Considering how much I love storytelling, writing, and entertainment, it may not come as a huge shock that I love to read. Aside from being a fun escape into different worlds, reading fiction is a good way to get the gears in my head unstuck. It’s a cool thing to pick up little bits of another author’s storytelling techniques and writing style to add to my own toolbox. It’s like watching film of your favorite ballplayer as a kid and mimicking the moves as best as you can. It’s also fun to review the stuff I read, as it helps analyze the stuff I like and don’t like in stories, so I can either do or avoid doing them in my own writing. To date, I have more than 50 book reviews posted on this site.

I try the Goodreads challenge every year, where we set out to read a target number of books, and while I rarely get through every book I try to read, I do get a lot of reading done every year. Some books I take on slowly, others I can devour in a day. And since we are what we consume, let’s take a look at the menu for this year, in no particular order.

- John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead

- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

- The Andromeda Evolution by Daniel H. Wilson

- The Clockwork Dynasty by Daniel H. Wilson

- Tuxedo Junction by Thom Carnell

- The Book of Koli by M.R. Carey

- The Trials of Koli by M.R. Carey

- Fleischman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

- Elysium by Jenifer Marie Brisset

- Dead Girls by Graeme Cameron

- Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

- The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

- Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

- The City We Became by NK Jemisin

- Gazing at the Distant Lights by Doug Margeson

- Six Wakes by Muir Lafferty

- Sensation Machines by Adam Wilson

- The Whisper Man by Alex North

- Adjustment Day by Chuck Palahniuk

- Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

- The Last Astronaut by David Wellington

- Wool by Hugh Howey

- Ink by Jonathan Maberry

- Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

- Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful by Arwen Elys Dayton

So that’s 24 books to read and review, averaging two per month for the entire year. I may not get to all of them, but I should probably get started anyway.