Reading Lists ~ or Goodreads Begone

In a 2014 “Diary of a Word Nerd” post, book review blogger Julia Tomiak offers three simple reasons why we should keep a list of all the books we’ve read. I came upon Tomiak’s short list while searching for backup on why I feel keeping such lists may in some way be detrimental. Don’t we already live in a high-tech experience where we can’t walk without wanting to measure each footfall by the 10,000-step goal, or post an online comment about every healthy meal we’ve cooked? For a slightly competitive fellow, the need to keep a list may potentially ruin the joy of reading, making each book part of a cutthroat “challenge” or comparative threat to my healthy state of mind.

I know myself. This list-keeping “challenge” could become very unhealthy for me, leading to compromises and corner cutting so that I can look better to the non-existent public critic. I would have to remind myself constantly that I’m not doing this for anyone else or to boost my own ego, but to buttress and elevate my own diminishing intellectual, spiritual, and physical health. I’m doing this as an important act of self-improvement, not for some debatable social applause — ego-boosting thought that might be.

Ironically, the three reasons put forward by Tomiak in her blog strike me as leaning more toward the “debatable” side of my motivation. Tomiak cites: 1.) Pride; 2.) Accountability; and 3.) Making Recommendations. Sure, the argument can be made that none of these represents a goal that is necessarily judged against other people’s achievements, but turn the table and you won’t be able to argue that they cannot be measured against another person’s achievements. Like I said, I have a potentially unhealthy relationship with “competitiveness.” (Not that I’ve ever used my inner contestant as a reason for actually getting off my lazy ass and accomplishing anything of value.)

If I cite “personal intellectual improvement” as the main reason for keeping a list of all the books that I’ve read (or more appropriately, “completed”) within this year, then I relieve myself of the risk of comparing my list to anybody else’s list. I’m doing this to help myself remember my reading, and perhaps from that I can benefit by a higher degree of awareness about myself. I can see what categories I tend toward in the real world, where things actually come to be as compared to what I think I want. I can see “trends” and “priorities,” and maybe even evaluate myself at the end of a year and see if I feel like any of my reading helped me keep at bay the monsters of Stupidity and Senility.

Of course, there is also a fair amount of cheating in the first additions to this list, as most of these are texts that I started reading in 2021. Hell, some of them may be things I started reading over three or four years ago. Or longer. Ahem.

So here goes, a list of books I’ve “finished reading” (how’s that for saving face?) in 2022. I hope I’ll be disciplined enough to keep adding to this list throughout the year. Heck, I just hope I’ll be disciplined enough to keep reading.

MY 2022 LIST (in order of completion)

• The Survival of Molly Southbourne (by Tade Thompson), novella [sci-fi]
• The President’s Vampire (by Christopher Farnsworth), novel [horror/thriller]
• The Eye of the World (by Robert Jordan), novel [fantasy]
• The Reckoning (by David Halberstam), cultural history
• The Searching Dead (by Ramsey Campbell), novel [horror]
• Farther Away (by Jonathan Franzen), essays
• Love to Hurt You (by Rahul Saini), novel [horror]
• Age of Anger: A History of the Present (by Pankaj Mishra), cultural history
• Woman Islands (by Chung Wenyin), novel
• Billy Summers (by Stephen King), novel
• Medieval Myths (by Norma Lorre Goodrich), stories
• The Big Book of the 70s (by Jonathan Vankin), comic book, cultural history
• Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Contemporary Native Women’s Writings of North America (Eds. Joy Harjo & Gloria Bird), poetry, essays, short stories
• Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts (by Orrin Grey), short stories [horror]
• Perma Red (by Debra Magpie Earling), novel
• Dune Messiah (by Frank Hebert), novel [sci-fi]
• Will & Me: How Shakespeare Took Over My Life (by Dominic Dromgoole), memoir
• Breaking the Tongue (by Vyvyane Loh), novel
• Born to the Dark (by Ramsey Campbell), novel [horror]
• The Shrimp People (by Rex Shelley), novel
• Banyaga: A Song of War (by Charlson Ong), novel
• Starship Troopers (by Robert A. Heinlein), novel [sci-fi]
• Plays: Two (by Conor McPherson), stage drama scripts
• Tell the World (by Liu Binyan), history
• God Save the Queen (by Kate Locke), novel [sci-fi thriller]
• The French Lieutenant’s Woman (by John Fowles), novel
• The Suicide Motor Club (by Christopher Buehlman), novel [horror]
• China and Japan: Myths and Legends (by Donald A. Mackenzie). anthropology
• Good Hair Days (by Jonathon Johnson), memoir
• The Unconsoled (by Kazuo Ishiguro), novel
• Evening is the Whole Day (by Preeta Samarasan), novel
• The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (Nov/Dec 2020), short stories
• Australian Gothic: An Anthology of Australian Supernatural Fiction 1867-1939 (Edited by James Doig), short stories [horror]
• Apocalypse Now Now (by Charlie Human), novel [horror]
• Now You See it (by Cathy N. Davidson), educational technology
• Memories that Glow in the Dark (by Gopal Baratham), short stories
• My Best Friend’s Exorcism (by Grady Hendrix), novel [horror]
• The Part I Left With You (by Rahul Saini), novel
• An Apple for the Creature (Edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner), short stories [horror]
• Boyhood: A Memoir (by J.M. Coetzee), memoir
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (by N.K. Jemisin), novel [fantasy]
• Ancient Evenings (by Norman Mailer), novel
• How to Survive a Plague (by David France), history
• Vanity Bagh (by Anees Salim), novel
• God is Red: A Native View of Religion (by Vine Deloria), essays
• Analog: Science Fiction & Fact (Jul/Aug 2005), short stories and essays
• Elegy of Sweet Potatoes (by Tehpen Tsai), novel
• Wide Sargasso Sea (by Jean Rhys), novella