Good morning!

Since this is the last reading thread of the year, I thought I'd post my list for the year.

Here's an imgur link. Books in grey highlights are nonfiction.

https://imgur.com/a/276pcgV

Best Novel: I'm actually counting the entire series of The Expanse. All 9 books. What an excellent sci-fi series. The books were so good that I have exactly zero desire to give the show a try.

Best novel that isn't a 9-book sci-fi series: The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi. Taking place in the near-future, this one was a disconcerting take on the coming Water Wars.

Best nonfiction: Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. A thorough expose of The Sackler Family and how they and their companies have basically engineered and intentionally prolonged the current opiate addiction crisis in America.

Worst Book: A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard. I feel bad putting this book on this list because it's not even her fault. She's not a writer. This is a very harrowing account of a girl who was kidnapped in California when she was 11 years old and was forced to stay with her kidnappers for over 18 years, eventually giving birth to two of her captors children. She was found when she was 29 years old. It's an insane story, of course, but her story could have packed a lot more punch if she'd hired a ghostwriter. I could even understand her decision not to; she wants her story to be in her own words. Who could blame her for that? Unfortunately, it's just not well-written and reading this book became tedious, quickly.

I got 37 books this year, which is 13 more than last year. Page count came out to 16716, which is the most I've read since 2013. My best month was July with 6 books and 2847 pages. My worst month was June with 0 books.

Can't wait to start my 2022 list.

How was your year in reading?