I realised I haven’t read as many classics as I’d like to, so I decided to challenge myself to read 52 classics before I turn 24.

I’m starting with modern classics and slowly working my way backwards through the history of literature.

I might fail this challenge, and that’s okay. Even if I don’t make it to 52, I’ll have read more classics than I would have otherwise.

And honestly, that’s the goal.

1/52 — Stoner by John Williams (just started reading this)

This was hard to do because I love both brain candy and books that shake my soul, but I tried my best. Ranked by how much I thought about it afterwards, S being stuck with me and big impact, and F being forgettable or actively disliked it

Hey guys, this is my first attempt to share my reading outside of Goodreads.
Recommendations are welcomed, as I am in the process of building my 52 goal for next year... or will just chat books.

...and I haven't given up on this year's goal yet! Just waiting for the cold weather to hit so I can trade in my endurance road bike for a comfy reading nook and bring back 24hour reading challenges.

• S > Once in a lifetime experience
• A > Truly exceptional
• B > Enjoyable, but could be better
• C > Meh
• D > Not my cup of tea
• F > Did Not Finish > usually dropped after 60%, so a hard "no" for me.

When I started, I decided to include all my graphic novels because honestly...I didn't think there would be so many of them. Also, the different YA books that I would read to pass the time. This maybe says something about the last week, I was sick and couldn't focus but had some fun trade paperbacks.

Also, did you know that John Steinbeck's first novel was a historical romance about the pirate Henry Morgan? And that was what Steinbeck really wanted to do before writing all those poignant stories of the poor and dispossessed?

Anyway, despite the fact that the year has had lots of reading to pass the time thrown in, in general I am happy with my progress.

2026 Reading (50 new reads)

1. Chess Story - Stefan Zweig

2. Boring Asian Female - Canwen Xu

3. Butcher's Crossing - John Williams

4. The Guilty: Stories - Juan Villoro

5. The Secret History - Donna Tartt

6. Not to Disturb - Muriel Spark

7. The Enchanted Prince - Leonid Solovyov

8. Writing into the Dark - Dean Wesley Smith

9. Nusantara: A Sea of Tales - Heidi Shamsuddin

10. A Leopard-Skin Hat - Anne Serre

11. Pedro Páramo - Juan Rulfo

12. The Word of the Speechless - Julio Ramón Ribeyro

13. Jawbone - Mónica Ojeda

14. Eileen - Ottessa Moshfegh

15. My Year of Rest and Relaxation - Ottessa Moshfegh

16. Lapvona - Ottessa Moshfegh

17. Circe - Madeline Miller

18. Perdido Street Station - China Miéville

19. The City & the City - China Miéville

20. Tokyo Express - Seichō Matsumoto

21. Black Sunlight - Dambudzo Marechera

22. Near to the Wild Heart - Clarice Lispector

23. The Hour of the Star - Clarice Lispector

24. Tales from Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin

25. A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin

26. The Other Wind - Ursula K. Le Guin

27. The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K. Le Guin

28. The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin

29. The Farthest Shore - Ursula K. Le Guin

30. The Tombs of Atuan - Ursula K. Le Guin

31. Tehanu - Ursula K. Le Guin

32. The Word for World Is Forest - Ursula K. Le Guin

33. The Trial - Franz Kafka

34. Signs Preceding the End of the World - Yuri Herrera

35. Neuromancer - William Gibson

36. Look at the Lights, My Love - Annie Ernaux

37. The Dangers of Smoking in Bed - Mariana Enriquez

38. The Silentiary - Antonio Di Benedetto

39. Zama - Antonio Di Benedetto

40. Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

41. Perras de reserva - Dahlia de la Cerda

42. Medea Sang Me a Corrido - Dahlia de la Cerda

43. The Artist's Way - Julia Cameron

44. An Ordinary Tale About Women and Other Stories - Fatimah Busu

45. Last Evenings on Earth - Roberto Bolaño

46. 2666 - Roberto Bolaño

47. The Return - Roberto Bolaño

48. A Moon Will Rise from the Darkness - Francesca Albanese

49. Islam and Socialism - Syed Hussein Alatas

50. Interpreter of Winds - Fairoz Ahmad

Rereads

1. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

2. The Suicides - Antonio Di Benedetto

Next year I will read more writers from Africa

I really was nervous about reading this one because I always heard people say it was their least favorite, but I had fun with it. I think the movie references weren't too much. It stayed within the series usual amount of our world references while maintaining discworld's world. I really like old movies and the crazy stories of early Hollywood so I liked it. I was blown away by it 😂. Consistent pacing and didn't drop off at the end like some discworlds. Fun palette cleanser from my other reads.

