I spent the last 12 months in a remote wilderness lodge with no internet and cell service, and spent all my time reading. I did a ranking and mini-reviews of the 40ish books I read in that time

EDIT: Damn, wasn’t expecting this to blow up! Thanks for all the encouraging words (and awards). Cell data comes and goes here so I’ll be checking the thread here and there answering whenever I can. It’s really nice to talk about this stuff though because I’m pretty much the only serious reader up here lol

A little background first: In early 2021 my life kind of fell apart very quickly. I lost my job, my long-term relationship of almost 10 years dissolved and I had a falling out with my dad, leading me to damn near a mental breakdown.

So I decided to make a clean break of it and do something I had always fantasized about – I left the big city and everything in my life behind and travelled up to northern British Columbia, Canada with nothing but a backpack, some clothes and an e-reader. Found work at a remote wilderness lodge just doing maintenance and odd jobs. The plan was to disconnect myself from everything and be somewhere in nature with barely any internet and cell service.

I really just wanted to isolate myself, lose myself in some good books, and recalibrate my mental state after all the shit that went down. The last 12-13 months have basically just been work, read and hike/camp among the beautiful northern landscapes the lodge was located in.

I managed to read close to 40 books in that timeframe, and I wanted to share my thoughts on them with the sub as reading, more than anything, helped me center myself and get some perspective on my life. I read across a variety of genres and have ranked them with a little mini-review below, from worst to best. I didn’t do an overall ranking, but rather ranked the books I read within their specific genres/categories.

**Classics/Literary Fiction:**

8. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara: Honestly, this book kind of irritated me in how transparent it was at being shamelessly emotionally manipulative. It was certainly very well-written, but I found Jude just unbelievably stupid as a character and after a certain point in the story, found myself losing any kind of empathy towards him. The rest of the characters are fairly non-descript. The book is kind of morbidly fun to see just how over the top the misery porn can get though, but I hesitate to actually call it “good”

7. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway: I’m starting to think that Hemingway might just not be for me. I’ve read The Old Man and the Sea and The Sun Also Rises previously, and found them “just okay”. That was my prevailing sentiment towards AFtA as well. I do like Hemingway’s terse, succinct style, but in this one, I felt it actually kind of worked against him because it makes both the war setting and central relationship feel a bit flat. But the worse thing about the book is the character of Catherine. Jesus christ, she is annoying. Just an insipid, silly character. I did like the downbeat, depressing ending though

6. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens: I have to admit, I was ready to hate this book throughout the first couple hundred pages. It’s dense, slow and filled with a shit ton of what fills like unimportant minutiae. But it eventually comes together, and the slow buildup really manages to create an epic scope and magnitude that are unlike anything else I’ve read from old Charles. It’s a story that demands concentration and attention, and by the final, powerful third act, it’s well worth it.

5. East of Eden by John Steinbeck: An epic, multi-generational family saga, East of Eden is a work that for me works masterfully on both an epic and an personal scale. It’s hard to encompass everything this story does so well in a short review. It’s both a biblical, mythical retelling as well as an intimate character study punctuated with some best-in-class writing. It makes the Salinas Valley into a living, breathing entity of its own, with these macro and micro tales of good and evil spanning its expanse. Also, fuck Cathy Ames. All my homies hate Cathy Ames

4. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: This is my first encounter with Woolf, and it solidified for me that I will be coming back to her body of work multiple times. It was definitely a bit of a struggle getting into it, as you’re jusyt thrown into the deep end with Woolf’s abstract prose and stream of consciousness style. But once you grab hold of what Woolf is trying to do, it becomes a beautifully melancholic story with a pastoral feel that nonetheless manages to really capture a huge gamut of human emotions and perspectives

3. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy: Horrifically beautiful. It’s fairly challenging to start, but once you start vibing with McCarthy’s style and writing, the narrative just completely immerses you into it. It’s like a surreal, fever-dream, gruesomely violent vision of the Wild West with gorgeous depictions of the landscape, brilliantly written dialogue and prose that begs to be read over and over, and the most unforgettable villain I’ve come across in literature. This is a novel I can see myself going back to time and time again

2. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky: I was flip-flopping between this one and Middlemarch as the #1 book in the classics/literature category but it’s very close. This book is, on the surface, “just” a murder-mystery but in actuality is a dense, complex philosophical exploration of various facets of life. This is a masterpiece of character development as we see ideas of free will, morality and family told through multiple different lenses. It’s also a bit of a treatise on religion and the meaning of faith. In short, it’s a *lot* and there’s probably a ton that I didn’t even get in one read-through. Nevertheless, it’s an epic tale that I found both illuminating and entertaining

