1. Thomas Brezina - Sisis Nacht inkognito
2. Phoebe Wagner - Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation
3. Brandon Sanderson - Tress of the Emerald Sea
4. Serg Koren - The Singular Case of the Three Witches
5. TJ Klune - The Bones Beneath My Skin
6. Melvin Burgess - Loki
7. Dave Burgess - Teach Like a PIRATE: Increase Student Engagement, Boost Your Creativity, and Transform Your Life as an Educator
8. Chip Pons - You & I, Rewritten
9. Chuck Wendig - Star Wars: Aftermath: Life Debt
10. Freya Marske - A Restless Truth (Last Binding 2)
11. Margaret Atwood - The Testaments
12. Mark Manson - The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
13. Patrick Rhone - For You
14. Brandon Sanderson - Warbreaker
15. A.J. Truman - The Falcon and the Foe
16. Hannah Kaner - Sunbringer
17. Brandon Sanderson - The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England
18. Vera Winters - Starlight and Shadows
19. Nicholas Bate - Love, Life & Legacy
20. Redfern Jones Barrett - The Giddy Death of the Gays & the Strange Demise of Straights
21. Satoshi Yagisawa - Days at the Morisaki Bookshop
22. Everina Maxwell - Winter‘s Orbit
23. Ryder Carroll - The Bullet Journal Method
24. Genzaburō Yoshino - How Do You Live?
25. Tim Hickson - A Catalogue for the End of Humanity
26. Toshikazu Kawaguchi - Before We Say Goodbye
27. Neil Gaiman - The Ocean at the End of the Lane
28. Genki Kawamura - If Cats Disappeared from the World
29. T. Kingfisher - Nettle and Bone
30. Amanda Montell - The Age of Magical Overthinking
31. Richard Dawkins - The Selfish Gene
32. Maggie O‘Farrell - Hamnet
33. Edgar Allen Poe - The Fall of the House of Usher
34. T. Kingfisher - What Moves the Dead
35. Justinian Huang - The Emperor and the Endless Palace
36. Timothy Hickson - On Writing and Worldbuilding: Volume III
37. Becky Chambers - A Psalm for the Wild-Built
38. Becky Chambers - A Prayer for the Crown-Shy
39. Sarah Penner - The Lost Apothecary
40. Matt Ruff - Lovecraft Country
41. TJ Klune - Somewhere Beyond the Sea
42. Emilia Hart - Weyward
43. Brandon Sanderson - The Sunlit Man
44. Bora Chung - Cursed Bunny
45. Michael Matera - EXPlore Like a Pirate
46. Stephen Fry - Troy
47. Brandon Sanderson - Mistborn
48. Gabe Zichermann & Christopher Cunningham - Gamification by Design
49. Brandon Sanderson - Yumi and the Nightmare Painter
50. Sangjyun Kim, Kibong Song, Barbara Lockee, John Burton - Gamification in Learning and Education. Enjoy Learning Like Gaming
51. Brandon Sanderson - The Well of Ascension
52. Sydney J. Shields - The Honey Witch
53. Swen Körner, Benjamin Bonn, Mario S. Staller - Gamification in der Hochschullehre
54. Terry Pratchett - A Stroke of the Pen. The Lost Stories

Three years into logging and reviewing the books I have read, I’m thrilled to announce that I finally achieved my goal of reading 52 books in a year, even adding two extra novels to the tally.

If I were to name this year’s literary journey (this might be a fun idea for the future) I would call it The Year of Sanderson as I became utterly captivated by his writing. Starting with Tress of the Emerald Sea I consumed all of the available Secret Projects throughout the year, thoroughly enjoyed Warbreaker, and am currently immersed in the Mistborn series. Each of Brandon Sanderson’s novels provides the reader with a creative and innovative magic system and highly realistic characters.

However, I was also touched by other works of fiction that left a lasting impression on me. Two of TJ Klune’s books, The Bones Beneath My Skin and Somewhere Beyond the Sea, as always, gave me warm and comforting gay feelings, something Klune is a master of. T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon was another author I discovered in 2024 and I immediately fell in love with her writing style and worldbuilding in Nettle and Bone. Despite the controversies surrounding Neil Gaiman, I finally came around to read The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which had me in tears at its conclusion. Additionally, I found solace in a set of feel-good novellas that had me yearning for the eco-conscious society and world they introduced. Of course I am talking about Becky Chamber’s A Psalm for the Wild-Built as well as A Prayer for the Crown-Shy - where can I apply to become a tea monk?

Another trend that I anticipate to continue in 2025 is a focus on specialized literature dealing with gamification and game-based learning in educational contexts which aligns with my primary research area as a lecturer and researcher at a university of education.

With this being said, I am looking forward to another year of my literary journey.

