annie mueller

Reading

My lifetime goal is to read all the books. 

Haha, just kidding, of course I can’t do that. *sob*

Reading goals

(2022) Explore, escape, and have no patience for anything dreary. Ground myself by sinking deep into familiar words.

(2021) Keep reading more fiction; continue reading notes as a way to remember more of what I read; seek and read more book recommendations from friends.

(2020) Read more (in general); read more fiction; quit reading books I don’t love; remember more of what I read.

Favorites

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson is one of my all-time favorite books. N.K. Jemisin’s trilogy is amazing. The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell is also excellent. I love the Silver Mystic quartet by Loren Andrews: City of Husks, Family of Ruin, Champion of Sin, Isle of Before. Andrews is one of my favorite dystopian writers. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu is great and I’ll read the other two in the trilogy soon. East of Eden by John Steinbeck is heart-rending and beautiful and bleak and rich. Barbara Kingsolver is an incredible writer; any of her novels is going to take you somewhere worth going. Bukowski’s poetry makes me cry in a good way.

If I were going to recommend one nonfiction book, it would be James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games. Mastery and 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene are well worth the time investment. I read Ferrini’s Love Without Conditions and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations regularly, and revisit Henry Cloud, James Clear, Greg McKeown, and Alan Watts often. Systemantics by John Gall and A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell are thought-provoking in different ways.

Reading notes