1. Middlemarch by George Eliot: A wonderful, atmospheric slow burn, and might be one of the best books I’ve ever read. Honestly probably in my top 5 of all time. I found it to be such an all-encompassing look at the things that make us human, and feels both incredibly personal and universal at the same time (kind of like East of Eden). It’s a story about marriage (hit me particularly close to hom) and about sacrifice, with masterfully sketched characters and an exploration of life in era to the minutest details. “Immersive” is a word that gets thrown around a lot for books but that’s what Middlemarch truly is – a totally lived in feeling of a small, nowhere English town a couple of hundred years ago. I found it unforgettable

**Historical Fiction:**

5. Shogun by James Clavell: This is a huge, huge novel, both in its page count, as well as the scope of the story and the characters. Historically speaking, it did seem a little mythologized and perhaps overly romanticizing of the whole samurai/warrior culture, and the main protagonist is a bit of a bland nothing white male fantasy. Clavell’s prose is also merely workmanlike. But as an entertaining story, it fares much better, and is actually very well-paced for something that’s almost 1200 pages.

4. Hawaii by James Michener: This is my first book written by Michener, and I can see why he came to be seen as the godfather of historical fiction. This, like Shogun, is an absolute unit of a book, and although it’s plenty flawed, I came away from it with something close to awe just based on the sheer scope of the timeframe that Michener captures here. the formation of Hawaii in the first chapter is some of the best storytelling I read in the past year. However, this is a book that gets progressively less interesting as it goes and moves into the “present” time, and the characters are little more than pawns. Still recommended though especially if you find Hawaii interesting

3. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel: Once I figured out that everytime this book uses “he” (which is a LOT), it’s almost always referring to the main character Thomas Cromwell, I started to enjoy it a lot more. It’s really eloquently written and Cromwell is a brilliantly developed character. It’s a story that requires a lot of focus but to me it eventually paid off, and the narrative really carries you along once you get used to Mantel’s idiosyncrasies.

2. I, Claudius by Robert Graves: well-written, funny and hugely informative. Really a slow burn character study of the eponymous Claudius, and the compulsively entertaining look at the back-door dealings and family conflicts of that era in Rome. I thought it also did a pretty great job at exploring the thirst of power and the excesses certain people are willing to go to achieve it. Just a great, multifaceted read overall.

1. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry: This book is seriously a contender for one of my top 10 favourites of all time. To begin with, the two main protagonists are just incredibly written and developed, and the attachment you have towards them carries you through to the monumental length of the narrative. It’s an emotionally powerful story with an excellent main plot and smaller side stories that are all great in their own right. Just a truly epic tale told by a master storyteller

**Science Fiction:**

6. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline: I imagine I would have probably liked this book if I was still in high school, crammed as it is full of video game power fantasies and endless pop culture references. But good god, actually reading it as an adult was a painful experience. Other than being a compendium of 80s homages, it fails spectacularly on almost every level. Bad writing, bad characters, tedious, dull storytelling. It’s frankly just awful

5. Foundation by Isaac Asimov: Look, I know this is a foundational (hehe) “canon” text in the sf genre, but I just found it to have too many issues to truly enjoy. The concepts and ideas are great – eye-opening and fascinating – but for me, the book fell flat in almost every other area. The characters are little more than cardboard cutouts, the writing style is about as wooden as it gets, and the book is very much of its time (i.e. dated af) when it comes to women. Really, this is just a collection of scenes with characters sitting in rooms and talking. Dynamic storytelling it is not, despite the interesting concepts

4. Dune by Frank Herbert: I don’t know if this will be unpopular or not, but I honestly thought Dune was just…ok. I watched and loved the movie, and decided to jump into the book afterwards. While I do appreciate the worldbuilding that went into it – as well as the often weird, surreal 60s drugged-out atmosphere – as a piece of storytelling I feel like Dune has been improved upon over the years. I still respected it as a forerunner of so many different kinds of sff stories we have these days, but taken on its own merits I found it to be interesting but rather turgid on the whole

3. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson: I can’t imagine a more definitive fictional story about Mars than this one. The amount of thoughtful research and extrapolation of science, technology, politics and society that has gone into this novel is simply phenomenal. It honest to god at times reads like an instruction manual for the first Mars colonists, whenever we end up getting there. That does work to the novel’s detriment at times though, as it can feel a bit dry and overly technical at parts. But I still found it to be a grand, immersive read, and the somewhat boring parts were more than compensated for by the overall sweep of the story and the author’s incredible vision of a Martian future for humanity

