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EP 51 - 2023 Reading Review
8 Plays9 months ago
It’s been another fantastic year of reading. On today’s episode, I’ll recap my 2023 reads, in case anything piques your interest. You can view the complete list, with links to each book in the show notes.
For more info and to download a free PDF of today's episode notes, visit: www.chriskreuter.com/CDWI
Join the Kreuter Studios mailing list: https://mailchi.mp/810367311f3d/ksbulletin
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Transcript
Bridging Gaps with Wisdom and Techniques
00:00:15
Speaker
Crystal Deal with it focuses on bridging the gap between where you're at now and where you'd like to be. We'll explore wisdom and techniques from a wide variety of domains and industries and apply them to your unique challenges. I love developing frameworks, processes, and storytelling metaphors that enable personal and business growth. Through actionable next steps, we'll build momentum and confidence. My goal is to help you clear roadblocks, do more with what you have, and realize the potential of yourself and your team. So throw your challenges my way and Crystal Deal with it.
2023 Reading Review
00:00:49
Speaker
First, an AI statement that all elements of this episode are products of the author, Chris Kreuter, and made without the use of any AI tools.
00:00:58
Speaker
Welcome to episode 51 of Crystal Deal With It, my 2023 reading review. So it's been another fantastic year of reading. On today's episode, I'll recap my 2023 reads in case anything piques your interest. You can view the complete list with links to each book in the show notes. If you liked this episode, I do recommend going back and checking out episode 20, where I reviewed my 2022 reads.
00:01:20
Speaker
Also, if you're a fan of the show, you should sign up for my email newsletter. These short, once per month emails contain updates, insights, and recommendations. You can sign up via the link on the homepage of chriscroiter.com. That's C-H-R-I-S-K-R-E-U-T-E-R.com.
00:01:39
Speaker
We'll start with a couple quick stats, courtesy of The Storygraph. So thestorygraph.com is a great alternative to Goodreads, which is owned by Amazon. So this year I read 36 books. My goal was 40, but I did read over 10,000 pages, which was my goal. I did read a lot of longer books this year, and that's probably why I didn't get my goal 40, but that's fine.
00:01:58
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So this year I had a 75-25 split between fiction and nonfiction. Last year was a 50-50 split. Another change from last year is that science fiction was only about 40% of my reads. Typically it's about 50 or higher.
00:02:11
Speaker
And I did have a 50-50 split between audio and print. That's a big change because last year about a third of my books were audiobooks. So I definitely find myself listening a lot more.
Highlighted Books of the Year
00:02:21
Speaker
So I've broken this episode down into six categories and in each category I'll give my book of the year with a quick little blurb and I'll just read off the other titles that I read with maybe a comment or two to keep this a short episode.
00:02:31
Speaker
So with the hockey books, I read three of them. My hockey book of the year is Klondikers, Dawson City's Stanley Cup challenge and how a nation fell in love with hockey. And this was written by Tim Falconer. This one here is a really interesting book that's part hockey history, part Canadian history about the turn of the 20th century.
00:02:49
Speaker
about an underdog hockey team from the Yukon during the Yukon Gold Rush that travels for almost a month to go challenge the owners of the Stanley Cup in Ottawa, and they show up and just get smoked. But it's a lot more than just about the hockey. It's really about how Canada fell in love with the game, westward expansion. I learned a lot about Canadian history and hockey history through this book, just really well researched and written.
00:03:12
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So I read The Winners by Frederick Backman, which is the long awaited conclusion to the Bear Town trilogy of hockey books. Frederick Backman is a very popular Swedish author. It's a really good series, although pretty dark.
00:03:24
Speaker
I also read The Rink Rats by Irene Punt, which was just the early middle grade hockey book that I picked up. I always try to read one or two of those a year. Let's get into the science fiction novels.
Book of the Year: 'Starter Villain'
00:03:34
Speaker
My book of the year is by my favorite author, John Scalzi, his newest title, Starter Villain, which is about a down and out guy who inherits his uncle's super villain business.
00:03:44
Speaker
It is a one-off. He's done a series of these last year's Kaiju Preservation Society. It was a fantastic book. This year was no different with Starter Villain. It's got sentient cats. It's got volcano layers. It's got some pretty scathing critiques on parts of modern society, all while just being a really fun read. So definitely check out Starter Villain.
Recommended Reads
00:04:05
Speaker
I'm going to do a bit of a cheat here. This book was my runner up for Book of the Year, but it is my audio book of the year. And it's Moon of the Crusted Snow by Wabakashig Rice and is narrated by Billy Morasti. And this is a really fantastic post-apocalyptic thriller. I actually just found out that this was part of the White Sky saga and book two is going to come out in February.