1. TJ Klune - The Damning Stone (Verania 5)
2. Markus Almond - These Are The Days
3. Thomas Brezina - Sisis Ball der Mörder
4. J.R.R. Tolkien - The Children of Hurin
5. TJ Klune - Ravensong
6. David R. Slayton - White Trash Warlock
7. David R. Slayton - Trailer Park Trickster
8. J.R.R. Tolkien - The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
9. David R. Slayton - Deadbeat Druid
10. TJ Klune - Heartsong
11. Nancy Sherman - Stoische Weisheit. Alte Lektionen für moderne Resilienz (Stoic Wisdom: Ancient Lessons for Modern Resilience)
12. James Baldwin - Giovanni‘s Room
13. TJ Klune - Murmuration
14. Gudjón Ragnar Jónasson - Little Gay Reykjavík. Queer History and Anecdotes
15. Adam Silvera - The First to Die at the End
16. Toshikazu Kawaguchi - Tales From the Cafe: Before the Coffee gets Cold
17. TJ Klune - Brothersong
18. Timothy Hickson - On Writing and Worldbuilding: Volume I
19. Rainbow Rowell - Carry On: The Rise and Fall of Simon Snow
20. Rick Rubin - The Creative Act
21. Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
22. E. Lockhart - We Were Liars
23. TJ Klune - In the Lives of Puppets
24. Hannah Kaner - Godkiller
25. TJ Klune - Into This River I Drown
26. Timothy Hickson - On Writing and Worldbuilding: Volume II
27. Travis Baldree - Legends & Lattes
28. Steven Pressfield - The War of Art
29. Diana Wynne Jones - Howl‘s Moving Castle
30. Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life
31. Alix E. Harrow - -The Six Deaths of the Saint_
32. Diana Wynne Jones - Castle in the Air
33. Diana Wynne Jones - House of many Ways
34. Freya Marske - A Marvellous Light (Last Binding 1)
35. TJ Klune - Bear, Otter and the Kid
36. Patrick Rothfuss - The Narrow Road between Desires
37. A.P. Beswick - A Forest of Vanity and Valour (The Levanthria Series 1)
38. Travis Baldree - Bookshops & Bonedust
39. Veronica G. Henry - The Candles are Burning
40. Tiago Forte - The PARA Method
41. Nghi Vo - What the Dead Know
42. Susan Cooper - The Dark is Rising
43. Agatha Christie - Hallowe‘en Party
44. Lev Grossman - Persephone
45. Jack London - The Call of the Wild
46. Austin Kleon - Steal like an Artist: 10 Things nobody told you about being creative
47. Austin Kleon - Show Your Work
48. Dan Tricarico - The Zen Teacher: Creating Focus, Simplicity, and Tranquility in the Classroom
49. Austin Kleon - Keep Going: 10 Ways to stay creative in good times and bad
50. Albert Camus - The Stranger

Again, I strived for reading 52 books in 2023. Looking at the list above, I obviously did not achieve this goal (with fifty books being pretty close, though), but honestly - who cares? I could make up a bunch of excuses for being two books short: Moving to a new flat cut my daily commute by about 40 minutes (which I usually spent reading), advanced education in teaching Digital Literacy regularly burns up a lot of time in order to write essays, learning patterns, and additional lesson plans, or life in general.

I have to admit, I TRIED reaching my goal and I COULD have managed to read two more books, but rushing through about ten of them in the last week of 2023 took the fun out of reading. Dan Tricarico’s Zen Teacher helped me understand this even further and made me halt in my pursuit of literary bragging rights (which does not mean that I won’t try again in 2024).

But let’s move on from me NOT explaining why I didn’t reach my reading goal for 2023 and briefly talk about readings that stuck with me. This year I continued binging TJ Klune’s work (my favourite being Murmuration as it made me cry several times) with still a lot to go this year. Austin Kleon’s writing on creativity stood out for me as well and I’m looking forward to further books. One novel that broke me and regularly forced me to put it down and take a breather was Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life. I can’t say that I’ve read anything in a long time that messed me up like this beautifully written piece of literature.

All in all, I still perceived 2023 as a successful reading year with the majority of the books being great and fantastic reads. Let’s see what 2024 is going to provide in a literary sense - my to read list is already waiting to be tackled.

1. Thomas Brezina - Sisis schöne Leichen: Kaiserin Elisabeth ermittelt
2. Adam Silvera - They Both Die at the End
3. TJ Klune - Under the Whispering Door
4. TJ Klune - The House in the Cerulean Sea
5. TJ Klune - Wolfsong
6. Kevin Hearne - Paper & Blood
7. Benjamin Alire Saenz - Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
8. TJ Klune - The Lightning-Struck Heart (Verania 1)
9. TJ Klune - A Destiny of Dragons (Verania 2)
10. TJ Klune - The Consumption of Magic (Verania 3)
11. TJ Klune - A Wish Upon the Stars (Verania 4)
12. TJ Klune - Fairytales from Verania
13. James Clear - Atomic Habits
14. Toshikazu Kawaguchi - Before the Coffee gets cold
15. Jennifer Saint - Ariadne
16. Zeyn Joukhadar - The Thirty Names of Night
17. Taylor Jenkins Reid - The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
18. Chuck Wendig - Damn Fine Story
19. Stefan Slupetzky - Der letzte große Trost
20. Andre Heller - Wie ich lernte, bei mir selbst Kind zu sein
21. Susanna Clarke - Piranesi
22. Stephen Fry - Mythos
23. Christopher Isherwood - Prater Violet
24. Kevin Hearne - No Country for Old Gnomes
25. Ava Reid - The Wolf and the Woodsman
26. Matthias Büttner - MbKK: Management by Karteikarte
27. J.R.R. Tolkien - The Silmarillion
28. Nikita Gill - Fierce Fairytales
29. Stephen Fry - Heroes
30. Nikita Gill - Great Goddesses
31. Lucas J.W. Johnson - The Clockwork Empire

Starting off with a reading goal of 52 books (one for each week of the year) seemed possible in the first weeks of 2022. In retrospect, this aim did not consider work and other events that have happened this past year. Still, with 31 books read in 2022, I have managed to pass any amount of reading I have done in any other year before.

This year, I was introduced to TJ Klune who writes beautiful stories about queer characters and I utterly enjoyed everything I have read by him (which was an amazing eight out of 31 books). I am already excited for his new novel In the Lives of Puppets which is scheduled for April.

Hopefully, reading works by great authors finally gives me the motivation to start writing myself - there are stories within me that try to break free, myself being the procrastinating barrier they have to cross and following Stephen King‘s quote of „Books are a uniquely portable magic“, I eventually want to be able to wield this magic.