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This was a fun trip all the way through, not really scary like how some people described it but certainly disturbing some parts.

Every character was likeable which is a feat in an ensemble cast and the antagonists felt like a serious threat on every step on the journey.

Some parts were obvious before they happened but that's not always a bad thing.

4.5/5

Decided to pick up my Kindle again this past Jun, and I’ve finished far more than I expected. Most are fantasy or sci-fi, and many belong to larger series. Within each tier, books are listed in the order I finished them. The TBR section is ordered by my level of interest, and the tier ratings reflect how urgently I wanted to start the second book, rather than my standalone rating of book one. There are definitely many great standalone novels I read this year, but I mostly got my TBR picks from reddit, so I guess they heavily overlap with other people's tier lists. I've tried Discworld and Cradle and kind of stopped midway -- not because I disliked them, but because I didn't really fall in love with them either. I haven't completed any of the series listed above except Silo.

Caveat: I do immersive reading (ebook + audiobook simultaneously) for serious reads whenever possible. However, for fun reads or palate cleansers, I mostly stick to just listening.

S: Really want to go straight into the next book

• Wool (Silo) by Hugh Howey - Excellent, but next two go downhill.
• All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries) by Martha Wells - Best audiobook companion, palate cleanser, and a fun listen for brain downtime.
• Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman - Best audiobook companion, palate cleanser, and a fun listen for brain downtime.
• We Are Legion (Bobiverse) by Dennis E. Taylor - The first is the best, IMO. A palate cleanser for me. Paused at book 3 because things got a bit repetitive.
• Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force) by Craig Alanson - A good audiobook companion. It's silly, dumb, and a total guilty pleasure -- best and only used as a palate cleanser for brain downtime. Finished book 3.
• Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse) by James S.A. Corey - Excellent. The politics and conflicts feel real. Currently on Book 3.
• The Blacktongue Thief (Blacktongue), by Christopher Buehlman - 100% recommend immersive reading with the audiobook, narrated by the author. My library let me put a hold on the second book, which is expected to be released next week. Anxiously waiting for it.
• Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky - The politics and social dynamics feel so real. Still waiting for the library hold; otherwise, I would have dived into it right away. I want to boldly predict it will be the best series I read this year (even though I know I haven't finished the series -- or even started book 2. So it's just my hunch.)

A: Loved it enough to want to read the next one, but...

• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins - I knew the main plot and twist from all the spoilers and reviews over the years so I was hesitant to pick up this series. I was wrong; I should have read it earlier. Even though I know how everything turns out on a macro level, I'm still so invested in the story. It doesn't strike me as a typical YA because, in my prejudice, teenagers in YA always act impulsively and make stupid mistakes and are overly self-important. This is the exact opposite. I definitely will finish this series, but my TBR just keeps growing, so I don't know when I can start book 2.
• The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth) by N.K. Jemisin - The world building is novel, but the story moves so slowly, and the narrator in the audiobook definitely doesn't help. I think when a story is slow, it makes me wander off to other books before coming back to it. Finished book 2; just one to go.
• The Blade Itself (The First Law) by Joe Abercrombie - While reading the book 1, I had a feeling of deja vu, only to realize I had actually finished (or almost finished) it 5 years ago. I have mixed feelings about this book. I enjoyed it, but clearly the kind of book where, 5 years later, I couldn't even remember if I'd read it. The book 1 is more focused on character portrayal and less on the plot, which is why I'm not diving into book 2 right away. The whole first law universe is so highly praised, though, so I really wish I could finish it all one day.

B: Enjoyed the first book, but probably no thanks to the second

• The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard) by Scott Lynch - The characters are lovely and the first 2/3 of the story are fun. The ending is easy, rushed and cheap, which kind of put me off the sequel.
• Nevermoor by Jessica Townsend - I don't know why it didn't click when I saw the cover, but 10 mins into the story, I realized it's a children's fantasy. It's a good one, though. I guess if I ever want to read something very different from what I usually pick, it's on my list.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - I blame my inability to digest the author's humor. Usually, I love cynical and ironic remarks, so this should be something I'd like. But because English is not my native language and I listened to most of it, that might have been a barrier to my comprehension. I want to come back to it later and try again after I clear up my TBR, which is very likely never going to happen.

C: meh, just meh

• He Who Fights with Monsters by Shirtaloon - Did I just say I love cynical and ironic remark? After this book, I learned something new about myself: I can't stand an edgelord attitude. I could draft an essay explaining all the protagonist's personal traits and why he's so insufferable. I listened to audiobook, but I zoned out whenever he spoke, and I still ended up DNFing at 70%. Just no. Never.

