56 Books, My Literary Journey in 2018
According to goodreads, I read 56 books in 2018. This was 4 over my goal of 52 books! I spent a lot of the year reading books from my never ending list of tralev books but I also took some time to appreciate the classics, award winners, and a random selection of history and business books from Prime reading.
I think my absolute favorite book of the year was The Dark Forest (#2 of the Remembrance of Earth's Past Book series). I read the entire series this year and gave each book 5 stars. Im a huge sci-fi fan and this is the best series I've ever read hands down.
I'm pretty conservative with my good reads ratings.
1 - why did I ever read this
2 - "ok", if you're a fan of this topic
3 - good book
4 - great book
5 - read this before you die
A couple other books that I really enjoyed last year were:
- Giant of Enterprise - a book about business tycoons that was recommended to me by Nathan.
- Kitchen Confidential - a book by the late Anthony Bourdain which gives us a peek into the real world of a career as a chef.
- Less - a pulitzer prize winning book about life, love, and loss.
- East of Eden - a masterpiece by one of Americas most legendary authors.
I hate being negative, but my least favorite book by far last year year was "That Dark and Bloody River" I wrote a scathing review of this one on my other blog. It was also the longest book I read last year. I have a terrible problem of not being able to stop reading a book halfway in between. I read this tome with anger over a series of several long haul flights.
I want to read 52 more books in 2019. Join me in the challenge. Happy reading!
Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
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Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- Grow, Like a Tree Not a Cancer from Jim Nielsen’s Blog
- Pluralistic: All the books I reviewed in 2025 (02 Dec 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- DEP-18: A proposal for Git-based collaboration in Debian from Optimized by Otto
- [RIDGELINE] No Phones in The Ten-don Shop from Craig Mod — Writer + Photographer
- My next chapter with Mastodon from Mastodon Blog
- How many pillars of observability can you fit on the head of a pin? from charity.wtf
- The Software Essays that Shaped Me from Refactoring English
- Give Your Spouse the Gift of a Couple's Email Domain from mtlynch.io
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