The Covenant of Water – Abraham Verghese (finished, I read this at Samuel’s place when I was over there and he was busy, so I finished it very slowly while reading other things and it was sometimes hard to keep track of all the characters but I really loved it! so many stories blending and overlapping and I cried multiple times reading it)
Ninth House – Leigh Bardugo (finished, I was surprised how much I liked this! if not for the fact that I’m just reading this author’s entire body of work I’d likely never have picked up a book with the premise of “secret societies at Yale are doing actual real magic” but it was an extremely fun read)
Factory Girls – Leslie T. Chang (finished, really interesting look at the lives of migrant factory workers in China, who are mostly teenage girls. it’s so interesting to me that this industry we see as completely exploitative is actually, at least as the author tells it, a huge factor in promoting gender equality in rural China, though of course two things can be true at the same time)
Ruin and Rising – Leigh Bardugo (finished, interesting conclusion, the gift-wrapped happy ending was kind of funny to me given how Crooked Kingdom ended)
The Omnivore’s Dilemma – Michael Pollan (finished, very good until I got to the part where he unconvincingly talks himself out of being vegetarian. the logic is just not there)
King of Scars – Leigh Bardugo (finished, what an excellent example of Bardugo’s ability to throw in the most devastating curveball right at the end of a story to make it all 5 times sadder)
Pure Invention – Matt Alt (finished, I found it really interesting how Alt draws parallels between the technological exports of Japan and the cultural exports, and how Japan’s economy declining prior to America’s makes their cultural exports of phenomena such as otakus perfectly timed to appeal to disaffected Western youth)
Steal Like An Artist – Austin Kleon (finished, I think this helped me in some ways to see making things in a different light. I have a very hard time stealing ideas which is probably part of why I have such a hard time creating things. it’s a work in progress)
Breakfast with Seneca – David Fideler (finished, a very enjoyable overview of Stoic beliefs. I definitely felt inspired. I will probably read some actual Seneca after this so that I can get it straight from the tap)
Hell Bent – Leigh Bardugo (finished, I loved this. I especially liked how Alex is revealed to be an unreliable narrator when it comes to the people she cares about–oops, her dead best friend is actually not the greatest person after all. I can’t wait til September! I wish Libby would let me put the next book on hold now so that I can read it right when it comes out)
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky (finished, the diologue was admittedly difficult to get through when reading during night shifts. sometimes I’d get a call and when I came back to the book I’d have to skip back to remember who was talking and what they were talking about for the last five paragraphs, but a fun read nonetheless)
Rule of Wolves – Leigh Bardugo (finished, man I thought this was going to put a nice tidy bow on everything and it almost did but then opened the door for another sequel, whaaaat? I got so mad that she was doing Nina dirty yet again but… no spoilers but I’m mostly satisfied with the way it shook out)
Project Hail Mary – Andy Weir (finished, I watched the movie before reading this and honestly, it was a very good adaptation in my opinion! definitely more explanation of the scientific aspects in the books that wouldn’t have made sense to include, but that was fun to read even if I didn’t understand it. also, why’d they make Rocky naked in the movie?! he wears clothes the whole time!)
13 Things that Don’t Make Sense – Michael Brooks (finished, this was a fun read. the chapter on placebos blew my mind a little bit. what do you MEAN placebo opiates don’t work when you narcan the test subjects???)
A Nation Unmade By War – Tom Engelhardt (finished, kinda read like a very long blog post [understandably so as the author is a blogger] but was interesting regardless)
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism – Susanna Zuboff (in progress)
Running Total: 27 completed, 29 total