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title	date	tags
2022 Wrap Up	2022-12-31T12:47:00-08:00	[productivity real-life reading]

One of the first posts on this blog was a [retrospective on my reading in 2021]({{< ref "/posts/2021-in-books" >}}) - it seems only natural to do something similar this year.

After crunching the stats on the provenance of my books in 2021, I noticed a dearth of books by non-white non-men. I set out to consciously address that this year, and I'd call my result a partial success - although I've dropped from 1 book by a person of colour to 0, my reading of new books by female authors has increased to >50%. My overall reading volume by-books dropped (from 42 to 16) - but given that 8 of these were from a seriously hefty series (more on that later), I don't feel too bad about that.

(Note - Amazon Affiliate Links used throughout this article. If you're interested in buying any of these books, please consider doing so via one of these links - it passes a percentage of the sale to me, at no extra cost to you)

Recaps

Dune: The Second Half, -ish

After the truly spectacular movie adaptation of (part of) the first Dune book last year, I was inspired to finally finish the Dune series. I'd read Dune itself a couple of times, and Messiah/Children/God-Emperor once, but never progressed beyond that. I'd heard that the series took a serious nose-dive in quality; but on the other hand, nerds do love to complain - how bad could it really be?

Turns out the answer was...very. I'll just link to this and leave it there. Enough is enough. I gave up after Chapterhouse despite it ending on a cliffhanger (which was resolved by Herbert's son in a two-book conclusion) - and after reading the Wikipedia description, I don't feel like I've missed out on much.

The Justice Of Kings

The first book in the Empire Of The Wolf series by Richard Swan (also author of some thoroughly enjoyable sci-fi; and an erstwhile Twilight Imperium play-partner of mine), I'll freely admit that I originally picked this up purely as a favour to a friend; but I was so gripped that I tore through it at a rapid pace. The world feels real, lived-in - characters are influenced by tradition and culture and history that seem natural and, although revealed in (tantalisingly few!) snippets, never feel forced. Looking forward to picking up the 2nd book next year!

The Night Circus // The Starless Sky

Loans from my friend Patrick who knew I was looking for non-white non-dude authors - these are poignant, evocative, beautiful. The Night Circus brought to mind both The Prestige and The Bone Clocks, in a more playfully magical-realist style; while The Starless Sky was a wonderfully meta meditation on the world of stories that has me even more excited for Patrick to finally finish Sandman :) bonus points for the fact that it briefly referenced Sunless Sea, on which two of my best friends have worked!

The Atrocity Archives

A recommendation from George (one of the aforementioned Best Friends), this first book in The Laundry Files - a techno-occult spy thriller - certainly had me hooked in and keen to read more (especially as I hear it only gets better as time goes on!), but my intention to skew more female this year won out. I knew what I had to do, but I didn't know if I had the strength to do it...

The House Of Niccolò

...but it turned out that I did.

This is the prequel series to The Lymond Chronicles, the six-book epic about Emo-Batman-in-16th-Century-Scotland, which stunned me by absolutely hooking me in to a genre (Historical Fiction) that I never expected to enjoy. It took me until April of this year to remember this series, by a female author who I knew I enjoyed - the perfect way to achieve my reading goal!

Well, I managed it, but only just. The first few books were compelling enough - though I do remember texting Toni (the friend who'd introduced me to The Lymond Chronicles) that although I preferred Niccolò to Lymond as a character, I preferred the Lymond series as a whole. Towards the end, it dragged more and more, to the point that I was really psyching myself up to continue reading.

I was already prepared for Dorothy Dunnett's penchant for making obscure references without any explanation, which is fine - you can just let it wash over you, and pick up on the tone if not the content. Also forgivable is her characters' tendencies to react with awe and subservience to the protagonist - a mediocre "hero" that impresses no-one is not a compelling character! The primary reasons I didn't enjoy this series were:

The motivations of a key character, whose actions are the driving force behind the primary plotline, are completely baffling - and it seems like I'm not alone. It's all very well for a character's motivations to remain mysterious or guessed at throughout the series, but you should at least have a good understanding of them by the end - or, at the very least, their actions must not be completely contradictory with no reason for a change of heart!
This seems strange to say about Historical Fiction, but - the necessity to know and care about history was much higher in this case. The necessary historical knowledge to enjoy the Lymond Chronicles boils down to two easily-inferred facts - every country, but particularly France and Scotland, hates England; and, religions were a powerful force at the time. The politics and personalities are much more relevant in the House Of Niccolò - without the context on the significance of alliances, you are left in the dark about motivations (as in the bullet above, in fact).