00:04:27
Speaker
Definitely recommend the audiobook here. I just kind of randomly picked it up on a sale on libro.fm, which is the alternative to audible also owned by Amazon. I gave it a shot and just fell in love with it. So it takes place completely within this small northern Anishinaabe
00:04:43
Speaker
First Nations territory in Canada and you don't really know what's going on in the outside world It's just everything kind of goes dark and there's an unlikely leader. There's chaos But it's really about the value of community and how we might adapt through some type of apocalyptic event I'm really looking forward to the sequel on this one, but definitely worth a couple hour audiobook
00:05:04
Speaker
Other sci-fi reads this year were Exhalation by Ted Chiang. It was a little late to the Ted Chiang party, but just some wonderful stories here. My favorite was the Lifecycle of Software Objects, which was very influential on some of the other work that I was writing this year. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabriel Zevin. Another fantastic audiobook.
00:05:25
Speaker
Deadly Memory by my buddy David Walton. This is the second book in his Living Memory series. I just got my copy of his third book in the series, Memory Reborn, which I'm excited to read early next year.
00:05:34
Speaker
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel and How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu. These are both near future pandemic novels that features things far worse than COVID that wipe out big swaths of humanity. They're also vignettes of different lives pieced together, a lot like Cloud Atlas. I read The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz, which I really enjoyed. The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time.
00:06:02
Speaker
Another interesting audiobook I picked up on a whim was Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. Again, a bunch of series of lies intertwined. It was kind of a theme for the year. There were three books that I read, that sort of
Exploring Genres and Influential Reads
00:06:14
Speaker
theme. Into the Riverlands by Nivo was the third novella in her Singing Hills saga.
00:06:19
Speaker
So I read four kids books. My book of the year here was Unplugged by Gordon Corman. This one, again, I just picked up on sale at the bookstore. I do try to read a couple books within the genre that I write for, which is that eight to 13 year old middle grade category. This one here was just about a group of kids were forced to unplug at this wellness camp. But instead, there's intrigue, adventure, chaos.
00:06:41
Speaker
So this one here was really influential for me because of it was a first-person narration that followed a couple different characters. I liked the main character Jet's personality. So again, unplugged by Gordon Corman.
00:06:53
Speaker
I read two books by a fairly prolific kids author, Bruce Covel. I was a sixth grade alien number one and the search for snout, which are both part of long series. They're both pretty good. Again, just in genre books that I try to read. I also read my first Rick Riordan book, Daughter of the Deep, where he pays homage to Jules Verne and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. My first experience with Rick Riordan was interesting. I think it's pretty violent, but as a lover of the Jules Verne books, I found it really, a really fitting homage to that work.
00:07:22
Speaker
Really got a little too violent for my taste, that's why I didn't make it my top pick, but pretty good overall. I did try out the romance genre this year, and I got a couple great recommendations from some friends. My book of the year was Beard Science by Penny Reed, which is part of the Winston Brothers series. This is the third book, but they can be read in any order.
00:07:40
Speaker
just a really fun read. I won't give a lot of details or spoilers or anything like that for these. But I did read another penny read book Homecoming King, which was a mix of the sports romance genre, which was interesting. Get a Life Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert, which was also the start of a series. And then Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade, start of another series there where it's a romantic comedy, plays off the whole Game of Thrones and fan fiction. So I learned actually a lot about the fan fiction world through this book, which was interesting.
00:08:08
Speaker
My next category is biographies, both real and unreal. So my book of the year goes to Bellhammers, The True Folktale of Little Egypt, Illinois, by Lancelot Schaubert. I met Lancelot at a convention earlier this year and we were both on a panel and he just gave a quick one-liner about this book and I bought it on the spot. Fictionalized retelling of his grandfather's life.
00:08:29
Speaker
It really talks a lot about industrialization, what happened in middle America during the early part of the 20th century. There are some scenes in here that are just downright hilarious. There are scenes that are very poignant. Just to give you an example of the type of writing you should expect in this book, I've got a quote. I'm going to substitute the word crap for the other four letter word that starts with S.
00:08:51
Speaker
In fact, the best dirt is really just a big old pile of crap, and that big old pile of crap hardens over time by leaking out all the soft stuff, and the hard stuff became gems and minerals and things, and the soft stuff became oil. One you could polish for making your home and city pretty, and the other you could dig up to power your cars and boats and planes. The whole fancy big city world was just a well polished, well designed piece of crap that ran on more crap.