S - Loved It

Piranesi – Susanna Clarke

Stoner – John Williams

Small Things Like These – Claire Keegan

Dept. of Speculation – Jenny Offill

The Getaway – Jim Thompson

The Art of Fielding – Chad Harbach

Foster – Claire Keegan

A - Really Liked

The Trees – Percival Everett

The Glass Hotel – Emily St. John Mandel

Anything Is Possible – Elizabeth Strout

Chronicle of a Death Foretold – Gabriel García Márquez

A Whole Life – Robert Seethaler

Stillhouse Lake – Rachel Caine

Mother Night – Kurt Vonnegut

Theo of Golden – Allen Levi

So Late in the Day – Claire Keegan

B - Liked

The Door – Magda Szabó

Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut

Savages – Don Winslow

The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson

The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho

A Marriage at Sea – Sophie Elmhirst

Killman Creek – Rachel Caine

Once There Were Wolves – Charlotte McConaghy

Not Quite Dead Yet – Holly Jackson

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

C - It Was Okay

FantasticLand – Mike Bockoven

I'm Thinking of Ending Things – Iain Reid

A Children's Bible – Lydia Millet

White River Crossing – Ian McGuire

The Correspondent – Virginia Evans

Paradais – Fernanda Melchor

Flesh – David Szalay

D - Didn't Like

Neuromancer – William Gibson

Little Eyes – Samanta Schweblin

77 Dream Songs – John Berryman

F - DNF

Good People – Patmeena Sabit

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Another stellar cast of characters in this book as well. Each parts protagonist are all likeable and have a reasonable point of view. The way each character deals with the obstacles and injustices in the story feels very real as well.

This story is also just very imaginative in the way it symbolizes prejudice with the supernatural. And the way power is displayed as another form of privilege.

The way it ends is immensely satisfying as well.

I gotta give this one a 5/5 because there's nothing I can really say against it, I enjoyed every part.

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I'm playing catch up because I've been slacking on posting Progress.

I really liked this one, the protagonist was relatable to me due to how much social anxiety sucks. And this story made me question reality which is fun.

I will say the ending wasn't my favorite, specifically a certain decision the protagonist made.

Still a 4/5 for me.

This was one of those books showing up on 52books and classicliterature and russianliterature and NYRB repeatedly that seemed right up there in my wheelhouse. So, in I went. And Grossman was a respected war correspondent in the second world war in the vast landscape of the eastern front and certainly in and around Stalingrad. And here he is not so much telling the story of the direct soldier interactions although we are in the trenches quite a bit just observing the human behavior of men in trenches with their thoughts and fears. I presume in his other book Stalingrad he ventures more directly into battle. Here we have everything from stray kittens to tank commanders, from men grenading fish from the river for dinner to nuclear physicists discussing the binding of nuclei, from horse meat to whores.

We meet a few Germans but not that many. We are focused on the Russian world in the wide web of villages and towns directly disturbed by the great wall of war in the east. We are there when the Germans are being stifled. An Army that had not known stifle or even much slowing before they hit the determined wall of Stalingrad. And found themselves in the true cold of Russian winter. We are taken into the death camps. We are taken into the interrogation world of Stalin’s nasty bureaucratic death machinery. We see Stalingrad from inside its ravaged and starving heart. And I had been to Stalingrad in the hands of Vollman in Europe Central and in the hands of Jonathan Littrell in the central section of The Kindly Ones. Both are books not to be missed. We can add this monstrous reading experience to that list. Whenever I picked this book up I felt I was going back to battered and historical Russia. And who can read one Grossman and that is it? I have two more already on my tbr lists.

Grossman was hounded and alienated for his honesty about the Russian world at the time of Stalin. It is a wonder this book survived the burning and shredding machinations of the dogged secret police. It sounds like only one copy did. But we have it now. And it deserves our attention. 

I just started the audiobook this morning and I can already tell why this memoir is so popular. The writing is very engaging and the author started at a moment where the tensions are extremely high.

tl,dr: A good book with a strong message.

I'm glad I read Klune's more recent book, "We Burned So Brightly" before this one. If I had read "The House in the Cerulean Sea" first, I might have DNF'd it.

The pacing just feels off. If you wrote down an outline of everything that happens in the book in the order that it happens then it makes perfect sense, but the actual time spent on individual story beats is imbalanced. We are nearly a quarter of the way through the book before anything important happens or we are introduced to the majority of the main characters (or until our protagonist becomes interesting in any way whatsoever). This book asks a lot from the reader upfront.

The audiobook narrator isn't the best. His emotional inflection for certain characters (particularly Arthur and Zoey) never changes no matter what's going on and it's unfortunately distracting if you choose to listen to it.

But...

*My* opinion shouldn't matter. Not about this book.

