Another year’s over… and a new one just begun. In years past, I’ve done a seperate post for my 2021 Reading Retrospective and 2021 TV & Movies Retrospective, but… that seems silly. Let’s do them all together this year!

In summary:

• 126 total books: 40 graphic novels, 52 audiobooks, and 8 short stories / children’s books)
• 24 seasons of TV shows
• 31 movies
• 2245 (!) plays across 207 different board games, 88 of them new to me!
• 45 different games played on Steam, 29 of them new to me

I really should add board games and Steam games to my lists. Not sure how to do that though. We’ll see.

Table of Contents

Digging a bit deeper now!

Books

Originally, I said that I would try to read a book every two days for a total of 186. I didn’t quite make that, but I suppose that over 100 is totally nothing to sneeze at. A lot of them are on audio, but for those listening along at home (heh) that totally counts as reading.

Overall, I read entire runs of a bunch of graphic novels / comics / manga:

• Hellblazer (17)
• The Unwritten (10)
• The Wicked + The Divine (7 of 9, finishing in 2023)

In addition, I listened to several audiobook series:

• Mercy Thompson + Alpha & Omega (13 + 5 + a few shorts, mostly relisten with one new book)
• Mistborn (7, graphic audio this time, they’re great!, 1 new book)
• The Murderbot Diaries (5 novellas and 1 full length novel)
• Wayfarers (4)
• The First Law (3)
• The Founders Trilogy (2, finishing in 2023)

And I read a few series as well:

• The Shadow Histories (2)
• The Burning (2)
• The Tide Child (2 of 3, finishing in 2023)
• The Scholomance (2 of 3, 3rd wasn’t out then)
• The Risen Kingdoms

And finally, I had another ~35 that were individuals in one way or another.

Overall, I had 30 books that weren’t part of any series.

Looking at it another way, I had 52 unique authors, with all but 9 at 1-3 books each. The big winners obviously go by series with:

• Patricia Briggs (27: Mercy Thompson + Alpha & Omega)
• Mike Carey (14, The Unwritten and some Hellblazer)
• Kieron Gillen (The Wicked + The Divine)
• Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn)
• Peter Milligan (Some Hellblazer)
• Becky Chambers (Wayfarers)

Looking at it another way, the oldest book I read was A Canticle for Leibowitz from 1959. I only read 5 books from before 2000 though, which I feel I really should try to do better about. 6 of them were from this year alone (The Lost Metal, Nettle & Bone, Soul Taken, Out of the Blue, Hellblazer, Vol. 26: The Curse of the Constantines, Brothers of War), with another 22 from 2020 and 2021. Interesting to see that.

Page wise, I read an average of 105 pages per day, which is right around where I usually end up. Of those, roughly 70 pages were from novels and 26 from graphic novels (so I’m not just reading graphic novels!). 60 pages per day were in a digital format (either ebook or graphic novel) and 35 per day were audiobooks. So I still read about 2/3 ’traditional’ books, but graphic novels and audio are a big chunk of it.

The longest book I read was… The Well of Ascension at 590 pages. Not even Stormlight and it’s still fairly massive. The shortest were shorts stories. Otherwise, I had 15 over 500 pages, another 15 over 400, and the majority in the 300-400 range with 43 books. A decent spread.

As always, I tend to read books that I think I’m going to like. 66 five-star, 53 four-star, and 8 three-star ratings for the year. C’est la vide. If you want to know if I think you’ll like a book, ask me. I feel like that’s a much better way to do these things.

Particularly awesome

If you want a very quick final suggestion for what I found particularly awesome this year:

• Wayfarers - slice of life sci fi with a very different cast and feel for each book and some fascinating looks at what it means to be ‘people’
• The Murderbot Diaries - an android (illegally) on it’s own with a delightfully snarky sense of humor and a way of looking at the world I just get
• Foundryside - a magic system similar to one I’ve worked on before that’s great (basically reprogramming reality by lying to it); warning: the sequels edge quite a bit closer to body/cosmic horror at times
• Nettle & Bone - a dark fairy tale writ large with bone dog necromancy (but in a cute way)

Full list

Pretty crazy looking at it that way. 😄

TV

Okay, TV time. As I mentioned, I watched 24 seasons of 15 unique shows:

• Altered Carbon - Season 1 was amazing, DNF Season 2
• Arcane - Amazing
• Fruits Basket - What was the point, DNF Season 2
• I Am Groot (MCU) - Short and cute
• Locke & Key - Different than the graphic novel, but still great
• Moon Knight (MCU) - Weird, I enjoyed it
• Mr. Robot - Even weirder, also enjoyed it
• Schitt's Creek - Not usually my thing, but really funny
• Shadow and Bone - Surprisingly good
• She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (MCU) - Interesting, but tonally strange; didn’t like the finale
• Star Wars: Visions - Experimental
• The Boys - Rewatch, gruesome
• The Orville - Starts rough, but once it stops trying to be so funny it’s much better
• Trigun - So weird
• The Umbrella Academy - Like Locke & Key, different from the graphic novel but enjoyable

A pretty good run.

