What I'm reading in 2026
This is an interactive article that gets updated throughout the year. Worth bookmarking and coming back to later.
What is this page?
I like reading, writing, and building things that are kinda crazy and dumb. This interactive blog post is an amalgation of all three of those: an interactive article that tracks what i'm reading and will be reading throughout 2026, with the aim of reaching my reading goal of 2 books a week (106 books in total, since technically this year has 53 weeks).
I used to do this with Goodreads, but I feel bad contributing to that app at this point because all of their product development has essentially stalled, and I've not come across a worthy substitute (a lot of apps have tried through). So why not build my own system that allows me to do few things, but do them well:
- Track what I've read
- Add notes to the books so I always come back to see what I though of each book
- Prsent these things in way that I find interesting, and that allows me to store them in my own corner of the internet
So I built this page. Let me know what you think (you can find how to reach me on the About page)
Reading progress
Below numbers are automatically updated as I update this blog post. I might add other metrics but at this point the most interesting thing for me is how many books I've read so far, am I in schedule, and how many am I projected to read. I threw in the total page count out of curiosity.
Books Read
12
of 106 goal
Pages Read
4,627
386 avg per book
Pace
+4
books ahead
Projected Total
151
at current pace
Why 106 Books?
I used to read a lot, but during the last few years the average amount of books I read has been around 20-30. For me that is not a lot, and while I would like to argue that I'm reading on my computer every day (docs, articles, blog posts), I don't think it counts. It doesn't capture the feeling of finishing a good book at all.
Talking of screens, I, like so many other millennials, have a bad habit of embracing my phone the moment the real world stops giving me dopamine. So in the beginning of this year, I blocked the two main dopamine sources I had on my phone (Twitter and Reddit), and made Kindle app the only widget on my lock and phone screens. Now I can really only use my phone for being in contact with people, or for reading. On average I'm spending 6 hours in the Kindle app, and the other apps that I use are Whatsapp, Slack, Safari, and none of those come close to the kindle numbers.
Lastly, writing is my job (well, part of it), and the only way to become better at writing is to write and read more. So in a way, I can say I'm reading my way a promotion (one can dream).
The actual books
Ok, let's not waste anymore time and get into the actual interesting part. I've structured this into three parts: currently reading, read, and to be read.
Currently reading
I'm reading multiple books at the same time; I've found it to be the easiest way for me to move books into the read category. Focusing on single book will stall my reading habit, as soon as the book gets even a tiny bit uninteresting.
American Psycho
Bret Easton Ellis
Started week 4
The Butcher's Masquerade
Matt Dinniman
Started week 4
Time Shelter - a Novel
Georgi Gospodinov
Started week 1
Read
Books I've read so far. I try to add a small note to everyone of them. It's taking a little bit of time to move the already written notes from my week notes emails here, so check in few days and I should have all of them in place.
Weapons of math destruction : how big data increases inequality and threatens democracy
Cathy O'Neil
Before we got our current AI overlords, world was ran by mathematical (big data) models that decided your insurance, whether you were hireable or not, and even pushed you to vote. This book is about the perils of those algorithms. This book came out in 2016, and reading it now 10 years later, not that much has actually changed. Mostly
The Gate of the Feral Gods
Matt Dinniman
It just keeps getting better. It gets so crazy towards the end of this book that I was just openly cheering in my hotel room. Also, holy fuck that plot twist.
A Lonely Girl Is a Dangerous Thing
Jessie Tu
A Sunny Place for Shady People
Mariana Enriquez
Horror stories as well. In my opinion more fun than Of the Flesh. Probably because this one is from a single author. I've read one other book from the same author (Our share of the night), and thought it was decent. This one I enjoyed more, probably because the other book felt needlessly long.
Carl's Doomsday Scenario
Matt Dinniman
Second installment in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, and the one in which you start to see the bigger picture of the story Matt Dinniman is creating. Even crazier than the first one, and because of that even more fun. The OG covers are absolutely hideous, but somehow charming.
The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook
Matt Dinniman
This is the book where characters start to see development. I'm in love with the 'You will not break me' mantra and all of its variations.
