Reading Done in 2024
2024 has been a good year for reading for me, double digits in books read after a while. I moved blogs from micro.blog to bear, and did not really post anything in 2024 about my reading, so I am going to retroactively post a summary of my reading and things of note.
It was a combination of audiobooks and kindle books - I only read one physical book this year. Running is really helping in keeping the book count up. Circe, A Gentleman In Moscow were a great audiobooks.
Most memorable book(s) were easily the Three Body Problem trilogy. Took a while for me to get through the first one, by the time I started the second, I had found a reading groove. The second one starts off really slow, goes into his awful "waifu" tangent, but then it turns into something that is just great. Even the third book is jaw dropping in terms of the scale of the sci-fi, it is probably one of the most ambitious books I have read. How he portrays people, their relationships and character development though? Horrible. Hated the Cheng Xin character, did not like the whole "pining for her" story arc. But again, where book 3 ends up.. is mind-bending.
All Systems Red and its sequel where quick and genuinely funny. Biggest book I read was 11/22/63 - though the time-travel and the "life" in the 60s was enjoyable, payoff was not great, in the end.
I enjoyed some of the non-fiction I read, and want to sprinkle it in with the fiction I read so I have some variety over this year. "How the world really works" makes you think about second order effect of things. Murakami's book on running is inspiring.
I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished.
-- Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
On to more books in 2025!