A hideous realization, and the 2025 book census

[roadrunnertwice]

When I was working at the counter in the bakery in Minneapolis, I would sometimes read a library book during downtime. (Hey, listen, you can't really go in the back and start mopping if you need to be ready to react to customers. Once you've tidied up the front, you're out of tasks.)

So at one point, a co-worker asked me "how many books do you even read?" and I realized I did not actually know the answer to that.

Well, it was the turning of a new year, so I decided I'd start keeping track of what I read. (I was also motivated by the cool new note-taking system I'd just built.) And since that was just a high-posting era for me in general (I was 24 and lonely and homesick and broke; Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service with a bike for a broom and a LiveJournal instead of a cat), I started posting the book log on my blog and saying a thing or two about each book, kind of automatically.

That was at the start of 2007, which means that this year, 2026, will be my

🌌🌋🏜🏚️ ️twentieth year 🗿🕰️💾📟

of reviewing all the books I read (and some video games, as guided by whim).

What the fuck!!! Who even does that?

Well, I've stayed on it because it's been a lot of things to me, I guess. It's a great way to keep my writing knife sharp when I don't feel I have anything else to write about; it's a way to talk about stories, which is one of the great joys in life tbh; it's a way to trick myself into processing whatever else is going on in my life (you'll have noticed I stray from the brief sometimes) and to keep an eye on my emotional and intellectual temperature; and, sometimes, it's a way to connect with my friends or make new ones, which I guess is what I was starving for most in 2007. I think there's actually a small handful of people who look forward to the bookposts on this little journal out in the middle of nowhere, which I never really expected to be the case.

Twenty is a sufficiently shocking number that I feel I should do something special to mark the occasion. I'm considering gathering up a sort of "best of" collection of old reviews across the decades and making an ebook from em? Maybe I'll do occasional retro posts during the process? A zine??

I'm no good at hustling or self-promoting, and so my "audience" has remained very small. But for this kind of writing, I think that's probably best — these are home-cooked bookposts, un-mauled by the depredations of "scale," and you're the local fam that comes over to my house for soup sometimes. I think everyone should have small-scale connections of creation like that, and I'm glad you're in this one with me. Thanks for reading Roadrunner Twice, weirdos.

---

Well, it's also the end of a year, so here's the

2025 book census

22 Prose Novels

7 new (5 by women, 2 by men), and 15 re-reads (8 by women, 7 by men).

4 Nonfictions

All new; 1 by NB, 3 by men.

29 Comics

All new; 6 by NB, 16 by women, 7 by men. (haha, I had to go back and check on an evolving pronoun situation for that one. Just had a feeling. These categorizations are best-effort and provided "as-is," by the way.)

6 Reviewed Games

As ever, the games category is whim-centric and noncomprehensive; I played some other stuff as well, I just didn't have as much to say about it.

Well?

Prose novel count is up, but much of that's re-reads; new novels are stable, for a few years in a row now. Comics are up (from snarfing down all of Delicious in Dungeon). Games are stable.

What's it all mean? Idk. I never know. But anyway, rereading is good for your mental health when things are going weird.

Comments

[sporky_rat]

Twenty years! Congratulations!

(I do enjoy your book posts, I usually find something new to read in them!)

[bzedan]

I feel like 20 years is always a horrible realisation (even if also a fun one). Relationships? Time lived somewhere? It's just! That's two whole decades! Proud of you for your consistent book posts, god knows I've picked books up because of them (and then never mentioned because once I put something into Libby I forget why I did so).