2. The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin: Complex, thoughtful and human. This isn’t the first Le Guin book that will appear on this list either. This book is the best depiction of a realistic utopia I’ve ever seen in fiction, and it does what the best sf does and presents a fascinating “what-if” look at a cool concept. Unlike a lot of sf, it succeeds hugely in two other areas. The first is creating a fully-realized central character – Shevek is an awesome protagonist with a lot of depth and nuance. The second is Le Guin’s inimitable prose, which is elegant and beautiful while still somehow managing to be simple and concise

1.Hyperion by Dan Simmons: This might be the best sf novel I’ve ever read. It’s the rare sf story (imo) that is both excellent from both a literary and “entertainment” perspective. It’s just crammed full of cool ideas and concepts, and I loved the Canterbury Tales-esque structure, which leads to the book’s greatest asset – the characters. I found each “pilgrim” to be fascinating and well-developed, and their respective stories were beautifully told, ranging from thrilling, scary, funny to downright haunting and tragic. The Priest’s Tale and the Scholar’s Tale have both been etched in my mind since I read them. This book is an incredible achievement and to me a high-water mark for the speculative fiction genre

**Horror:**

5. The Troop by Nick Cutter: Not much to say about this one. It’s a pulpy, B-movie-esque story without much in the way of characterization, prose or depth. But it does disgusting body horror better than almost any other horror novel I’ve ever read. Some of the scenes are downright grotesque and repulsive, and I have a high tolerance for that kind of stuff. It’s a quick, easy read and but not particularly memorable outside of the gross-out factor

4. The Elementals by Michael McDowell: A fun, atmospheric and really well written Southern Gothic horror story. This book is akin to Haunting of Hill House in that it deals in subtlety and a sense of creeping doom. It’s a definitely slow burn but that really helps it in building a stifling sense of gloom and dread. The characters are fascinating and it really is very well-written. Highly recommended if you like horror novels focused more on atmosphere than gore/jump scares

3. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories/The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by HP Lovecraft: I’m combining these two collections into one as they’re essentially just one big compendium. After reading these, I’ve become a huge Lovecraft fan. I’m aware of his racism and xenophobia but I believe in separating the art from the artist to a certain degree. Anyway, I thought these stories were mostly pretty awesome. I actually love Lovecraft’s verbose, overwrought prose – it really gives the stories a certain level of operatic, melodramatic ambiance. Some of the Dunsany-inspired stories are downright gorgeous. The mythos is fascinating and in the best stories – At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Colour out of Space etc. – he reaches a kind of dark, horrific grandeur. Reading these in the remote northern landscape was truly a fantastic experience

2. The Books of Blood by Clive Barker: Dark, horrific, visceral, erotic – this is an incredible collection of horror short stories. Barker is a hell of a writer – a few levels above most in this genre, and he has a uniquely twisted and dark imagination obsessed with the human body, and in particular, sexuality, and how the body can be a battleground of all sorts of horrors, physical or otherwise. Some of them also have a dreamlike, surreal feel to them. In particular, I was blown away by “In the Hills, the Cities” – it’s a story unlike any I’ve ever read before, mind-boggling, bizarre and haunting. Also of note are “The Midnight Meat Train”, “Rawhide Rex” and “Dread”, but honestly they are all pretty damn great even at their weakest

1.The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: The amazing show led me to the book, and although the source material is almost completely different other than sharing some names with the characters from the show, it’s an incredible story in its own right. Jackson’s prose is probably the best I’ve come across in this genre, and her ability to create atmosphere and mood is without peer. The setting just feels alive in all its creepy, gothic glory. It’s a fairly small, intimate story but a very powerful, often gut-wrenching one in how it captures the main character’s very human flaws and insecurities. In the end, it leaves us pondering about what’s more terrifying – a seemingly haunted house full of ghosts or the doubts and self-loathing in our own hearts?

**Non-Fiction:**

5. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari: Yeah…I wasn’t really feeling this one. I understand why it’s popular and it did start off very well. But the vast majority of the book is just too full of speculation and the author’s own musings without much in the way of concrete evidence. I also found his mythologizing of hunting and gathering and seeming dislike of the agricultural revolution strange and misguided. The whole book just felt a mile wide and inch deep. Superficial, surface-level exploration without any true insight or in-depth analysis of a complex topic

4. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain: Wow, if ever there was a non-fiction book tailor-made for Reddit, this is it lol. I have to admit, this book did come to me at the perfect time, as I was in a pretty closed-off, solitary mood after making my big move. I liked it well enough, and the insight into analyzing introvert behaviour was fairly interesting. But honestly, for the most part, this book just felt like it was preaching to the choir, about how awesome and helpful introversion is. It tends to conflate a lot of psychological aspects and concepts with a generalized sweep without really delving deep into them. Ultimately, it really feels like a narrative that’s just self-affirmation for introverts. Which I guess is not all bad

3. The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins: I’ve always been a huge fan of Dawkins and evolutionary science in general, and this book to me, is his masterwork. It’s painstakingly detailed look at 4 billion years of evolution through certain ancestors that’s structured like the Canterbury Tales. It’s a little different from Dawkins’ other books in that it’s a bit more technical and maybe not as friendly to the layperson – and also missing his trademark snark and cynicism (whether that’s a good thing is up to the read). But it’s incredibly enlightening and informative, and even eye-opening.

