The Big Reading List

I primarily use The Storygraph for tracking my reads, but I'll post them here too. The list is categorized from most recent to oldest and by year when possible. For links, I default to author website, publisher website, and/or independent booksellers - whichever comes up first in a search. Editions may not necessarily match. I don't include my DNF ("Did Not Finish") books, which would probably increase the list length by 20-30%.

Current

For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

2026

• God is Red: A Native View of Religion, Vine Deloria Jr.

• Red Rabbit, Alex Grecian

• Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels

• The Far Edges of the Known World, Owen Rees

• Brutalism, Achille Mbembe

  • A continuation of his previous book, Necropolitics, outlining a synthesis of ecological destruction, technological advancement (particularly in areas of surveillance and artificial portrayals online), colonialist thought, borderization of land, resources, and bodies themselves. Borderization in particular focuses as framework within which bodies are included and excluded in various categories of social/political legality and viability (and are brutalized when not in the right group). Also covers the "becoming Africa" of increasing portions of the world without political power. Despite all this, it holds a hopeful message and proposes that the world lean into African ways of belonging and systemic thought to heal the global community.

• Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark

  • Cool, short story about a band of monster slayers (one of whom, Maryse, wields a magic sword) battling literal demons called Ku Kluxes.

• The Lions of Al-Rassan, Guy Gavriel Kay

  • This lived up to the hype - there's some incredible prose in there. You find yourself rooting for Rodrigo, Ammar, and Jehane (along with side characters like Alvar) early and often. It's clear early on that something tragic is coming, and the ending really hits hard.

• Stone Sword Table, Various

• Jonny Appleseed Joshua Whitehead

• The Mercy of Gods, James S. A. Corey

• The Foucault Reader, Michel Foucault

  • Foucault (along with Fanon) seems to be a major influence on many of my favourite socio-political authors. His thoughts around biopower and panopticism are very important for analyzing the contemporary world through a critical lens.

• Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, Michel Foucault

• Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), Dean Spade

• Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, Nick Turse

• Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations, Richard Wagamese

• Dark Matter, Michelle Paver

• Horrorstör, Grady Hendrix

  • This book was a very underwhelming start to the year. I should've seen the gimmick-y read coming.

2025

• The Stone Sky, N. K. Jemisin

  • This entire trilogy was great. Jemisin is a new favourite author of mine.

• The Obelisk Gate, N. K. Jemisin

• Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods, Shawn Wilson

  • Ontology, Epistemology, Methodology, Axiology. Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Circular time. Relationships and accountability applied to a respectful research paradigm.

• Orientalism, Edward Said

• Mapping the Interior, Stephen Graham Jones

• The Fifth Season, N. K. Jemisin

• Taaqtumi, Various

• Bad Indians Book Club, Patty Krawec

  • Very cool follow-up to Becoming Kin, focused on writing from marginalization. Particularly interesting look at the Indigenous perspective on the apocalyptic and horror genres.

• The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber, David Wengrow

  • Second time reading. This was an eye-opener for me the first time I read it. I think I may actually like Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years better.

• The Kaiju Film, Jason Barr

• Book and Dagger, Elyse Graham

• The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

• Pollution is Colonialism, Max Liboiron

  • Lots of insights about ideas of waste, historical views on the "safe" amount of pollution which an environment can handle, and so on. Seems important for those taking a serious look at changing ecological systems and human relationships with them.

• The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller

• The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli

• Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

  • What a monster of a book.

• Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials, Marion Gibson

• Land Justice: Re-imagining Land, Food, and the Commons, Various

• A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Barbara W. Tuchman

• How to Change Everything, Naomi Klein

  • I read this one to see if it might be a suitable recommendation for younger folks. Seems that way. Someone who has spent any significant amount of time reading about climate and geopolitics may not find anything new here, though.

• An African History of Africa, Zeinab Badawi

  • A very useful book for those (i.e. most) of us who've learned very little about Africa other than something focused on ancient Egyptian civilizations as part of high school history classes.

• Zegaajimo, Various

  • Another good collection of Indigenous horror stories. Surprisingly, I found the story from Waubgeshig Rice (whose Moon of the Crusted Snow and Moon of the Turning Leaves I loved) underwhelming.

• After the People Lights Have Gone Off, Stephen Graham Jones

• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad

  • A very timely, practical example of necropolitics at work.

• Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures, Various

• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones

  • One of my favourite fiction reads of the year.

• Necropolitics, Achille Mbembe

  • Second time reading. Seems like it'll become a yearly look.

• If I Must Die, Refaat Alareer

• Caliban and the Witch, Silvia Federici

• At the Trough: The Rise and Rise of Canada's Corporate Welfare Bums, Laurent Carbonneau

• Tiger Lung, Simon Roy, Jason Wordie

  • A collection of prehistory fantasy comics. Cool concepts, but a little disjointed.

• Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction, Damien Keown

• Confucianism: A Very Short Introduction, Daniel K. Gardner

• The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien

  • Tolkien's works have shaped my reading and media interest for a very long time, so I decided to finally give this a go. While it's nice to have some idea of the broader mythology he had in mind, this was a brutal and boring slog of a read. I can't say I'll ever do so again.

• The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon

  • I'm surprised I hadn't read this one earlier. Challenging, but it really is an important book.

• The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World, David Graeber

  • Posthumous release of essays and speeches by Graber. If anyone wants to get a feel for his thinking, this seems like a good place to start. For certain topics (i.e. "bullshit jobs", which is also a book), I think the essay is actually sufficient.

• Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, Various

  • This was amazing. Give it a read.

• Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse

• Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction, Kim Knott

• Between Doorways: Explorations Into Liminal Space, Various

  • Another short story collection, this time about "neverwheres" and in-between places. There are some really creepy ones in here.

• Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future, Patty Krawec

  • One of my favourites.

• Chaos: Making a New Science, James Gleick

  • This book blew my mind when I first read it in ~2009, and it helped inspire me to pursue a degree in physics. However, I didn't find any of that magic while re-reading it, and I don't think I'll read it again. Funny how that works.

• Howls From the Dark Ages, Various

  • The first of many forays into short story collections of the year.

• The Art of Not Being Governed, James C. Scott

  • Interesting overview, and it meshes well with writing from Graeber/Wengrow and others. I found it to be a little repetitive, though - while I understand this isn't my area of expertise and a lot of details given might be useful to similar researchers, I felt that it could've been half as long.

• The Abrahamic Religions: A Very Short Introduction, Charles L. Cohen

• The Blacktongue Thief, Christopher Buehlman

  • A good example of very concise worldbuilding, combined with some novel takes on common fantasy tropes. I hear the audiobook is also good.

• The North-West is Our Mother, Jean Teillet

• The Lost World, Michael Crichton

  • The movie Jurassic Park is possibly my all-time favourite, and I love both books. Reading this again recently reminded me of how much more entertaining the second book is than the corresponding movie.

• African Religions: A Very Short Introduction, Jacob K. Olupona

  • One of several religion-oriented AVSI books I had planned to read in 2025.

2024

• Afterglow: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, Various

• Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy

• The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer

  • This felt like a very compact and actionable version of her previous book, Braiding Sweetgrass. I recommend it.

• Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

• The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord

• An African American and Latinx History of the United States, Paul Ortiz

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The IDW Collection Volume 1, Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz, Erik Burnham

• Astonishing X-Men, Volume 1: Gifted, Joss Whedon

• Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton

• The Invention of Prehistory, Stefanos Geroulanos

• Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto, Kohei Saito

• The Solutions Are Already Here: Strategies of Ecological Revolution From Below, Peter Gelderloos

• Anarchism and Other Essays, Emma Goldman

• Moon of the Turning Leaves, Waubgeshig Rice

  • An incredible follow-up to Moon of the Crusted Snow.

• Necropolitics, Achille Mbembe

  • Short but very insightful and hopeful (despite the title). Draws on Foucault and Fanon to describe the concept of necropolitics, ideas of the Other, applications of bio-power, and borderization. There's also some stuff in there about artificial intelligence-type developments. Apparently based on an earlier essay.

• Hyperobjects, Timothy Morton

  • The idea of a hyperobject (i.e. an object or concept distributed through both time and space, which has nonlinear, aperiodic influence on other objects; climate change is the primary example) seems useful, but I agree with many other reviews which suggest the book is too vague and the existing definition too broad.

• Elephants on the Edge, G.A. Bradshaw

• The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin

• Hood Feminism, Mikki Kendall

• Moon of the Crusted Snow, Waubgeshig Rice

  • This was a very vivid and intense read, experiencing how a community struggles to get by in the wake of civilizational collapse.

• Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir

  • Booktok recommendation. Stopped going on Booktok after.

• Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber

• The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones

• Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber

• The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, Rashid Khalidi

• The Causal Angel, Hannu Rajaniemi

• Between Two Fires, Christopher Buehlman

• The Jakarta Method, Vincent Bevins

• A Short History of the Blockade: Giant Beavers, Diplomacy, and Regeneration in Nishnaabewin, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

• The Fractal Prince, Hannu Rajaniemi

2023

• Freedom is a Constant Struggle, Angela Y. Davis

• The Last Ronin, Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, Tom Waltz

• Discourse on Colonialism, Aimé Césaire

• The Rise and Reign of the Mammals, Steve Brusatte

  • Lots of very interesting post-dinosaur evolutionary and ecological developments leading up to the current area that don't get enough attention.

• Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning From Indigenous Practices for Environmental Stability, Various

• The Quantum Thief, Hannu Rajaniemi

• Canadian Labour in Crisis: Reinventing the Workers' Movement, David Camfield

• Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation, Various

• X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills, Chris Claremont

• Plastic Matter, Heather Davis

  • Plastic as a material reflection of societies' expectations about the world, its long-term consequences as part of our identity, and a form of kin for the future.

• Batman: Hush, Jeph Loeb, Jim Lee, Scott Williams

• Radicalized, Cory Doctorow

• Stonehenge, Bernard Cornwell

• The End of This World: Climate Justice in So-Called Canada, Various

• Transgender History: A Resource for Today's Struggle - and Tomorrow's, Susan Stryker

• The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien

• The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien

• Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death, and Art, Rebecca Wragg Sykes

• The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien

• The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

• Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon

• The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan

2022

• Archaeology of the Night, Various
• The Will to Change, bell hooks
• The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin
• Bleeding Edge, Thomas Pynchon

Older

Non-exhaustive:

• The Expanse Series from James S.A. Corey
• Mort, Reaper Man, Soul Music, Hogfather, and Thief of Time, Terry Pratchett
• The Dark Elf Trilogy, R.A. Salvatore, along with some other random installments in the series
• The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere, Paulette F.C. Steeves
• A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Great Silence, Milan M. Ćirković
• The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, Steve Brusatte
• Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family, Cynthia J. Moss
• Antarctica: An Intimate Portrait of the World's Most Mysterious Continent, Gabrielle Walker
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Charles C. Mann
• How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney
• 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act, Bob Joseph
• Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Warfare in Neolithic Europe: An Archaeological and Anthropological Analysis, Julian Maxwell
• Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America, Paul S. Martin
• Made to Order: Robots and Revolution, Various
• Open Veins of Latin America, Eduardo Galeano
• Cosmos, Carl Sagan