It wasn't a waste of time - I'm glad that I read the series, but I have no desire to go back and re-read it, whereas I'm certain I'll do so for Lymond at least once more in my life. In fact, I'm struggling to bring to mind more than a few memorable scenes in the whole 8-book Niccolò series, whereas at least one scene per Lymond-book is forever branded into my memory!

Exit, Voice, and Loyalty

I took a brief detour during Niccolò to read this book, inspired by this tweet about reactions to differences of opinion in large organizations. It was a short but very worthwhile read - as is often the case for really insightful non-fiction¹, the concepts seem obvious in hindsight, and provide a useful evaluative framework rather than just a collection of facts.

Cosmere books

With the Year Of Sanderson starting a little early, I re-read Bands Of Mourning and Secret History to get up-to-speed before The Lost Metal was published in November. Although it was a decent standalone story with a real heart-wrenching conclusion, as a conclusion to Mistborn Era 2 and as an introduction to Cosmere crossovers it felt lacking - several narrative tensions introduced in the previous book(s) went unresolved, and from a Cosmere perspective we got to see some worldhopping but didn't really learn anything new. Really, it felt like there should be another Era 2 book to tie up all the loose ends - (spoilers: {{< inlinespoiler >}}Tell us who drained the Bands Of Mourning! Skip forward a little and have Era 2 conclude with the resolution of a Scadrian World War! Show Steris growing into her new-found confidence and appreciation, with a subplot showing changing Scadrian opinions on gender equality as a link to/contrast with the next Era. Give a little more detail on what Kelsier was up to, how he regained a body, etc. - that belongs much more in a Scadrial book than a Roshar one!{{< /inlinespoiler >}}). The more I think about it, the more I feel like this would have been a great penultimate book of Era 2 - some resolutions to the points mentioned above would really make Era 2 end with a bang, not a damp cliffhanger.

I then moved on to re-reading Dawnshard and Rhythm Of War just in case Stormlight 5 is part of the 4 books next year (no spoilers please! I'm avoiding learning anything about them until they literally arrive on my doorstep). Still just as great as I remember - great stuff, no notes, keep at it BrandoSando. I've been enjoying diving back into the Words Of Brandon to inspire or test fan-theories (given the increasing {{< inlinespoiler >}}scientific attitude{{< /inlinespoiler >}} on Roshar, and the fact that {{< inlinespoiler >}}Surgebinding literally has surges for the Strong and Weak Nuclear^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Axial Forces{{< /inlinespoiler >}}, I love the idea that the four Dawnshard might correspond with {{< inlinespoiler >}}Maxwell's Equations{{< /inlinespoiler >}})

Introduction To Algorithms

Recommended as part of my revision ramping back up to interviewing for a new Software Engineer position. I wasn't sure where to put this on the list as I was reading it over the course of several months in parallel with my leisure reading. And, true to nerdy form, I charted my progress:

Interesting to note that, aside from an early hiccup where I really struggled with the Master Method for solving recurrences at first, my progress-per-unit-time was almost exactly linear. Particularly surprising as some of the content was completely new to me (despite being a software engineer for over 10 years, this was the first time I actually found out what a Red-Black Tree is!), while other content was purely rehashing stuff I knew and remembered well from Uni and/or work.

Full list and stats

Plus Rhythm Of War (re-read, incomplete)

20 Fiction, 2 Non-Fiction ("Exit, Voice, and Loyalty" and "CLRS") Of the fiction:
- 5 Sci-fi (4xDune, The Atrocity Archives)
- 7 Fantasy - though, running the gamut from "Fantasy Legal Thriller", through "nearly Magical Realism", into "sufficiently-advanced Magic is indistinguishable from Science"²
- 8 Historical Fiction
12 by men, 10 by women - didn't quite make my >50% goal this year, mostly due to The House Of Niccolò taking longer than anticipated and my prioritizing of getting back into Sanderson to avoid being spoiled. In my defence, my non-re-reads this year were 10/6 female/male, but still - must do better! (Though I freely admit that I probably won't next year due to the Sanderson focus)
16 fresh reads, 5 re-reads

I'm thinking of Seven Habits or Getting Things Done (Affiliate Links) ↩︎
I'm a big fan of the definition of Science Fiction that it deals with "how people or societies adapt to new capabilities provided by technology" - under this definition, it's perfectly feasible to have a sci-fi story dealing only with established contemporary (or even historical) technology rather than lasers and robots and spaceships. I don't have a similarly pithy definition of Fantasy, but there's an interesting debate to be had about whether Mistborn even qualifies - it probably does, but the discussion would be fascinating! ↩︎

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