As is my wont, I am cutting off my “annual reading” in this, the week after Christmas, and am starting anew the count. I won’t pick up anything too long this week since the 2026 Winter Reading Challenge starts in January. But I am picking out books and stacking them up for that time period, a period where I might be taking a little trip with just me, my beautiful wife, and a stack of books. So this year’s reading challenge might be easier than most–and although one only has to read a book in five of the fifteen categories, you know I try to complete all fifteen.
So, what have I read this year?
- Seaforms by Dale Chihuly
- Three-Bladed Doom by Robert E. Howard
- Karate-dō: My Way of Life by Gichon Funakoshi
- The Book of Golf Disasters by Peter Dobereiner
- Hawkeye: Private Eye
- The Maine Lobster Book by Mike Brown
- A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
- The Old Dog Barks Backwards by Ogden Nash
- Shakespearan Whodunits by edited by Mike Ashley
- A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir
- Saturn’s Race by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes
- Conan the Valorous by John Maddox Roberts
- Love Always Wins by Marla Lucas
- Minimalist Lofts
- A Tale of Two Cities / A Christmas Carol / The Chimes by Charles Dickens
- Smirnoff for the Soul by Yakov Smirnoff
- The Big Empty by Robert Crais
- Wine of the Dreamers by John D. MacDonald
- The Senior by Mike Flynt
- Naked Came the Manatee by Carl Hiaasen et al
- iWoz by Steve Wozniak with Gina Smith
- Myst: The Book of Ti’ana by Rand Miller with David Wingrove
- Mid-Flinx by Alan Dean Foster
- Slipt by Alan Dean Foster
- Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle by Edgar Rice Burroughs
- 40 Days of Discovery
- Fatal Interview by Edna St. Vincent Millay
- The Guns of Terra 10 by Don Pendleton
- HALO: The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund
- The Man from Skibbereen by Louis L’Amour
- The Buck in the Snow and Other Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay
- Sonnets and the Ballad of Allana MacDale by Michael J. O’Neal
- Finnish Proverbs by Inkeri Väänänen-Jensen
- Beyond the High Hills by Guy Mary-Rousselière
- Baldknobbers Joke Book Volume I
- Jes’ Dreamin’ by Bud Healy
- The Maine Woods / Walden / Cape Cod by Henry David Thoreau
- Homicide Near Hillsboro by James R. Wilder
- A Collection of Poems and Stories by Jack Buck
- Westward the Tide by Louis L’Amour
- A Dickens of a Cat and Other Stories of Cats We Love by edited by Callie Smith Grant
- Walden and Other Writings by Henry David Thoreau
- The Haw Lantern by Seamus Heaney
- Monarch of Deadman Bay by Roger Caras
- Black Angel by Lawrence Conaway
- Dialogues with Nature: Works by Charles Salis Kaelin by
- Dressed Inside Out by Elizabeth Price
- 199 Useful Things To Do With A Politician by David Schafer, Andre Perl, and Mike Jackson
- Tales from the Green Bay Packers Sidelines by Chuck Carlson
- Green Bay Packers Stadium Stories by Gary D’Amato
- Shōgun by James Clavell
- The Best of Wheat and a Little Chaff Number II by Leah Lathrom Wallace
- Hornblower and the Crisis by C. S. Forester
- Brighter Days To Come by Salesian Missions
- The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
- National Lampoon Jokes Jokes Jokes Verbal Abuse Edition by Steve Ochs
- The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- It Ain’t Over by Yogi Berra
- God’s Book by Mary Noggle
- I’ve Seen It All In The Library by Jonathan M. Farlow
- Be Kind by Charles M. Schultz
- Martial Arts and Christianity by Keith D. Yates
- The Gold of Friendship by Selected by Patricia Dreier
- Once More With A .44 by Peter Brandvold
- The Redwood Series by Judy Stevens Callaway
- Memoirs of Ms. P. by Amy Petrus
- Modern Short Story Classics of Suspense by Reader’s Digest
- Rowdy Joe Lowe by Joseph G. Rosa and Waldo E. Koop
- Coffee House Memories by Brian J. Noggle
- Okinawa
- Denmark: The Four Seasons by Inga Aistrup
- Maxfield Parrish by Laurence S. Cutler, Judy Goffman, and the American Illustrators Gallery
- My Turn at Bat by Ted Williams as told to John Underwood
- The Complete Odes by Pindar (translated by Anthony Verity
- Vigils by Aline Kilmer
- Brute Force: Betrayals by Dean Wesley Smith
- Stories by Dorothy Parker
- 101 Great American Poems
- The Ghost Pact by Ben Wolf
- The Ghost Plague by Ben Wolf
- Boxing for Everyone by Cappy Kotz
- The Turquiose Lament by John D. MacDonald
- Rickshaw Riot by Ben Wolf and Luke Messa
- The Last Christmas Show by Bob Hope as told to Pete Martin
- A Night Like No Other by Chip Davis and Jill Stern
- Frostworld and Dreamfire by John Morressy
- Four Gates to Health by Julian Lynn
- Time and Again by Clifford D. Simak
- Bo Jackson:Playing the Games by Ellen Emerson White
- Mackinac Island by Robert E. Benjamin
- What the Frost? by Ben Wolf
- The Name in the Stone by Gerard Van Der Leun
92 books. This list includes three or four that I did not add to my tracking list but only spotted in the book reports on this blog.
So what are the trends? A lot of poetry. Some westerns. Several games based on video games, and one set in a video game. Many sports books based on teams or individual biographies–and the bios are all of baseball players. A couple of martial arts books. Probably a little lighter this year on nonfiction than in the past.
Strangely enough, this is also an annual metric I’m proud of, but it doesn’t do me any material good.