Particularly awesome

With the exceptions of my DNFs, this was a good year for TV. My standouts are:

• Altered Carbon: Season 1 - man that had so much potential; I really do recommend not even starting season 2 though
• Arcane - that’s just spectacular looking with a story that’s intense to match

Worth a look

Full list

Movies

31 movies. Not bad. It’s not quite the 54 of last year, but still not bad. I did a few series rewatches this year, including:

• Underworld
• The Matrix
• Pirates of the Caribbean
• Star Wars (finishing from 2021)

I also had a handful of movies with my children I hadn’t reviewed before and a few new releases.

Particularly awesome

Some movies really worth a look:

• Everything Everywhere All at Once - oh that’s wonderfully weird and weirdly wonderful, just go in and watch it
• Encanto - I expect you’ve seen it, but it’s been stuck in my head all year, delightful
• Spider-Man: No Way Home - fan service out the wazoo, but just a fun movie; the Avengers of 2022, really

Full list (ranked)

Board Games

New up this year (mostly because I’m a huge stats geek), Board Games! When I (re)discovered I could play games with random people over the internet on Board Game Arena… I went a bit nuts.

BGStats is a great app. Worth supporting:

Mostly ignore the time played, I play turn based games a lot, so that’s way off.

I trimmed this just to the top quarters, since the original image was something like 10,000 pixels tall…

Another view:

So yeah, I definitely slowed down by the end of the year and I fully expect 2023 to not be this nuts, but still. It’s pretty much a thing. 2,245 games over 207 unique games. 88 of them newly played this year and 23 of them played at least 23 times each. That’s pretty awesome.

Most played games of the year:

• Railroad Ink - all versions, I just track under Deep Blue; I love the variety of expansion dice they put out
• Kingdomino - simple and easy to play, the children enjoy this one
• Railways of the World - deeper strategy, the children actually play this one too!
• Draftosaurus - another quick drafting game, good for children
• Nidavellir - a new favorite, especially with the two expansions now on BGA, quite a bit of strategy for relatively simple rules

Other stand outs this year:

• Ultimate Railroads - an engine builder with a huge amount of acceleration, ear 10 points in turn one up to 100+ in turn 7
• Bärenpark (Bear Park) - a tile placement game that the kids have really gotten into
• City of the Big Shoulders - stock market game (where you don’t only have your own company but invest in others), nicely complicated
• Rallyman - racing with dice! plays great online or in person
• The Isle of Cats - cats make funny shapes when they’re sleeping, play tetris with them!
• Caravan - Agricola (but in my opinion and only with base game) but better!
• Gaia Project - a 4x in SPACE, played a lot of this towards the end of 2021

I’m going to have to go back and review basically all of these this coming year, aren’t I… 😄

Otherstatwise, I’ve won roughly 33% of the games I’ve played this year.

Steam Games

I got a Steam Deck this year! I see why people love their Switches. It’s a gaming PC (that runs Linux!) that I can either hook up to my monitors or play on the go. That’s pretty cool.

I’ve played a giant pile of mostly roguelites on it, they really are my favorites.

A few that I’ve been playing (loving) recently:

• Noita - this game is amazing; crazy spell building and destructive power
• Backpack Hero - inventory management the game; I love the variety of characters
• Slay the Spire - I need to play more of this on the Deck, particularly with the now officialish Downfall expansion mod
• Plate Up! - another multiplayer one, it’s Overcooked but roguelite! and with more automation
• Hades - only played a little this year, but it pays great on the Steam Deck
• Nova Drift - a very solid implementation; space shooter the roguelite
• Peglin - like Peggle done roguelike, but better
• Unrailed - the only other multiplayer one; I like playing it with my kids, more a true ‘rogue’ in that there’s no progress between sessions, which I actually prefer to have 🤷
• Repetendium - twin stick shooter as a chicken! pew pew
• Bio-Prototype - very early access, but like Noita only more biological and squishy

I do find it amusing that all but Noita and Hades are in early access, but I’ve really gotten to see the value of that particularly in the roguelite genre. If you don’t have a longer story, it’s much easier to completely rewrite things and go with it.

And of course:

Yup. I have just shy of 2000 hours in that game over the last two years since I bought it. There’s a reason it’s known as Cracktorio. And I’m probably going to do it again. Write up on my blog? Hmm…

It’s kind of amusing to contrast the roguelites (pick up and play for a bit, but don’t worry about needing to keep track of a super long session) versus Factorio. Such is life.

On a side note, some achievements from the past year that I’m particularly proud of:

😄

Summary

Well, that’s it for 2022. Onward to another year! We’ll just have to see what 2023 brings.