2054
Elliot Ackerman
One the Christmas presents I got, name comes from the fact that it's set in the future. Premise sounded interesting, authors sounded like an interesting combo (ex military). Premise of the book can be summed with the word 'singularity'. Falls short on writing, characters, and tension. Also it's kinda funny how much the characters make references to Covid 19, and the pandemic doesn't even have anything to do with the plot.
The anatomy of story
John Truby
I have a hobby of reading screenplays, and books about writing good screenplays. This one is probably the most well known (or is it Save the cat? Not sure), and works more like workbook than a book that you read in bed. While I enjoyed the book a lot, I don't know how much I actually got out of it, as I don't really spend time writing screenplays (yet). Would though read if you're a movie buff.
Dungeon Crawler Carl
Matt Dinniman
Not sure how to summarize this book, but here goes: earth gets invaded, a beefcake and his cat are forced to compete in a dungeon, run by an AI. Cat learns to talk, they kill a lot of goblins. Things are really weird. AI has foot fetish. I bought this book because the cover looked nice (the current ones, the original ones are absolutely hideous). It was also a risk buy because I thought I would not like the premise (it just felt a little childish). Things took a quick turn and this book series has become my favorite thing. I keep advocating to everyone. It's almost impossibly fun to read, and just keeps getting better.
Of the Flesh
Susan Barker, J K Chukwu, Bridget Collins, Michel Faber, Lewis Hancox, Emilia Hart, Ainslie Hogarth, Robert Lautner, Adorah Nworah, Lucy Rose, James Smythe, Lavie Tidhar, Francine Toon, Evie Wyld, Louisa Young, et al
Collection of horror stories. Some not weird enough to be good, some too weird to be good. Can't name a favorite one (except maybe the first one because it ends in such a funny way).
The Atlas Six
Olivie Blake
Booktok book. Predicable writing about young people with magic skills in a modern world; that doesn't actually go anywhere (because this is the first part in a series, who would have guessed). Bought it because I've seen it in so many bookstores and the frequency bias made me expect it to be good. Well it's alright, but I'm still comptemplating if I'll read the other books in the series or just leave this as the entry into a series that I abandoned.
Several People Are Typing
Calvin Kasulke
To be read
This is more like a todo. At the moment it's missing quite a lot of books that I have on my nightstand. I'll work on adding them soon, after I've built the MVP version of this page.
The Heart of a Dog
Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков
Snow Woman and Other Yokai Stories from Japan
Noboru Wada
How I'm reading
This list of books consists of only read books, so no audio books are counted into these numbers. Not because I have anything against audiobooks, but because I this year I'm actively trying to focus on reading, not "listening and doing something else at the same time". Adding audiobooks would probably allow me to "consume" even more books, but I don't really see the point to just consuming books.
Anyway, here's how I'm reading:
- Old Kindle from 2019. Carry this with me all the time in my bag. Whipping it out as soon as I know have to be in place for more than 5 minutes.
- iPhone and the Kindle app. I tend to pull out my phone almost habitually, so I actually get a lot of reading done with my phone. For example I read almost all of the fifth Dungeon Crawler Carl book from my phone, while we were having our developer advocate offsite in Singapore (read everytime I was in a taxi or a train)
- Physical books. I love buying these and I love reading these. More than I like reading on digital screens. I'm usually carrying at least two books in my backbag, one that is almost finished and one that I have not started.
How this page is built
So this page is slightly over engineered 😅 Made a heavy use of Claude Code for building all of this.
- Data storage: Books are stored in simple JSON files (
read.json,reading.json,upcoming.json) with just ISBN, rating, week finished, and notes - Metadata fetching: A build script fetches book details (title, author, cover, page count) from Open Library API with Google Books as fallback, cached for 30 days
- Cover images: Pulled from Open Library's cover API, with generated gradient placeholders for books without covers
- Stats calculation: Progress, pace, and projections are calculated client-side based on current date and books read
- OG image: Dynamically generated at build time using Next.js OG image generation, featuring the 6 most recently read book covers in a fan arrangement, Has a tiny isometric image of me reading on my favorite chair