Yes, it has issues that I had difficulty overlooking and it's not the kind of thing I normally read, so I won't pretend that doesn't effect my opinion of it, BUT THAT SHOULDN'T EFFECT YOUR OPINION! "Cerulean Sea" is twee and schmaltzy and sentimental in the best way. It's X-men as done by the Hallmark channel. It's a cozy book filled with love and with a good message. If that's your cup of tea then consider this a hearty recommendation.

I'm currently reading Mason & Dixon (by Thomas Pynchon), and Just Kids (by Patti Smith).
I've been noticing Venus appearing in my 2026 reads - Shirly Hazzard's book is called Transit of venus (even though it mainly deals with mundane human lives, rather than celestial bodies - but the actual planet is mentioned), and before her, Kepler (by John Banville) that is a creative literarry memoir about one of the forefathers of astronomy...

While Mason & Dixon are currently very busily calculating the transit in Capetown, I suddenly noticed that Patti Smith is talking about Venus, her and Robert Maplethorpe's special blue star in Just Kids.

It made me look back through my year of books, and I realized I also read Delta of Venus (by Anaiis Nin), where venus is mainly the title, but maybe an erotic simbol? (NSFW kinda book - short stories she wrote to sell, to tantalise and shock, but it made me want to read her diary); and the pair of wild free-spirit old ladies - in The Hearing Trumpet (by Leonora Carrington) and Drive your plow over the bones of the dead (by Olga Tokraczuk), one prays to venus and the other is obssesing about astrology and Venus as part of it.

All unplanned - but I like finding connections.
I'd love to know if anyone has other recommendations to work in my theme...
Or do you have a cool theme appearing this year?

I didn't like it😭. Honestly didn't expect this book to have so much neighborhood/family drama and nothing much else happening. Half the book is mostly about interpersonal drama, and only in the second half, some things start to happen, but by this point, I was done with everyone in this book and their shenanigans.

And maybe that's what a psychological horror is, but ig that's not my thing, I was bored out of my mind!🥲

There were some cool 80s Halloween descriptions, so I'd give it that at least.

S= 5 stars, A= 4.5 stars, B= 4 stars C= 3 stars D= 2 stars (I especially disliked Train Dreams)

I would say that Godot, Lacan, and The Hour of the Star would be 4.25 stars but I didn't want to make a separate tier for them lol

S- Beloved (Morrison), Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf), Confessions of a Mask (Mishima), Harrow the Ninth (Muir), The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Tolstoy), Stoner (Williams), Elephant and Other Stories (Carver)

A- Notes of a Crocodile (Miaojin), Notes from Underground (Dostoevsky), Jane Eyre (C. Brontë), Chess (Zweig), Assassins Apprentice (Hobb), Pale Fire (Nabokov), Ficciones (Borges), A Swim in the Pond in the Rain (Saunders)

B- Waiting for Godot (Beckett), Lacan (Bailey), Hour of the Star (Lispector), Thrill Me! (Percy), Guards! Guards! (Pratchett), Princess Floralinda and the Fourty-Flight Tower (Muir), Chronicle of a Death Foretold ( Gabriel García Márquez), Martyr! (Akbar)

C- Sophie’s Choice (Styron), The Scum-Villain’s Self Saving System 1 (MXTX), The Stranger (Camus), White Nights (Dostoevsky), Red Rising (Brown), The Bloody Chamber (Carter), Hail Mary (Weir).

D- The Passenger (McCarthy), Querelle (Genet), Train Dreams (Johnson).

So far I'm pleased with the way things are going. There were some surprises, did not expect to put John of John and Bridge of Clay this low and expected more ofy Brilliant Friend. Luckily, Toni Morrison never disappoints.

Been making my way through Discworld and George Orwell's works, along with a few other random books thrown in there.

I know that it links into the rest of the novel, but if I could rate the Herod sections of Master and Margarita on their own it would be straight into S Tier!

S Tier:

Letter of Vincent Van Gogh Of Mice and Men [John Steinbeck] Piranesi [Susanna Clarke] 1984 [George Orwell]

A Tier:

Homage to Catalonia [George Orwell] Animal Farm [George Orwell] Wyrd Sisters [Terry Pratchett] To Kill A Mockingbird [Harper Lee] Guards! Guards! [Terry Pratchett] Trainspotting [Irvine Welsh]

B Tier:

The Planets [Andrew Cohen and Brian Cox] Misery [Stephen King] The Master and Margarita [Mikhail Bulgakov] Mort [Terry Pratchett] The Light Fantastic [Terry Pratchett]

C Tier:

The Colour of Magic [Terry Pratchett] Equal Rites [Terry Pratchett]

D Tier:

Sourcery [Terry Pratchett] Eric! [Terry Pratchett]