00:09:15
Speaker
bull crap powered bull crap. You simply had to think about all that crap in the right way to make it look pretty and work good. It's the mind that matters, not the body or the will. So again, it's bellhammers by Lancelot Schaubert, my book of the year for biographies. Close second here with the many assassinations of Samir, the seller of dreams by Daniel Nairi. Dan's a great guy. He narrates this book and does a wonderful job. I'm a big fan of his work. So I would definitely recommend that one.
00:09:43
Speaker
I also read Paddle Your Own Canoe, One Man's Fundamentals for Delicious Living by Nick Offerman, which I found immensely entertaining and poignant as well. I read a Louis Lamour book for the first time. Hondo is the one that I chose based on some recommendations. Pretty good western.
00:09:58
Speaker
I did read a short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I hadn't read Fitzgerald since I was forced to in high school with The Great Gatsby, which I wasn't a huge fan of, but I did enjoy this one. I know they made a movie out of it that I'd never seen, but I'll give it a quick read. I read J.B.R. Crow by Wendell Berry. This is my first Wendell Berry book. This is part of his Port Williams series of books.
00:10:19
Speaker
I really enjoyed this one. There's not like a serious plot line with lots of stuff going on. It just follows the life of Jaber Crow in the simple setting of his barbershop. But I think it had some really pointed sayings on devotion and love and things like that. So definitely recommend that one.
00:10:33
Speaker
I finally got my Kickstarter for 42, the wildly improbable ideas of Douglas Adams by Kevin John Davies, which was a collection of all of his archived work that he had at the University of Cambridge, sponsored this Kickstarter two years ago, and Douglas Adams being one of my favorite writers of all time. I really enjoy this kind of look into his life and his influences. And it was even better than I thought it was going to be. And lastly, I read Post Office by Charles Bukowski more accurately read about a third of it and then just got rid of the book because it was terrible.
00:11:03
Speaker
Lastly, it has some nonfiction books this year.
Insights into Tech Elites
00:11:05
Speaker
My book of the year is Survival of the Richest, The Tech Elite's Ultimate Exit Strategy by Douglas Rushkoff. This was narrated by the author, which is always awesome because they know their work and the pacing better than anybody.
00:11:18
Speaker
Douglas Washkoff is a very prominent thinker. I got into him last year and continue to read his work, follow his blogs. And I've really been absorbing a lot of what he's trying to say in terms of how I go about living my own life and how I perceive what's happening with the modern world. So I would highly recommend Survival of the Richest. I also read The Extended Mind, The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Paul.
00:11:41
Speaker
This was a really interesting book. It took me a while to get into it, but really talks about how we can use environments and systems outside of ourselves to extend the power of our own minds. I had a really good practical takeaways as well as some of the historical context and really lays out its points really, really well. I did read two parenting books this year, The Gift of Failure, how the best parents learned to let go so their children couldn't succeed. This was by Jessica Leahy.
00:12:06
Speaker
And there's one of these Ultimate Parenting Bible books, how to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk. This could have been a pamphlet. It gives a lot of interesting examples, exercises, but the core points are pretty straightforward. Not any less helpful, just it doesn't need to be this big of a book.
00:12:23
Speaker
Finally, two little food books, flour, water, salt, yeast, the fundamentals of artisan bread and pizza. This was by Ken Forkish. Love this book. I really can like a lot of people got into bread baking a little more seriously during the pandemic. My great grandfather was a baker, we emigrated to America. So it's kind of a nice way to bring that back. But this book has some phenomenal recipes, but really gets into the science behind it, which I found fascinating. And it actually did
00:12:48
Speaker
He does a great job of bringing that science into the practical nature of how to bake really excellent bread. So definitely for me, it was a level up book. And I always pick up the French art of tea. This is a book put out by Maryage Freres, one of the top tea houses in France. I enjoy this little book. It's kind of like the J. Peterman catalog from the Seinfeld series. But for tea, you learn a little bit about tea. It's got these really interesting little passages and things like that that a little over the top, but I reread it every once in a while just just for
Engagement and Resources
00:13:17
Speaker
fun.
00:13:17
Speaker
So I hope you check out some of these books. Again, there's links to all these in the show notes. If you do want any personalized recommendations, feel free to reach out. You can find all the links to contact me on the website. I hope you all have fun with your 2024 reads. Have a great day.
00:13:30
Speaker
If you feel that Chris dealt with it, I'd appreciate your support of the show by sharing it with someone who might benefit. Ratings on your favorite podcast player are also helpful in growing the audience. Visit chriscroiter.com for free downloadable PDFs with notes and resources from today's episode, sign up for the CDWY mailing list, or to send in your problems or requests for future shows, that's C-H-R-I-S-K-R-E-U-T-E-R.com, or use the link in the show notes. Thanks for listening to Chris'll Deal With It.