What I'm reading in 2026
Overengineered approach to tracking how many books I've read in 2026, with filtering, auto generated images, and progress bars
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 amalgamation of all three: an interactive article that tracks what I'm reading throughout 2026, with the aim of reaching my reading goal of 2 books a week (106 books in total, since this year has 53 weeks).
I used to do this with Goodreads, but their product development has stalled, and I've not come across a worthy substitute (a lot of apps have tried though). I built my own system that does a few things well:
- Track what I've read
- Add notes to the books so I can come back to see what I thought of each book
- Present these things in a way I find interesting, stored in my own corner of the internet
Let me know what you think (you can find how to reach me on the About page).
Reading progress
These numbers update as I update this blog post. I track how many books I've read, whether I'm on schedule, and how many I'm projected to read. I threw in the total page count out of curiosity.
Pages Read
7,813
372 avg per book
Pace
-28
books behind
Projected Total
45
at current pace
Reading breakdown
Author Gender
Fiction vs Non-Fiction
By Genre
Author Nationality
Why 106 Books?
I used to read a lot, but in recent years I averaged 20-30 books. I read on my computer every day (docs, articles, blog posts), but that doesn't count. It doesn't capture the feeling of finishing a good book.
I have a bad habit of reaching for my phone the moment the real world stops giving me dopamine. At the start of this year, I blocked the two main dopamine sources on my phone (Twitter and Reddit) and made the Kindle app the only widget on my lock and home screens. Now I can only use my phone for talking to people or reading. I'm averaging 6 hours a day in the Kindle app. The other apps I use (WhatsApp, Slack, Safari) don't come close.
Writing is part of my job, and the only way to get better at writing is to write and read more. I'm reading my way to a promotion (one can dream).
The actual books
On to the books.
Currently reading
I read multiple books at the same time. Focusing on a single book stalls my reading habit as soon as it gets even a tiny bit boring.
American Psycho
Bret Easton Ellis
Careless People
Unknown Author
Time Shelter - a Novel
Georgi Gospodinov
Japanese Myths
Joshua Frydman
Read
Books I've read so far. I try to add a note to every one of them. I'm still moving notes from my weekly emails here, so check back in a few days.
The moustache
Emmanuel Carrère
Margo's Got Money Troubles
Rufi Thorpe
This Inevitable Ruin
Matt Dinniman
Sky Daddy
Kate Folk
The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
Matt Dinniman
How to Keep House While Drowning
K. C. Davis
Unknown (9781647397067)
Unknown (9781647397067)
Unknown
Snow Woman and Other Yokai Stories from Japan
Noboru Wada
Honestly, I expected more from this one. This book is literally just a collection of stories, written in a way that doesn't explain any of the culture or history of the stories. Hopefully the 'The Japanese Myths' I'm reading as well ends up being better.
The Butcher’s Masquerade
Matt Dinniman
Fifth in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. Best so far. Well, who am I kidding, I've given 5 stars to all of them. But this one is especially good.
Weapons of math destruction : how big data increases inequality and threatens democracy
Unknown Author
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. Well, it is outdated, but same processes still run. Things just essentially got worse. Three stars because the book didn't have that much new information to tell. Perhaps these were groundbreaking insights in 2016, can't remember.
The Gate of the Feral Gods
Unknown Author
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 former child prodigy in violin is now a sex addict. Selfishness, impulsiveness and self-harming through actions in Australia. Bought this in Singapore, from a bookstore called Book Bar (definitely worth visiting). Read on the flight back to Finland. It will make you think, but the story is secondary. Wouldn't read it again.
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 Night), and thought it was decent. This one I enjoyed more, probably because the other book felt needlessly long.
Carl's Doomsday Scenario
Unknown Author
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 of 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
Unknown Author
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. Predictable 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 contemplating 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
Man gets uploaded to Slack and which everyone else at the public relations firm think is just a bit to exploit the company's work from home policy. Chaos ensues. Nice quick read. Book is written in the form of discussion on Slack so despite being 250+ pages, you can read it in an hour or so.
How I'm reading
This list counts only read books, no audiobooks. This year I'm trying to focus on reading, not "listening and doing something else at the same time". Audiobooks would let me "consume" more books, but I don't see the point of consumption for its own sake.
My reading setup:
- Old Kindle from 2019. I carry this in my bag and pull it out whenever I know I'll be somewhere for more than 5 minutes.
- iPhone and the Kindle app. I reach for my phone out of habit, so I get a lot of reading done on it. I read most of the fifth Dungeon Crawler Carl book on my phone during our developer advocate offsite in Singapore (every taxi ride, every train).
- Physical books. I love buying and reading these, more than reading on screens. I carry at least two books in my backpack: one almost finished, one not yet started.
How this page is built
This page is overengineered 😅 I used Claude Code to build most of it.
- 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: Generated at build time using Next.js OG image generation, featuring the 6 most recent book covers in a fan arrangement. Has a tiny isometric image of me reading on my favorite chair