On returning to fiction

This year, I read more books, more non academic books and literature, than I have in a long time.

Something no one really tells you when you start a doctorate is that the last thing you want to do in your free time is more reading. After years of journals, theory, textbooks, and PDFs that all start to blur into one, reading for pleasure quietly disappears.

So this year felt like a return.

At first, I struggled to get back into fiction. I started with The Trees by Percival Everett, which I really liked. Then I attempted Blood Meridian. I am about halfway through that one. I would not say I have dropped it, but it is… slow going. I need a thesaurus nearby when I read it, so it is currently on hold.

Then, slightly unexpectedly, I was in Waterstones asking a member of staff for recommendations when a very handsome man suggested a Brent Weeks book. Naturally, I listened.

I started The Way of Shadows while I was on holiday and was immediately hooked. Assassins, magic, complicated political situations, moral ambiguity. Exactly what my brain needed. That book pulled me properly back into reading.

From there, I read the rest of the trilogy, and that was that. I was back.

I had set myself a very gentle challenge for 2025: read ten books. Nothing ambitious. I was not trying to cook my brain again after it had already been thoroughly cooked by a doctorate.

Here is what I ended up reading:

1. Parable of the Sower – Octavia E. Butler
2. Orbital – Samantha Harvey
3. A Midnight’s Night Marriage – John Masefield
4. The Suitable Surroundings – Ambrose Bierce
5. Of the Flesh – Susan Barker
6. The German Stories – Robert Pierce Gillies
7. The First of May, or Warburg’s Night – Robert Pierce Gillies
8. The Way of Shadows – Brent Weeks
9. Shadow’s Edge – Brent Weeks
10. Beyond the Shadows – Brent Weeks

Since then, I have also finally finished my first Brandon Sanderson book, Mistborn: The Final Empire, which has been recommended to me by almost everyone I have ever told that I like magic, dragons, political intrigue, and vaguely medieval worlds. I have finished the first book and have now started the second on Mistborn: The Well of Ascension.

For 2026, I am very open to reading suggestions. I did make a TBR list, but I have lost it entirely and can no longer remember where I put it. What I do know is that the Brandon Sanderson books will sit in the background as a constant, while I read other things alongside them.

That feels like enough.