Update on my 2025 reading goal

At the beginning of the year, I set a reading goal to finish reading more series, or at least make more progress through them than I usually do. This is because I'm notoriously slow in making my way through a series, even the ones I like. 

I've been reading at least one book in a series each month. The books I read so far were:

• Royal Assassin - Robin Hobb
• Fatal Revenant - Stephen R Donaldson 
• The Poppy War - R.F. Kuang
• The Dark Forest - Cixin Liu 
• The Valiant - Lesley Livingston 
• Death's End - Cixin Liu 
• The Defiant - Lesley Livingston
• The Shadow Rising - Robert Jordan 

Three of the books listed (The Poppy War, The Valiant, and The Defiant) were not part of series that I had already started but rather series that I've been meaning to read.  I've heard so many good things about The Poppy War series that I was going to start it this year anyway, but now I'm vowing to complete it, especially since I enjoyed the first book so much. The Valiant is a lesser known series that I've been planning to read for years, and this year was as good a time as any. I'm glad I did because I've liked the first two books.

Of the 8 series books I've read so far, four earned 5 star ratings, three were 4 stars, and I gave one 3 stars. That's a pretty impressive average rating of 4.375. Maybe I should be finishing series more quickly than I have been doing.

 

Highly rated fantasy books that I didn't like as much

No book will appeal to every reader. That is true no matter what the book is or how well-written it is. On this blog, I've documented my reading history with well-regarded books, including my positive experience with Goodreads Choice Awards finalists in 2021 and my less positive experience with NY Times bestsellers in 2020. I thought it'd be interesting to look back on which books from my read shelf have the highest Goodreads ratings that I didn't like. In this post, I'll focus on fantasy books since that is my favorite genre (closely followed by sci-fi and thrillers). I may list books from other genres in future posts.

In alphabetical order by title, here the top eight highly rated fantasy books that I didn't like as much:

1. A Clash of Kings (4.42 Goodreads rating) - Ten years ago (!), I talked about how my dislike of the Game of Thrones books was the reason why I was late to watching the TV show. I didn't read past A Clash of Kings because it was so painful to finish, but I finished the TV series.
2. A Day of Fallen Night (4.34 Goodreads rating) -  I thought The Priory of the Orange Tree was good but too long. A Day of Fallen Night wasn't as good and still too long. Maybe I would've liked it if it was under 400 pages rather than over 800.
3. The Fifth Season (4.30 Goodreads rating) - I thought The Fifth Season was boring until the twist at the end. It boggles my mind how this book won so many awards. Needless to say, I didn't continue reading the series.
4. A Game of Thrones (4.45 Goodreads rating) - See A Clash of Kings above. A Game of Thrones wasn't as awful as A Clash of Kings, but I still didn't like it.
5. House of Earth and Blood (4.46 Goodreads rating) - Before Sarah J. Maas fans berate me, let me say that I really enjoyed her Throne of Glass series. It turns out that I don't like her romantasy books as much, or romantasy in general. 
6. Iron Flame (4.37 Goodreads rating) - This is another case of my not liking romantasy very much. I thought Fourth Wing was fine, mainly because the novelty of the dragons and the training outweighed the romance aspect. That didn't happen with Iron Flame.
7. The Lies of Locke Lamora (4.31 Goodreads rating) - I'm still confused why I didn't like this book. It had all the elements of a story I should like, but the story wasn't quite interesting enough, the characters not quite likeable enough, and the writing not quite good enough, so the end result was a book that was just meh.
8. The Stand (4.35 Goodreads rating) - This applies to just about every Stephen King book because I've yet to come across one I really liked. The Stand happens to be the highest rated of the ones I've read.

 

Auto-buy authors

I've seen several social media posts lately where readers share their auto-buy authors. These are authors whose books a reader would automatically buy just because they were written by the authors. 

I went through all of the books I rated on Goodreads to come up with my auto-buy authors. I was surprised that there are only three:

• Brandon Sanderson - For anyone who has been following me, this is a no-brainer. Not only will I buy any book he publishes, I will fund any crowdsourcing campaign he starts. :-) 
• Lisa Gardner - By now, I own and have read almost all of the books written by my favorite thriller author. She has a new book coming out in 2025. I don't know anything about it other than the title, but I'm buying it! 
• Laini Taylor - Unlike Brandon Sanderson and Lisa Gardner, Laini Taylor hasn't published as many books. Based on how much I loved the Daughter of Smoke & Bone series and the Strange the Dreamer duology, however, I'd buy whatever she publishes next.
  

Although the three authors above are my only "official" auto-buy authors, there are several others who nearly met the bar (in no particular order):

• Lee Child - I would auto-buy any book in the Jack Reacher series. The reason Lee Child the author isn't an auto-buy for me is that he has published books that don't feature Jack Reacher, and those books are not auto-buys.
• Suzanne Collins - The books in the Hunger Games series are auto-buys. (I would've bought Sunrise on the Reaping regardless of what reviewers said.) I enjoyed her Underland Chronicles as well, but I wouldn't classify them as auto-buys.
• Rainbow Rowell - Rainbow Rowell is 90% an auto-buy author for me. Before I read the first two Simon Snow books, she would've been an auto-buy, but I lost interest in that series and haven't read the third book yet.
• Ken Liu - I've only read his Dandelion Dynasty series and The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. Based on those five books, Ken Liu could be an auto-buy, but the sample size is too small for me to say for sure.
• Taylor Jenkins Reid - This is another example where my sample size is too small. I've thoroughly enjoyed the five books I've read, but I'm not certain she is an auto-buy author. Nevertheless, I plan to buy Atmosphere when it's released.
  

 As an author, I can only aspire to be on some reader's auto-buy list. Who are your auto-buy authors?

 

Does fiction writing help with business writing?

 

I've been so busy with my day job for the past year that I haven't had time to work on my next novel. But that doesn't mean I'm not writing. I churn out thousands of words a day, whether it's business documents, emails, or chat messages with coworkers. Do I think my experience in writing fiction have helped with the writing I do at work? Absolutely!

Whether you're writing a story or a business memo, the ability to communicate is vital. Just as a story won't be as enjoyable if the author can't express what is happening to the characters, work goes more smoothly if coworkers can communicate their ideas to one another. As someone who works in software engineering, we often need to share engineering design ideas and be able to understand designs proposed by other engineers. I have seen miscommunication result in building the wrong software or building it incorrectly. While I can't claim that my ideas are all good, I can tell that I get them across in a less confusing manner than many of my colleagues, and I attribute that to the years I've spent writing stories.

Three ways that writing fiction have helped me in my business writing:

1. The mechanics of writing, such as spelling, syntax, and grammar - Even in this age of spell check, I come across too much business writing riddled with misspellings and sentences that don't make sense. It's hard to get your ideas across if people can't understand your sentences.
   
2. Saying what you want to convey - It doesn't matter how smart you are if your email or memo doesn't convey what you intend or if your engineering design document doesn't describe how you think the software should be implemented. Thanks to my fiction writing, with its need to tell my stories without confusing readers, I believe I have a good grasp of this.
3. Not saying more than what you want to convey - Just as importantly as getting your point across is not drowning your message in extra words. While some fiction authors have a problem with this, my stories tend to be more concise, and this has helped with my business writing.

I miss writing fiction because of the workload from my day job, but I'm glad that my fiction writing background serves me well at work too. Once I finally get to return to writing stories again, it'll be interesting to see if all of the practice in business writing helps with writing fiction.