2. The First Three Minutes by Steven Weinberg: If you have any interest in astronomy and cosmology at all, then this book is a must-read. It’s fairly old, written near the end of the 70s, but aside from missing the discovery of dark matter, it’s still very much relevant and probably the best encapsulation of the big bang and the beginning of our universe you can find. It straddles the line perfectly between being appropriate for a casual reader and someone more academic

1. Endurance by Alfred Lansing: Boy did I pick the perfect book to read while living in a cold, remote landscape. Endurance is without a doubt one of the most thrilling, intense stories of survival I’ve ever read. You come away with awe and respect at not only the courage, determination and perseverance of these men, but also at the sheer unfeeling power of nature itself. Some of the events and twists are so crazy that it feels like the contrivances of a Hollywood director – in the best way possible. Lansing captures everything with some truly mind-boggling amount of research from primary sources, and creates an incredibly entertaining – and scary – narrative

**Fantasy:**

6. The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan: This was the only DNF book for me out of my entire list. I had read Eye of the World and The Great Hunt before, and I did a quick summary read-through of those two books to catch me up on the third book. I remember finding the first two books flawed even when reading them as a teenager but tried to give the series another shot. It’s a no go, to be honest. I just can’t over how weirdly juvenile and archaic all the characters and their interactions are. It borders on being cringeworthy and Jordan’s understanding and writing of female characters is just baffling. The plot just seems like more of the same. Bad guy of the week needs to be stopped by motley crew of magically powered teenagers. I’m calling it quits on Wheel of Time for good

5. Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson: I read the first book of Stormlight a few years back and thought it was alright. Have seen rave reviews of WoR and decided to give it a shot and honestly came away really underwhelmed. There are some cool ideas for worldbuilding here but I don’t really find Sanderson to be a good writer at all. Aside from the wooden prose, the characters just come off as shallow, fantasy archetypes and the plot is both convoluted and nonsensical at the same time. Too much time is spent on explaining how powers and magic works – which I also found to be an issue with the first book. I can see the appeal of these books for younger readers as they basically are like spectacle-filled action movies, but they are not for me

4. Red Rising/Golden Sun by Pierce Brown: I read these back to back because they’re fairly quick, easy reads. These are essentially mindless action movies in book form and they were a pretty nice change of pace as I needed something lighter after Wolf Hall. The character is a total Gary Stu, the dialogue is ridiculous and the story is crazy over the top. But yeah, it’s pretty fun, can’t deny that

3. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke: Man, this book might have taken me the longest out of everything I read in the past year, and there were times when I was contemplating dropping it. I’m glad I persevered though because I eventually came to love it. It’s essentially a Victorian novel, written in that era’s style with almost scary accuracy, and a fantasy novel-of-manners. Once you get on its wavelength, you start to appreciate the writing and the beautifully immersive world with some fascinating characters. The footnotes are amazing and the slow burn really helps create a wonderful atmosphere that carries you through to the end

2. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin: Man, Le Guin is on her way to becoming one of my favourite authors. This little book is beautiful and punches far above its weight in terms of ratio of size to content. It’s a small little thing, especially compared to a lot of the bloated doorstoppers common to the genre but for me, it contained more emotion and wisdom than 10 Jordans or Sandersons. Written in Le Guin’s clear yet elegant prose, it has a fairy-tale-esque melancholy atmosphere, as if it’s a story you’re being told in front of a fireplace by your grandfather or something. It’s a story of self-discovery and learning to accept the dark parts of yourself, all brilliantly written. Will be continuing with the rest of the series eventually

1. The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe: Preface – I only read Shadow and Claw so far but holy shit. What a book. Mysterious, mystical, weird, beautiful and often frustrating – BotNS is unlike any fantasy I’ve ever read. It probably has the most gorgeous prose I’ve ever come across in the genre, and the usage of allegory and metaphor was really well done. The strange, dreamlike, almost surreal ambiance is what really stood out to me, and despite the obfuscations of the plot and the language, this still makes the book easy to get lost in

That’s it for my reviews/analysis! Let me know what you guys think of these books. I’m in the process of going through another batch of stories and may post another review thread in a year or so lol

by Listen2themotto